Chapter 16 Vivian
Vivian
Unknown Time
It feels like she’s fallen asleep without washing her face; there’s that uncomfortable early-morning grimy sensation.
She is so, so tired; it’s a smothering kind of exhaustion.
She couldn’t get up even if she wished to.
But she doesn’t wish to. She doesn’t wish to do anything at all.
When thoughts arrive, they intensify the ferocious pounding in her head, and so she wills them away. Wills herself to nothingness.
Sleep overcomes her, or rather it settles, like the way one leans back on a sofa, because truthfully it could already be there. She could be asleep.
And indeed, she is: She dreams a terrible dream. She is walking through her mother’s nursing home room, past the empty unmade bed, slowly opening the bathroom door. But instead of finding her mom poised in front of the mirror, a dab of La Mer facial cream on her finger, Vivian sees herself instead.
She’s the one dead. She just hasn’t realized it yet.