My body slamming into the bedpost hard enough that I heard wood crack.
My fingers bending back at unnatural angles, like invisible hands were pulling them.
My toes twisting, snapping, reshaping under pressure that wasn’t there.
My skin screaming — a thousand needles of heat ripping upthrough every pore.
A ringing so loud it felt like my skull was splitting open.
I think I screamed.
Or maybe I didn’t.
Maybe the sound was just in my head.
Everything went white.
Then black.
Then something in between — a sick, shimmering void that burned and froze at the same time.
Time stopped meaning anything.
Seconds… hours… years… it all bled together like ink in water.
I began to see things.
Or thought I did.
I saw my father — running from the room.
Or was he thrown? His face a blur of fear and disbelief as he stumbled backward.
Guilty.
Then another face — one I knew. One I loved.
Kieran’s.
He was above me, mouth moving, trying to say my name… but no sound reached me.
His hands brushed my face, my hair — frantic — but I couldn’t feel anything.
I wasn’t sure if he was real.
Or just something my dying brain conjured out of desperation.
Then the whispers.
“We can’t keep going like this…”
“I can’t leave her! I won’t!”
“You have to!”
Voices I almost recognized.
Voices I might’ve dreamed.
