“You're lying!”
Atticus meows loudly, squirming in Niall's grip, and he loosens his hold, letting the kitten hop down onto the floor.
“Tell Claire I went to bed,” he mutters, and then just as quickly he was gone. Not stalking up the stairs, but going through a door under them that I’m pretty sure Claire told me led to a basement.
He slams the door behind him, upsetting Comet who had tried to follow him and now is scratching and whining at the wood.
What just happened?
22
Say it (or... don’t)
Niall
October, 2007
THE WATER ISN'Tblue.
I’m trying the best that I can, but I can’t use my legs, or my arms. Every time I try to move them, it’s like I’m pulling myself deeper down and end up not going anywhere.
I can see the surface, see beyond it to the sky. But no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get myself to move. My lungs burn, my throat aches, my limbs are leaden. I’m stuck in the middle of the water—not floating, not even sinking—just suspended in agony.
I can’t save myself—I’m trying, but I can’t.
I can’t breathe.
I’m going to drown.
Then, like lightning, something breaks through the surface. Hands. Hands reaching for me, fingers spread wide, palms slick with water. I try to lift my arms—try to push myself up—but I can’t. I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t scream.
I’m trying, can’t you see I’m trying.
And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the hands are gone.
No, no, no.
The water closes over them.
I wake up gasping for the air I was being denied in the water (water that wasn’t real), sweat-soaked sheets twisting around my legs when I try to move. I panic for a moment before I realize what the source is, and quickly pull all the covers off my body so that nothing’s touching me and making me feel held down.
The clock on my bedside table reads 3:07AM. My bedroom is dark, draped in shadows that shift like tide pools. I look over at the end of the bed, half expecting to see the water rising over the floorboards. Countless times I think I’ve woken up from a dream only to realize I’ve just shifted gears into another one, making me further question my grasp on reality.
But there’s nothing there but my football boots, tossed in the corner, caked in the drying mud of the game we should have won. A game I let slip through my fingers.
I roll onto my side, pressing my face into my pillow, fingers digging into the mattress.
I don’t know how much time passes before I finally throw the sheets off, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. The wooden floor is cold under my bare feet. I stand slowly, testing my weight, gripping the bedpost until I’m sure I won’t collapse. The knee’s a little better now.
The whole house is silent. I’m no stranger to it, I’m constantly waking up in the night from yet another dream of drowning. It’s like my brain needs to torture me in every possible way.
Why can’t I have just one repeating bad dream like a normal person? Why do they always have to be different?
Even though I was underwater in my dream, my throat feels like sandpaper and I need something to drink. Probably a cold glass of water.
It’s fucked up—that people need water to survive, but then water can turn around and kill you for fun. It doesn’t need you tolive, but you need it. And it’s like it knows, and uses that against you, as if water is some kind of predator.
The deadliest.
