Page 12 of Monk

She was disappearing.

Fading like smoke in wind. Like fog under morning sun. Like everything good I’d ever touched.

And I reached for her, desperately trying to hold on, my fingers grasping and clutching at air, but my hands closed around nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but the cold and the empty and the dark rushing in to fill the space where she had been.

I woke with a start, my heart pounding violently against my ribs, my hand outstretched toward empty air, grasping at nothing but shadows and fading memories.

The room was dark.

Cold.

Silent except for the sound of my own ragged breathing.

I was alone.

Always alone.

I let my arm fall back to the bed with a heavy thud as I stared at the ceiling, my chest tight with grief and longing, my throat raw like I’d been screaming in my sleep.

A dream.

Just a fucking dream.

The same one I’d been having for seven years, night after night, like some kind of cruel punishment designed specifically to break me down piece by piece.

Different variations. Different moments. Different settings and scenarios. But always the same woman with those impossibly kind eyes. Always the same soul-crushing feeling of loss when I woke up and realized she was gone.

That she’d never been there at all.

That she existed only in the twisted landscape of my subconscious mind, a phantom of what might have been.

I sat up slowly, ran my hands through my hair, and tried desperately to shake off the oppressive weight pressing down on my chest like a boulder.

It didn’t work.

It never fucking did.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, the screen’s blue light harsh against my eyes, and checked the time.

2:47 AM.

Perfect. Another sleepless night stretching ahead of me like an endless highway to nowhere.

The clubhouse was quiet now. Everyone else was either passed out drunk in various states of undress or fucking enthusiastically in their own rooms, the walls barely thick enough to contain the sounds. The party had died down hours ago, the music silenced, the laughter faded, the empty beer bottles and whiskey glasses scattered like evidence of a crime scene.

I should have gone back to sleep.

Tried to rest.

But I knew I wouldn’t.

Not after that dream.