Dream
Ishatter awake with a violent gasp, my eyes flying open as my ribcage stutters and heaves.
My trembling fingers claw convulsively into the silk sheets, desperate to anchor a reality that has already dissolved.
The phantom weight of him clings to my skin like a second, burning layer.
I can still feel the devastating rhythm of his body moving against mine, the impossible fusion of his glacial touch and molten heat searing every nerve ending.
My palm flies instinctively to my throat, pressing hard against the pale flesh, searching frantically for the phantom sting of his teeth.
You absolute fool, my inner voice spits, a bitter, self-loathing tyrant sitting in judgment over my ruin. You traded everything for a ghost and then murdered him with your own hands.
I snap my head across the chamber, my frantic gaze scouring the perimeter. The corners are dead. The shadows are inert, obedient pools of blackness that refuse to shift, pulse, or reach for me. Powerless. Empty.
He is gone.
The tears rupture before I can dam them, hot and corrosive. I bury my face in my palms, but they spill relentlessly, soaking my cheeks, matting my hair, saturating the pillows until I am drowning in my own salt.
It was my fault. I shattered the mirror.
I splintered the threshold, sealing him away in the agonizing void between dimensions, in the absolute dark of the abyss.
Every violent kiss, every possessive grip, every sacred oath of forever—reduced to ash by my own reckless idiocy. A prelude to my ultimate betrayal.
And now I’m left with nothing. Not even the phantom of my monster.
I lie paralyzed, staring blankly at the ornate plaster of the ceiling as the tears dry into sticky, salt-crusted tracks.
Pale, clinical sunlight filters cruelly through the lace curtains, utterly indifferent to my ruin.
Dust motes drift lazily through the golden beams. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, a bird mocks me with its mindless, endless song.
Logic commands me to rise, to armor myself against the fresh horrors waiting at Cain’s door. But the agony is too absolute. I let my heavy eyelids slide shut, sinking willingly back into the dark, praying the dream will swallow me whole.