The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 36 🔻 Wake Up!

​​​​Everything came crashing down around me. I was still imprisoned in this hellhole that used to be home, and now I saw it for what it was. No more earthquakes rocked the building. No more ethereal blue light danced and weaved across every surface. No more glass glittered on the floor. No more illusions. It was just my apartment, grown more desolate in my absence, and that made it all the more torturing.

I stood alone in the hall with just my murderer and the realization that my entire life on Earth had been a waste—too much dreaming and not enough waking up. Too much dreaming for the day when things would be better. Being alive was not the same as living.

My life had long since ended, and yet there I was, a ghost still trapped in a dream within a dream.

I tore my face away from the scribbled black monsters on every wall. I looked away from Dominic, but I could still feel his tether digging deeper and deeper into my heart, like a worm burrowing into a corpse. When I raised a hand to wipe a tear away, my heart panged. Held before my face, my fingers crumbled away like sand in the wind. Already, I began to fade.

I turned to the looming man in the room. "You need to let me go, Dominic. I can't stay here. You have to stop this." He only narrowed his eyes in response. I held out my fading hand to him. "All this time, it's been you summoning the Light. Not me. Call it again so I can go home."

His jaw clenched. "I can't," he said. Then he corrected himself. "I don't want to."

The numbness engulfing my arm now reached my elbow as the fade spread. Now I was left with only my scarred arm. Ashes rose from me like dark embers. Dominic watched them float away. "I can't let you leave. Wherever you go, I'll follow. I'll find you," he said. "Whenever you're gone, I keep hearing your voice in my head. I need to make it stop." His eyes rolled in their sockets, and he tore at his hair with white-knuckled fists. He became like a feral animal—a monster.

I could envision him now, at the mercy of his crazed mind, scrawling shadows on the walls while he imagined my voice filling his head. It pleased me to know that I had been haunting him all this time from After without even lifting a finger.

I would've liked to savor that thought, had the fade not been spreading up past my elbow now. The worm in my chest bit down hard, making my heart pound. I didn't want to die here. Not again.

With every heartbeat, fire filled that vast, hollow space inside me. I could even taste the metallic tinge of iron in the back of my throat once more. An inferno fueled by hatred raged within. And that seething hatred made me tangible. The lux beneath my skin burned red hot. My scarred fingers curled like claws and found Dominic's throat. I forced him against the wall and pulled him down so that we were at eye level. "Bring back the fucking Light, Dominic."

He let out a gasp at my sudden, inexplicable corporeality. But that brief second of confusion quickly melted away as hot rage contorted his features. The bridge of his nose bunched up, and he bared his teeth, practically foaming at the mouth. "What's going on?" he spat at me. "You want to run back to that British bitch, don't you? Why don't you want to stay here with me?"

In a flash, he snatched fistfuls of my hair and pulled me away from him, shoving me hard against the opposite wall of the hallway. I let out a scream—but not one of fear. No, I was absolutely done being afraid and cowering. My time In After had shown me I could be strong.

That I could fight back.

Pinned against the wall, I glared daggers at the man who'd killed me and had gotten away with it. He should've been hauled to prison for my murder. I assumed he'd even gone to my funeral and played the part of the grieving boyfriend. I thought of my friends and family who also surely attended. Did they all believe he was innocent? Did any of them suspect a killer walked among them?