AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Like…” He makes a low sound. Not despair, exactly. Close to it, though. “This is so fucked.”
Oh, shoot.
Oh, no.
My head gets heavy in Hercules’s hands, and the conversation isn’t enough.
The nightmare wins.
It’s dark, and then it’s not. The space is empty, and then it’s not. A cat’s eyes glint in the shadows. A kitten. A black kitten.
“Hi.” It never comes to me, and I wish it would. “Come here.”
The eyes disappear.
I don’t have to look for the gates. The dream pulls me to them. The nightmare. Huge, imposing gates. They’re black, and they’re not-black, and it doesn’t matter because what’sthroughthem—
Is my family.
My mom. My dad. My cousins. Everybody. Dead. Dead.Dead.
I can’t stop.
I don’t want to go in there, and I do, because where else should I be, if not with them?
I can’t—
Stop.
The closer I get, the less clear they are. Less skin, more bone. Less human, more monster. None of them is right, but I know without a doubt it’sthem.
I don’t know who I’ll be if I go through those gates, and the pull hurts more than the sun. Resisting it turns my stomach. I dig my heels in. Makes no difference on smooth wood.
I put out my hands to stop myself, to grabanything, and they’re covered in blood.
Both hands. Fingertips to wrist.
Because.
I killed them. I’m the one who killed them. I’m the reason they’re through the gates, they’re not themselves, I made them that way, I made them—
The kitten screams.
A louder voice taps at the boundary of the dream, then shatters it.
“Daisy.Daisy. Daisy. Wake up. Wakeup.”
It’s Hercules.
Resurfacing gives me a pressure headache like you wouldn’t believe. My throat feels cut up. And worst of all, the dream’s fighting back.
I don’t know how I ended up in Hercules’s lap, but I lunge for his neck and hang on tight.
“Don’t let it happen again.” This is supposed to be an order but it comes out desperate. “I don’t want to go back in there.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Anything.”
