Page 29 of Dreamscape Therapies

“Jay,” he says, nodding in my direction.

Something warm spreads through my chest as I walk toward my house. I shouldn't feel this happy, and I definitely shouldn't feel like I just had the best date of my life, but as I stand on my porch watching his tiny silver Honda disappear down my pothole-filled driveway, I can't stop the smile spreading across my face.

Because, honestly?

It really did feel like the best date of my life.

And that is a massive problem.

Chapter Eleven

The world is soft.

Too soft.

I'm walking through a city made entirely of yarn, and every step I take sinks slightly into woven rugs that have somehow replaced the sidewalk. Buildings climb into the clouds, stitched together from thick cables of wool. Braided stair rails. Knitted brickwork. Dangling tassels swaying in the wind like ivy.

It's cozy. Plush. Like walking through a grandmother's craft room if that craft room had been designed by an architect on hallucinogens.

Everything is muffled. My footsteps. My breathing. Even my thoughts feel quieter here, like the yarn is absorbing sound itself.

No concrete. No glass. No steel. Just texture everywhere I look.

And no people.

Great. I'm alone in a yarn city. This is fine. Totally normal.

Except I'm not alone.

There's a shadow watching me from somewhere I can't quite see. I feel it the way you feel someone staring at the back of your head in a crowded bar.

I keep walking.

Alleys twist back into themselves like tangled skeins of thread. Hallways unravel forever. I walk through a doorway and the stitches tighten behind me, sealing shut. Trapping me deeper.

Fuck.

The deeper I go, the stranger it gets. The colors fade from cheerful patchwork into grays and muted blues. Yarn hangs from rooftops like spiderwebs. Whole neighborhoods start to unravel, strands drifting through the air like loose hair underwater.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear clicking. Constant. Rhythmic. Like knitting needles working at inhuman speed.

Or insects.

I follow a red thread because apparently that's what I'm doing now. It winds through the city like a vein, disappearing around corners just slow enough to keep me chasing it. Sometimes it crawls up walls. Sometimes I touch it and it pulls back, like something on the other end is tugging.

Leading me.

I follow it through tunnels of hanging crochet flowers, across suspended bridges that loosen with every step. My heart pounds. The thread leads me into the center of the maze where the buildings are stitched so tightly together they block out the sky completely.

That's where I find it.

The monster.

An impossibly tall figure sitting in a cathedral made entirely of tangled yarn. Their face is hidden beneath layers of knitted veils. Their fingers move endlessly, pulling glowing thread from their own chest and weaving new parts of the city with it.

They're making this place. Right now. While I watch.

When they look up at me, I realize something.