~Asteria~
Sometimes the line between dream and reality is thinner and more dangerous than we realize.
I kept telling myself exhaustion was finally catching up with me.
Too many sleepless nights. Too many thoughts that refused to quiet.
It seemed like the only explanation.
Because the alternative was far harder to accept.
~~~
The darkness swallowed me slowly.
Not all at once, but in quiet, patient layers, until I could no longer tell where it ended and I began.
My ribs tightened, subtle at first, then sharper, as if something inside them had begun to claw outward.
A dim red light flickered in the distance.
It pulsed faintly, almost breathing, and with it came a whisper too soft to understand.
It was calling me. Promising a sweet escape.
A relief I ached to answer.
The deeper I moved into that void, the heavier everything became. Sorrow coiled around my ankles like chains, dragging me toward the crimson glow until it was no longer a glare at all.
Then I saw it clearly.
My sweet, promising light was the moon itself.
Its bloody shimmer drenched my skin, heavy and cold, pressing into my chest until my heartbeat strained against it.
It pulsed through the darkness as if it was feeding off me.
But beneath the hunger, something else lingered.
A song.
So hauntingly beautiful...
Soft and mournful, wrapping around my mind like silk and settling somewhere deeper than memory.
A siren's lullaby.
Woven with grief and longing that called me closer and urged me to surrender.
It felt familiar. Like something I had once known by heart and forgotten only yesterday.
Almost like coming home.
I reached for it...
A sharp caw split the darkness, slicing through it like a blade.
The sound shattered the moment, leaving something jagged in its place. Its cry felt deliberate, almost intelligent, as though it had reached into that moment just to tear me away from it.
Fear surged through me all at once, violent and absolute, and I knew I had to find my way back into my body before it would consume me entirely.
Heat spread at the back of my head, crawling inside my skull as I dug my nails into my skin, desperate to feel something real. The world shook around me.
My eyes snapped open.
For a moment, nothing made sense.
Everything was black.
Silent. Still.
My body lay heavy beneath me, as though I had surfaced too quickly from something that refused to let me go. Each breath felt thick, slower than it should have, as if the room itself resisted me.
Julian's bedroom.
The shape of it returned slowly, piece by piece, familiar and wrong all at once.
The ceiling. The faint outline of the walls. The quiet hum of the night pressing in from every direction.
I tried to move, but I couldn't, as if my body had not fully decided to belong to me again.
Every muscle ached with pain as if invisible claws were pressing me into the mattress, pinning me down with a weight I could not fight.
My eyes dragged toward the edge of the bed, slow, unwilling, as if some part of me already knew what waited there and wanted to delay it for as long as possible.
Something was lying beside me.
Not Julian.
A shape stretched across the sheets, wrong in a way I could not name, its outline barely held together by the darkness around it.
I heard it hiss—or was it my own panicked inhale?
Tears began streaming down my face, hot and uncontrollable, as waves of desperation crashed into me.
I couldn't run. I couldn't even make a sound.
Then it moved.
A cold, damp sensation traced the curve of my ear.
Then it slid inside.
A long, wet tongue, invasive and unmistakably real.
My body convulsed before the sound could form, the reaction tearing through me as something deep and instinctive finally broke free from that frozen stillness.
A scream ripped out of me, raw and violent, as control slammed back into my limbs all at once.
I shot upright, gasping for air, the sheets clinging to my damp skin.
For a moment, I could not tell what was real.
I only sat frozen, listening for something that refused to make a sound, my eyes scanning the darkness for anything that did not belong.
Julian lay beside me, sleeping peacefully, as if nothing in this world or the next could touch him.
For a moment, I could only stare at him, my thoughts struggling to catch up, grasping for something that made sense, something that could anchor me back into reality.
Exhaustion washed over me, heavy and inescapable, dragging me back toward the mattress like a tide too strong to resist. My eyelids fell shut.
As soon as the void claimed me once more, a violent tug on my hair yanked my head back.
Pain tore across my scalp as unseen fingers dug into my skull. A voice echoed through my mind, shrill and hateful, each word slicing like broken glass.
"Do you think you can get away?"
I jerked again, hollow to the core, scrambling away from the bed as if fire had consumed it. My feet touched the floor, unsteady and cold.
For a few moments I stood there in the darkness, clutching my arms, willing my heart to steady. The shadows around me seemed to pulse with the memory of that voice.
I closed my eyes and whispered into nothing, barely audible.
"It wasn't real. It wasn't real."
But I could still feel it.
Not on my skin.
Deeper.
A lingering wrongness, buried beneath the surface, as if something had reached inside me and left a trace I could not name.
Nausea churned in my stomach.
I didn't lie back down.
I couldn't.
The rest of the night, I forced myself to stay awake.
At first, it felt like a choice.
Something I could control.
I moved through the apartment in deliberate motions, cleaning dishes that were already clean, straightening objects that had never been out of place, letting my hands stay busy so my thoughts would not have to be.
Every room felt slightly displaced, as if it remembered itself differently than I did.
I made coffee I did not want.
Watched the steam rise.
Waited for something in me to settle.
Nothing did.
Time slipped strangely.
The air behind my neck kept shifting as if someone was standing just out of reach. The floor creaked even when I stood perfectly still.
Sometimes a whisper brushed my ear, too quiet to understand, yet full of intent.
I didn't turn around anymore.
By the time the first hint of morning light crept through the window, pale and distant, I was still caught in that quiet, restless loop I could not seem to break.
I opened the window, letting the cool air drift inside, carrying the distant sounds of the waking world with it.
Birds sang somewhere beyond the buildings, soft and distant.
The first rays of sunlight touched my face, warm and gentle, and I whispered to myself that it was over.
Julian appeared in the doorway behind me.
I didn't hear him approach.
"Morning, my love."
I turned toward him, forcing my expression to soften, to match something closer to what he expected to see.
He leaned in to kiss me, but paused as his eyes lingered on my face a little longer than necessary. As if counting something invisible.
"You didn't sleep."
It wasn't a question.
"Just a little," I replied, the words coming too easily, slipping into place before I could stop them.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Something unspoken settled between us.
His gaze held mine for a second longer, searching, weighing, as if deciding whether to press further.
"You should stay," he murmured. "Rest. I'll take care of everything."
"I can't," I said, more quickly than I intended, the answer sharp enough to make him pause.
I softened, forcing a small smile that did not quite reach where it should have.
"I need to finish a painting I've been putting off."
I stepped closer, brushing my lips against his, letting the contact linger just long enough to feel real, to anchor myself in something that still made sense.
"I'll see you later," I whispered.
He nodded, though something in his expression remained unsettled, like a thought he hadn't quite formed yet.
I turned before he could say anything else.
Outside, the air still carried the scent of yesterday's rain. Sunlight stretched across the sidewalks in warm, gentle bands, but the unease beneath my skin remained, steady as a second pulse.
When I reached my apartment, a raven was perched on the balcony railing, its feathers swallowing the light as it stood against the open window.
It did not startle when I approached.
Its head tilted slowly, and something in the stillness of it made my steps falter. Dark eyes held mine with an intelligence too deliberate to dismiss, as if it had not simply found me there, but had been waiting for me to return.
Could it be the same one?
The thought rose too quickly, too naturally.
I pushed it away at once.
No, that would be impossible...
I stepped inside without looking at it again, tossed my bag onto the floor, and crossed the room toward the canvas as if routine alone might be enough to steady me.
The apartment should have felt familiar.
Instead, it felt like a place that remembered me more clearly than I remembered myself.
For a long moment, I only stood there staring at the blank surface, willing something to come. When nothing did, I picked up my brush and forced my hand to move.
At first the strokes were careful, almost mechanical.
Then they sharpened.
Color bled into color without shape or mercy, lines cutting across the canvas harder than I intended, until the whole thing began to look less like a painting and more like evidence of something unraveling beneath my skin.
My head throbbed with the memory of the dream, the voice, the thing beside me in the dark.
Every small sound in the apartment felt too loud after that. The scrape of the brush against linen. The shift of my own breathing. The hush of the room around me.
Then the caw came again.
Sharp. Close.
It cut through me so suddenly that I turned on instinct, rage flaring faster than reason.
"Leave me the hell alone!"
The words tore out of me before I could stop them.
I lunged toward the window, waving it away with all the frustration I had failed to bury, but the bird watched calmly, almost amused, before spreading its wings and vanishing into the sky.
A few dark feathers spiraled down in its wake, turning slowly through the stillness until one came to rest near my feet.
I stared at it for longer than I should have.
Then I sank to the floor.
Only then, in the hush that followed, did the apartment begin to feel fully visible again.
Books and records. Theater props. Tiny statues. Trinkets gathered from places that no longer meant anything to me except that I had once chosen to keep them.
Pieces of a life.
Proof of habits.
But not of belonging.
Photographs covered the walls, a collection of strangers' faces captured in fleeting moments.
But there were no family portraits.
No personal items passed down through generations.
No mother's dress folded away in a drawer. No grandmother's earrings. No father's guitar resting in a corner. Nothing that suggested I had come from anyone, or anywhere, at all.
I just had a collection of train tickets, bottle caps, and little souvenirs, gathered in a pathetic attempt to fit in some kind of story.
Scraps of other people I'd collected to fill the silence.
Because I remembered nothing.
Only the night they found me barefoot at the edge of town, dirt on my skin, my name written on my arm. Seventeen years old and terrified.
The orphanage.
The smell of bleach and cold soup.
The failed foster homes.
The running.
The shelters.
The fear.
The constant fight to survive.
I built myself from nothing. Yet something inside me felt unfinished. Unrooted. As if pieces of me were scattered somewhere I could not reach.
My train of thought was interrupted by the sound of the phone, and after a deep breath, I was greeted by Julian's suspiciously cheery voice.
"I hope you have not forgotten about me. Because I have a surprise for you."
~~~
I cannot stop thinking about how Julian's voice was warm, bright, full of secrets he couldn't wait to share.
A surprise, he said.
Something special for both of us.
Looking back now, that moment feels strangely heavy.
Because that simple invitation was the first step toward something neither of us could ever escape.