Chapter 4
Laurie
I was back, in that place.
I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten there or how they’d found me, but I was back.
Walls, too white for comfort, blurred in and out of focus as I stumbled forward.
No, not this again. My younger self—shorter by a head or two, shaky in the knees—moved hesitantly down the hallway where adults loomed like towering skyscrapers.
Their voices were kind but their faces were warped, mouths revealing teeth that were far too pointed.
The figures in lab coats congregated around me, conferring in hushed tones over my head. They told me, It’s okay, we’re just making sure you’re healthy. You’re such a special kid. But when they reached for me, I felt the prick of needles, the tug of tubes, the cold bite of antiseptic.
Some part of me was aware that I was dreaming, but that didn’t halt the terror creeping up my spine. I wanted to go home, except there was no home, only this corridor that stretched infinitely onward. I felt a prickling behind my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t come.
Then the dreamscape shifted. The overhead lights flickered, and suddenly I was flung to the far end of the hallway, the air thick and choking with black smoke, a siren blaring from somewhere unseen. Something’s gone wrong—again. I had been here before.
Smoke clogged my throat. Fire? My breathing came in panicked bursts, and I realized I was holding something tight to my chest. Something soft, warm, and infinitely precious—and I knew in my dream logic that I was about to lose it. The dreadful certainty weighed my arms like lead.
Don’t take it from me. My mind screamed the thought, though my lips refused to form the words. And still the alarms wailed, red emergency lights painting the corridor in hellish hues.
Then the dream cracked at the edges and the corridor dissolved into darkness.
I woke up with a start, my lungs clawing for air, the sheets twisted around my legs like they’d tried to tie me down while I slept. A layer of cold sweat clung like a second skin, and my heart pounded a war cry in my chest, hammering violently against my ribs.
Not again. I forced a breath, hiccupping through the motion, pressing a palm to my chest as if that could steady the galloping rhythm. I forced myself to lie still in the dark, staring at the popcorn ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes.
The nightmare still clung to the edges of my vision, lingered in my nostrils, and tainted my skin: the stench of antiseptic, the glare of fluorescent lights overhead, the cool metal of restraints digging into my wrists. That place. I swallowed, trying to push the memories back.
But like Pandora, I’d opened the box, and the nightmares were spilling out all over again.
I ran my hands up my forearms, palming goosebumps that prickled my skin. The sensation of cold needles sliding into my veins was a recurring fixture in my dreams, and it stuck around long after I woke, too.
All the bad memories—the horrifying memories—were there, always. I was out, I was free, and I had been for two whole years now. But I only had to close my eyes and I'd be right back in that facility all over again.
Worse than the flashes of clinical laboratories and sterile children's toys were the memories of that final day. The day I made my escape. I remembered fire, choking smoke, and alarms sounding all around me. I was running for the exit with a bundle in my arms. It was something precious. Something I couldn’t bear to let go—
“Nope. That’s enough.” I sat up abruptly and clamped a lid on the tide of emotions surging up my throat. “We’re not doing this again.”
There was no chance I’d lie down again. I didn’t dare close my eyes. The nightmare would come roaring back the second I gave it the chance.
Swinging my feet off the bed, I planted them on the scuffed floorboards, letting the chill seep into my soles. It was grounding, for a moment, but that too was a painful reminder of the past: Bare feet on cold floors, bland hallways, and people in lab coats breezing by like ghosts.
“Stop,” I scolded myself with a stinging palm to my cheek. The light prickle of pain cleared the cobwebs from my eyes, but the dredges of vicious night terrors remained. I stood upright, forcing one foot in front of the other until my body remembered how to move on its own.
I paced across the apartment—a small studio space that some would call cozy.
It was nothing but claustrophobic to me.
It felt like a holding cell, or a cage, and when I’d first moved in, it was far too clinical and clean to ever be comfortable.
Now, I stepped over scattered newspapers and empty takeout containers on my way to the front door.
The place was a mess, but I was too wired to care—at the same time, too fatigued to do anything about it.
I reached the front door and checked the deadbolt—twice, then thrice.
Once more. The rickety chain lock rattled under my fingers.
Next, the single window to my left—locked, secure.
The tiny kitchenette window—locked. The bathroom door—I tested the knob and peeked inside, just to be sure no one was waiting for me in there.
Ridiculous. But my pulse slowed a fraction once I confirmed that I was indeed alone.
Then I leaned against the kitchen counter, fingers drumming restlessly in the stifling stillness. What time is it? Some ungodly hour, probably. A glance at my phone told me dawn was still a few hours away. Too long a wait, with no desire to return to sleep.
The nightmares would drag me straight back to that facility, to the memory of bright lights and blood-stained floors, and I’d jolt awake again, maybe screaming next time.
It had happened before. I rubbed my arms, wishing I had a shred of calm left in me.
Instead, all I had was that thrumming urge to do something.
Anything, just to keep the ghosts at bay.
Eventually, I opened the fridge, rummaging for a drink. Nothing but stale water and half a can of soda from who-knows-when. I grabbed the soda, sipped it, made a face at the flat taste, then tossed it aside. Figures. It clattered into the kitchen sink.
Arlon had helped me pick this place out about a year ago, when I decided it was time to live on my own.
God knows I never would’ve found something this…
well, marginally better than a rat-hole, without him.
The landlord, an elderly woman with suspicious eyes, only let me sign the lease after Arlon stepped in with a few reassuring words and a stiff presence that insinuated cop—don’t argue.
Even then, she’d eyed me like I might vanish in the night.
Living with Arlon before that had been a mixed bag.
It wasn’t a pretty picture: he tried to help me as best he could, and I’d flinch at every small noise, every footstep across the creaky floor of his tiny bungalow.
He meant well, but the closeness, the forced domesticity under his watchful gaze, quickly grew stifling.
He’d try anything to help me recover, to the point of annoyance.
Therapy sessions, group meetings, and even an art class because he thought “expressing my trauma” would help.
But every new push to fix me just made me shut down further.
I’d skip appointments or sulk silently in the back of the car, arms folded, blocking out any attempt at conversation.
Eventually, I’d had enough. Arlon saw it in my eyes—desperation, resentment, and plenty of guilt at being unable to handle living under his roof a moment longer.
I gave him a halting speech about needing my own space, to stand on my own two feet and, of course, he supported me—cautiously, but earnestly, because that’s just who Arlon was.
Hence, my current state: an unkempt apartment that was tangible proof of exactly why he worried.
The fridge would’ve been stocked at his place, no chance of stale soda or suspicious smells.
But independence had its perks, if only minimal.
And if I occasionally starved because I forgot to buy groceries—so be it.
Arlon was right to be concerned, but that didn’t mean I’d scurry back under his wing.
At least I was alone, no more well-meaning footsteps in the hallway to make me jump.
I sometimes missed the quiet comfort of not having to check every lock by myself—Arlon was always up first, scanning windows and doors before I even got out of bed.
But that small reassurance couldn’t outweigh the suffocating sense of always being observed, always trying to live up to his idea of recovery.
The word was bitter on my tongue. There was no “recovering” from what happened. Surviving, sure, but that didn’t mean living. I rubbed my temples, half-laughing at the irony that even here in my very own fortress of solitude, I couldn’t find peace.
I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t rest, not while they were still out there.
With a low groan, I pushed off the counter and started pacing again, double-checking every lock.
No rest for the wicked. Or for the broken, apparently.
Like a wind-up toy, I had to run myself down, repeat the same pattern until sheer exhaustion dragged me to my knees.
That was the only way to get a good night’s sleep.
Because the nightmares never ceased. They followed me everywhere, always, and I wasn’t naive enough to assume I’d ever be free from them. No amount of therapy, or talking, or “expressing my feelings” would be enough to wipe them away.
All I had to cling to was revenge, and even that was little more than a pipe dream. But it was the only good dream I had.