Page 23 of Insidious

When I try to move my hand, it responds sluggishly, as if there’s a delay between what I want and what my body understands. That same delay follows my thoughts, too, everything thick and slightly out of sync, like I’m moving through water.

“Don’t move.”

A sleep-roughened voice cuts through the fog as hands hold me still.

Isaac.

Relief comes first, followed by something I don’t have the clarity to name yet, and I try to turn towards him. But the moment I do, the world inside my head lurches, and pain blooms again, forcing me to stop halfway.

“Hurts,” I try to say, but the words come out slow, blurred at the edges.

“It will get better,” he promises.

I try to focus on him, but it takes effort. My eyes struggle to settle, everything slightly out of place, as though my brain is a step behind what I’m seeing.

“Head hurts,” I mutter.

“You fell,” he tells me, and a vague memory flickers again before the effort of thinking makes my head throb harder. I let it go, retreating instead into stillness, into the strange awareness that something is not right inside my skull, that this is more than just pain.

My thoughts feel slow, stretched, difficult to hold on to, and when he asks about the headache, the nausea, the dizziness, I answer in pieces, each word taking more effort than it should, until even that feels like too much.

“Isaac.”

“I’m here.”

I don’t open my eyes at first. I don’t need to; I can feel him here, close, solid, holding me in a way that keeps the drifting at bay.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” I whisper, because somewhere beneath the fog, I know that matters.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says, his hand almost bruising tight around mine.

For a moment, I let myself sink again. Then, slowly, carefully, I open my eyes.

His face is right here.

It’s fuzzy at first, like it takes my brain a second to recognise what I’m seeing, to piece him together from light and shadow. There were two of him, but now there is one.

He came.

He came at last.

The thought drifts through, soft and confused, and I feel a small, tired smile tug at my lips as something else floats up from nowhere, slipping past whatever filters I still have left.

“I still dream about you,” I say before I slip back into the darkness.

Chapter 5

Isaac

Four days ago

I type it before I can stop myself.

I still dream about you.

The words sit there for a few minutes under Chloe’s name like a loaded gun, the cursor blinking like it’s waiting for me to undo a mistake already made.

I hover over delete for a long minute before pressing delete for everyone.