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"Stop," I try to command, spit flecking my lips as my body jerks, a puppet with its strings snarled. "Just stop." But who am I talking to? The vision or myself?
There's Evan, his eyes wide with something like fear, something like accusation. He's not really there, I know that, but damn if it doesn't feel real. I see him mouth words that don't reach me, can almost feel the heat of his anger.
"Can't... control it," I gasp between spasms, my voice barely a whisper, straining against the violent tide inside me. I want to tell him I didn't mean for any of this to happen, but he's just a phantom, a specter born of guilt and a brain misfiring.
"Sebastian, no!" The words rip from my throat, raw and strangled. I'm here but not here, a ghost in the folds of my own mind, watching helplessly as the bullet tears through Sebastian's skull, painting the world in a gruesome tableau of red and gray.
"Look at what you did!" The voice is Evan's, but it's not the voice of the little boy I just saw. It's deep, filled with years of grief turned to fury. I see him now, grown, his face twisted with condemnation. "You killed him! You killed them all!"
I try to speak, to defend myself, but my tongue is leaden, useless. Instead, tears streak down my cheeks, salty trails of remorse for sins both real and imagined. I can't escape this—this theater of horrors that my brain conjures up with every misfire of its electric storm.
"Did you think you could just walk away from this, Constantino?" Evan's eyes are ablaze, mirrors of the fire that once consumed his father. "You've got blood on your hands, and it's never coming off!"
"Didn't want this," I manage, the confession barely audible above the din of my seizing body.
"Too late for sorry," he spits, and there's a truth in his anger that slices through me sharper than any blade. "You're nothing but a murderer."
And then she's there—Evelyn. My heart lurches toward her, seeking solace, but she's retreating, her blue eyes cold and distant. "I can't do this anymore, Constantino. I never want to speak to you again."
"Evelyn, please," I whisper, reaching out to the vision of her, knowing even as I do that my hand will grasp only air.
But she doesn't hear, or maybe she does and just doesn't care. She fades into the distance, taking with her a piece of my soul I didn't know was hers to claim.
I'm sinking, drowning in a sea of guilt and regret. There's an ache in my chest that feels like it might never heal. This isn't real, none of it, but goddamn if it doesn't feel like it is. Every accusation, every disappointed look, every tear shed—it's all part of the cruel circus my mind has become.
"Can't do anything," I mumble to the shadows that dance along the edges of my consciousness. They flicker mockingly, as if to remind me that here, in this place, I am stripped of my power, my control, my very identity.
It's all abstract—a twisted dance of memory and fantasy, desire and repulsion, love and hate. There's a part of me that knows none of this is real, but that sliver of sanity is drowning in the deluge. The grim reality that I'm alone in this fight, that no one can breach these ramparts when my own body turns traitor, is a stark contrast to the power I wield outside of these moments.
So I wait. Wait for the darkness to claim me, envelop me, offer me respite from this inner tempest. Because once the seizing stops, once my body goes limp and surrenders, only then can I crawl out of this pit and piece myself back together.
The darkness is creeping in, wrapping around me with icy fingers, promising oblivion. And I'm so damn tired. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let it take me, just for a while.
"Let go," I breathe, surrendering to the void, and for a moment, there's peace in the surrender. But it's fleeting, gone as quickly as it came, leaving me to claw my way back up to the surface alone. Always alone.
"Please," I mutter, a plea to no one, to everyone. My words are lost amidst the cacophony of synaptic misfires. I'm Constantino Maldonado, enforcer, feared, revered, reviled—and right now, utterly powerless.
Consciousness claws its way back to me, a relentless tide that won't be denied. My eyelids flicker open and the world swims into focus—blurry, like I'm looking through water. The ceiling is a familiar one, the cracks and patterns old adversaries in the war to fall asleep. My bed, it's mine alright; I can feel the indent of years shaping the mattress to my form.
But it's the weight of who's next to me that pins me down, heavy and real. There she is, Evelyn, slumped in the chair beside my bed, her golden hair spilling over the armrest like molten sunlight. Asleep, her features are softer, the lines of stress and strain smoothed away by the innocence of slumber. Her chest rises and falls in a rhythm that's almost hypnotic, and for a moment, I forget to breathe.
She saved me. That much is clear as day. The last tendrils of the seizure's grip have loosened, but what tightens instead issomething in my chest when I look at her. It isn't just gratitude—it's fear, too. Because damn it all if I don't have feelings for this woman. Feelings that could get us both killed, and almost did.
"Hey," she murmurs, eyes fluttering open, blue as the deepest part of the ocean. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been run over by a truck," I rasp out, trying to push myself up. But my arms are noodles, no strength, no nothing.
"Whoa there, big guy." She's on her feet and pressing me back down before I can protest. "You're not going anywhere. You just had a seizure."
"Great," I snort, all bravado with none of the bite. "Just what I need, someone fussing over me."
"Call it professional concern," she replies, and there's an edge to her voice that says she won't take any crap. Not from me, not from anyone. I like the new her.
I let her push me back onto the pillows, surrendering not because she tells me to, but because my body refuses to cooperate. My limbs are leaden, my head a foggy mess. I'm a kingpin, for crying out loud, yet here I am, laid low by my own treacherous brain.
"Thanks," I mumble, the word sticking in my throat like it's too big to swallow.
"Rest," she says softly, brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead. It's a gesture so tender it threatens to unravel me.
