Page 205 of In Somnis

Now we build the new protagonist of my next bestseller.

It emerges from the sink, something that was human once, maybe, before someone decided to peel away every layer of skin and leave only the screaming underneath. A figure made entirely of exposed nerves and pulsing veins, muscles twitching with every phantom heartbeat.

It reaches toward us with hands that end in surgical instruments, dripping with rust and worse. The thing’s mouth opens wider, and the sound that comes out isn’t a scream. It’s wet, as if drowning from the inside out.

Lennon turns at the foreign sound, pushes my hand away, opens her eyes, and screams⁠—

I’m yanked out of the dreamscape so violently it feels as though I am being torn through broken glass. Suddenly, I’m sitting in my bed with heaving breaths, the phantom taste of lemon lollipop still on my tongue, and Lennon’s scream still piercing the air.

I check my fingers. Five. Reality.

She’s still screaming, a raw sound clawing its way through drywall and straight into my skull.

“Fuck.” I shove myself upright, and the guilt and horror slam into me with the realization of what I’ve just done. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

I made her comfort zone, the safe space in her own subconscious, a nightmare.

My stomach twists hard.

For one horrible second, all I can think about is spiders crawling across white walls and Paul Bennett looking at me like I’d broken something I couldn’t put back.

She’s never going to forgive me for this.

Another scream rips through the wall. She can’t seem to stop, and my heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.

I did that to her.

My hands are shaking as I stare at the wheelchair sitting beside my bed.

I haven’t left this apartment on my own in months. Not since⁠—

Another scream.

Move. You have to move.

My arms won’t cooperate because leaving means she will see. It means navigating that hallway, that carpet, that door on my own. Means being out there where I’m not just Ridge, the writer with the fucked-up dreams, but Ridge, in the chair. Ridge, who can’t -walk. Ridge, who broke.

She screams again, and this time, it sounds as if she’s choking on it.

Fuck.

I transfer into the wheelchair, not in the careful way my physical therapist taught me, just fast before I change my mind, my hands gripping the armrests as I swing myself over. My legs follow uselessly, and for one horrible second, I think I’m going to miss and fall, adding one more humiliation to this absolute disaster of a night, but I don’t. I land hard, the chair rocking slightly under my weight.

The landlord keys my parents gave me for emergencies hang by the front door, the ones that open every lock in this building. I have to cross the room to get them. Have to roll to my door, open it, go into the hallway where the carpet will drag at my wheels and make everything harder, and then I have to⁠—

Another scream cuts through my spiraling thoughts.

She’s terrified.

“Move,” I snarl at myself and shove forward.

I grab the keys from the hook with shaking fingers before yanking open my door. The hallway stretches out in front of me with all its glorious carpet.

I’m the guy who can’t simply walk across the hall like a normal person.

Another muffled scream.

Move.