Page 31

Thirty-One

I knew I was getting released in the morning.

Everyone said so.

The discharge papers were signed. The meds were packed in a little paper bag labeled with my name. Shelly, the night nurse with the strawberry lip balm and tired eyes, had even smiled when she handed me my last dose. “Just one more night, kiddo,” she’d said, like this was summer camp and not a place people whispered to themselves behind locked doors. Like it was easy. Like I wasn’t leaving something behind.

I should’ve felt something close to peace. Relief, maybe. Gratitude. A sense of freedom fluttering at the edge of my ribs, waiting to be let out.

Instead, I felt still.

Not calm. Not quiet.

Just… still.

A wrong kind of still. The kind that settles behind your teeth and holds your breath hostage. The kind that makes you afraid to move—not because something might see you, but because something already has. My room didn’t buzz with anticipation. It watched . The shadows were too long tonight, stretching across the floor like they had somewhere to be, like they were listening.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead with that low, mechanical whine that’s never bothered me before but suddenly felt unbearable. I swore they were saying something. Not words, exactly—just pressure. A vibration against the bones in my skull, like a warning in a language I didn’t speak.

I hadn’t touched the bed. I sat perched on the edge of the thin mattress, my arms wrapped tight around my middle like I could hold myself together if I just squeezed hard enough. The cotton sheet was already wrinkled beneath me, the plastic mattress protector sighing every time I shifted my weight. The room smelled like overused bleach and fabric softener trying to cover up something dead underneath. No window. No breeze. Just air from the vent above the door, pumped in like a poor imitation of outside.

I looked at the packed bag again—small, insignificant. A toothbrush. A worn paperback I never opened. The folded paper with my discharge plan sat on top—my name stamped across it in stiff black ink. Dr. Reynolds’ number was already in my phone. Has been for years. But she still wrote it on the back anyway, along with a soft reminder in her handwriting: “Call if the ground shifts.”

But things had already slipped.

I just hadn’t told her how far.

If it was all a delusion—Sun, Moon, the warmth, the whispers, the protection—then why did it feel more real than anything I’d ever known? Why did it settle deeper in my body than any medication ever had? The pills dulled the noise, sure, but they hadn’t quieted the ache. They hadn’t made me feel safe.

They had just made me quieter.

Was that what healing was supposed to feel like?

Part of me—the part that still tried to chart reality with logic like constellations on a map—wondered if they’d just given me the wrong kind of meds. Maybe all of this could be explained with chemical imbalances and incorrect doses and a brain wired for myth. Maybe if they’d found the right pill, the right combination, I wouldn’t be seeing things. I wouldn’t be missing them.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel like my body was betraying me.

Because it was. It felt stretched too thin—like someone had yanked a sweater two sizes too large and told me to wear it as skin. Everything sagged in the wrong places. My joints ached like they didn’t know where to rest anymore. My fingertips twitched like they were waiting for warmth that would never come.

I had gotten my body back.

So why did it feel borrowed?

What if I’d just gaslit myself into obedience?

What if I’d told myself they weren’t real because I needed to believe I was getting better?

And what if getting better was just another kind of lie?

Because even if they weren’t real—even if I’d made them up in some trauma-spun fever dream—they had cared for me in a way no one else ever had. Not clinically. Not conditionally. But completely. With gentleness. With reverence.

They had held me like I was precious.

And now that they were gone… now that the silence had returned like a white noise machine pressed against my skull, I wasn’t sure what was real anymore. I wasn’t sure if I ever had been.

I folded the paper, my fingers trembling as I pressed the crease flat. My name glared back at me in bold, clinical font.

Dawn.

Like I was a person again.

But I wasn’t sure who that was anymore.

The blanket lay in a heap next to me, untouched. My feet didn’t reach the floor. My hospital-issued socks—blue with little rubber treads—felt like a joke. I sat in that sterile, too-white room and tried to remind myself I was almost free. That I just had to make it through one more night. That nothing could happen now.

And yet, the shadows disagreed.

Because even though the room was empty, I felt it.

Something shifting.

Not loud. Not obvious.

Just there .

Waiting.

I blinked.

That was all it took.

One heartbeat I was perched on the edge of my hospital bed, staring at the discharge papers that still shook in my lap.

The next—I was elsewhere .

There wasn’t a jolt or a flash. No dizzy swirl of recognition.

Just a slow, sinking shift, like the world itself had rolled over in its sleep and dragged me beneath it.

The walls looked the same at first. My bed. The stiff chair. The overhead light.

But they breathed wrong.

Everything shimmered like it had been lacquered in grease. The paint peeled in long, weeping strips that curled away from the walls like tongues. The overhead light didn’t flicker—it throbbed , pulsing yellow-green with an ooze-glow that made the shadows on the floor ripple like oil in water. Every surface glistened. Every edge warped.

The smell hit next.

Rot and old sugar. Stale lavender curling up from beneath the bed, twisted with mildew and something sharp and chemical—like bleach that had tried and failed to wash the sin away.

I stood.

Tried to stand.

The floor was… wrong.

Wet.

Soft.

My socks sank with a sickening squelch, and the floor squirmed. Not like something under it was moving—but like the floor itself was alive and didn’t want to be stepped on. I took a step back, but it felt like dragging my foot through half-coagulated blood. The scent intensified. Sweet. Sickly. Something dying in a field of flowers.

The walls breathed deeper.

That’s when I felt it.

Not behind me.

Not in the shadows.

In me.

In the space just behind my ribs, something curled and began to feed .

Not on flesh. Not on sanity.

On fear .

Every flicker of panic. Every ragged breath. Every spiraling doubt I’d tried to bury under logic and medication. It licked its lips with every tremble.

“ Delicious, ” a voice purred—wet and echoing, like a throat full of tar and glass.

I turned toward the sound.

And there it was .

No shape. Just suggestions . Limbs that bent the wrong way, dozens of eyes blinking in and out of existence, a mouth stitched together with screaming teeth and shadows. It hovered just above the floor, quivering with anticipation, like it couldn’t wait to climb inside me.

“You’re riper than most,” it said, slithering closer. “So much self-doubt. So many pretty little lies. I could eat forever. ”

I backed into the wall.

It sighed with pleasure beneath my hands, warm and sticky, like skin pulled taut over bone.

“You’re not real,” I whispered.

The thing laughed. Not loud— wet . A sound like a drowned body cracking open.

“Oh, but neither are they, remember?” it hissed. “Sunlight in your lungs? Shadows in your spine? Darling girl, you stopped believing. You opened the door. You starved your gods. And now I am here.”

My chest seized. My breath came shallow and tight.

It moved closer.

The air around it shimmered with heat and wrongness , like a dying fever dream. My vision blurred at the edges. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. My thoughts tried to race—but the fear dragged them down like a net.

I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t think.

And it loved that.

“So easy to crawl inside,” it whispered. “So ready to be worn. Let me in, little one. Let me slide into that hollowed-out ribcage and make you sing. ”

Its form grew.

Towered.

Split down the middle with a gaping grin made of void.

It was going to eat me from the inside out.

I closed my eyes.

And something hit .

Not pain. Not contact.

Memory.

The cool press of a thumb against my jaw.

The hush of a voice in the dark.

The stillness of a dream that had cradled instead of crushed.

Moon.

The nightmare he’d rewritten.

The breath he’d returned to me when I hadn’t known I’d lost it.

He had found me before. Pulled me from the edge without ever demanding I look at him.

And now—now I needed him like a drowning girl needed the surface.

“Moon,” I whispered.

The thing recoiled.

A flicker of fury twisted its shape. It buzzed with electricity, limbs twitching like static.

“Moon,” I said louder, voice cracking. “Please—please, I need you?—”

“He’s gone! ” it shrieked. “You rejected him again! You let him starve! You let me in!”

But the shadows around me shifted .

Deepened.

Not with menace.

With promise.

Something ancient stirred behind my heartbeat.

“I believe in him,” I said. “Even if he’s not real—I choose him .”

And the world split .

No noise.

Just rupture .

Like the universe gasped—and then broke open .

Moon didn’t appear. He arrived .

The cold of him came first—like winter air curling into a too-warm room. Like frost painting glass.

Then the silence—sharp and slicing.

Then him .

He stepped through the veil like it wasn’t there, moving as if the ground bent beneath him out of reverence.

The parasite screamed. The sound wasn’t noise—it was despair made audible.

Moon’s presence rolled across the room like a tide coming in to erase everything that didn’t belong.

“You fed on what was not yours,” he said, voice calm and final.

“She doubted you—” the thing wheezed. “She invited me ? —”

Moon looked at it the way the moon looks at a dying star.

“You mistook ache for absence. You mistook silence for surrender.”

He lifted one hand.

The temperature dropped.

Frost bloomed along the walls.

The parasite spasmed. Shrieked again.

“You don’t belong here,” Moon said.

And without raising his voice, without moving another inch?—

He unmade it .

Not with force.

With presence.

The nightmare imploded .

Collapsed into itself, screaming in a pitch that made the walls buckle—and then it was gone .

The air held.

The rot faded.

The light above stuttered once… and steadied.

Moon turned to me.

His expression didn’t soften.

But his presence did.

He knelt in front of me, silent.

Took my shaking hands in his own.

“You called,” he said simply. “And I came.”

“I believe now,” I whispered, breath hitching. “I believe in you.”

He exhaled—a sound like snow melting.

“You don’t have to believe everything,” he murmured. “Just believe me . Believe Sun .”

I nodded.

Not because I was certain.

But because I was done starving the only things that had ever made me feel whole.

The cold faded into something softer.

The room settled.

The dream was over.

And when I opened my eyes?—

I was back in bed.

Sweating. Shaking.

But not alone.

Not anymore.