Page 10 of After the Fade, Vol. 1 (Asheverse: B-Side)

Hollow Folk: Vie has a dream.

In the dream, I was running, the way I ran every morning. It was one of those dry days at the end of summer, the prairie grass burned white, the air crisp and clean because the sun was still coming up. Just me, and the wind pressing against me like a hand, giant fingers drawing lines through the buffalo grass. The highway was empty except for me. No semis hauling ass. Nobody running cattle. Not even any joggers—not that there ever were, not this far.

He was a dot when I first saw him. Just a dot. But I knew.

Emmett was a darkness first, and then an outline trimmed from the sky, and then he was Emmett: the dark hair, the lean muscle, raw sex rising from him like smoke curling over a fire.

“Fuck off,” I panted as I passed him and kept running.

“Right back fucking at you!”

The highway followed the curve of the land, and I lost him behind a hill. My steps beat the shoulder of the road. Gravel crunched under my soles.

When I crested the next rise, he was there again. Sitting on his ass this time, arms around his knees. He had to know it would bother me because it was the only possible reason he’d do it, but he was chewing a stalk of grass like he was Huck Finn or some bullshit like that.

“You’re not—” I had to gulp air. “—supposed to be here.”

He shot me double eagles, and the long morning shadows made it impossible to read his face.

I passed him, and the gravel sounded like water sloshing underfoot. The road snaked around a low hill, and I looked back at the turn. He was still there, head tipped back, that fucking piece of grass bent like an arrow in the wind.

I ran harder. Sweat poured down my face. My chest burned. My legs hurt, and then they were numb, and then they were dead. The road climbed another swell, and when I came over the ridge, he was there again, sitting in the middle of the road. His legs made a vee at the double yellow lines.

One of the things I was working on with my therapist was not getting caught up on stuff. The fucked-up thing about dreams, though, was sometimes they ended up being a lot like metaphors. I thought Mr. Spencer would be proud of that. Then I thought I was supposed to call him Jim now.

I dragged myself the last twenty yards at a walk, hands at the base of my spine, the wind blowing my sweat-damp hair out behind me. I felt like if I spread my arms, it would pick me up, carry me. It made a sound in the grass. In Oklahoma one year, the cicadas had gone wild—something about all the different populations hatching at once. The sound had been enormous, enough to make you go crazy for a couple of weeks, and then it had been over. The wind was like that, a little—without the bandsaw buzz at the end of the cicada’s song, but never letting up. Some things come, I thought, looking at him sitting there like a horse’s ass, and they just keep coming.

When I reached him, Emmett said, “I told you you’re getting fat.”

I wiped my face with my shirt. He looked; he didn’t try to pretend he didn’t. He even smirked and waggled his eyebrows.

“You should have seen yourself coming up that hill.”

I turned into the wind and lifted the hair off my neck.

“Huffing and blowing.”

I eyed him.

“Probably because bubble-butt keeps you on such a tight leash.”

A minute passed. I fanned myself with my shirt. He was still staring up at me, grinning, and finally I said, “What?”

“What what?”

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

He shrugged.

“Emmett, come on. This is the third time.”

“Don’t look at me; I’m not the fucking psychic.”

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“So, knock it off.”

I smothered a growl. “I can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Sounds like an excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse. It’s a fact.” He didn’t say anything, so I said, “Do you know how many colleges there are in the US? How many other colleges? Do you know how many there are just in Wyoming? And none of them means you have to sleep five miles away from me.”

Emmett rolled his eyes. “Baby.” He stood, stretched, touching the hem of his shirt to draw my eye as the fabric rode up bronze muscles. When he finished showing off, he grimaced. “Do I really have to do this?”

“It’s my dream.”

“I hate running.”

“So, leave.”

“I don’t run, tweaker.”

“Great. Get the fuck out of my head.”

“Does it look like I’m dressed for running?”

“You’ve got until five, and then I’m going without you. One.”

It was a dream, so one moment he was still in jeans and a tee, and the next, he was in a scoop-neck tank top that said WARNING: ERECTION OVERLOAD and little white ripstop shorts, the kind that would have gotten him arrested— or murdered—if he’d worn them in the waking world. He was barefoot, of course. He could get away with bullshit like that in a dream.

We ran together.

“It probably says something about you, doesn’t it?” He was already sucking air; Jim let him spend half the day on the couch, and it showed. “That big tweaker brain, and it’s empty as hell inside.”

The sun was coming up. It picked out his hair, highlighting each tuft, accentuating tiny strands of bronze and copper and gold, little tawny hints you never would have noticed if you didn’t watch him enough, if you never saw him when the sun came up. He caught me looking, and the sun made a crescent of light in his eyes.

“Well,” I said, “it’s not totally empty, is it?”