He had a dream where he died over and over again. When he awoke in a haze of his own fading imagination, the rolling waves of dissipation leaving him like the boom of thunder leaves the sky in flashed across, he turned slowly off his bed. His myopic vision blurred the words he wrote, but he only needed to write a few, brisk scribbles etching long characters onto the notepad he kept by his bed when he had trouble sleeping. 'There is a reason, there is a reason.' It was hard for even himself to read.
He put on his glasses and groaned. Each muscle in his back hurt not from physical pain but from memory, each way he died that night when he dreamed. It coursed through his veins in steps, distinct steps that issued similar pains. His father stabbed him in the gut, the nurse peppered syringes at him like bullets. He found it funny how she wondered why he got angry all the time. She was the one that killed him first every night. The hospital was the factor that drove him to escape.
Perhaps what killed him harder, what hurt the most, was when She died.
She didn't kill him, but it broke him in two to know that he killed Her. It was over before he knew what was happening. Every night he would anticipate it and would try to stop it, but he couldn't contain himself. She tasted like strawberries. She looked so peaceful when she slept, limp in a puddle of jam.
He rubbed his neck of its decapitation and put his face in his hands. Each breath he exuded was hot with shame, with shame for not dying when the blade had entered him. It blew hot through his face, dispersing across the gaps in his fingers and disappearing into the dark night. Perhaps it would be for the best. Surely it would be for the best. He knew the stigma he posed, the rumors he lead. The people who passed by his door had heard he never went out. He couldn't go out. She echoed in ever footfall he made, following him through the soft scraping of leaves as he tried to escape her pursuit.
He stayed in the dark. There were darknesses in life and there were lights, and She was one of the lights, the light of all lights. When he stayed out of Her sun, he could stay away from her. That's all he needed to survive with the guilt, and he lingered daily near the blinds, peeping out at the mountains that surrounded his dilapidated hut and the people who seemed wary of glancing eyes behind his window, and he breathed the stale air of his existence. The only time he went out was to restock his refrigerator, and he went at night.
That morning was no different.
He decided to stay in.
The cold sun boiled streams of purple out of the sky, rocketing orange light in fragments across his kitchen table. He gave an irritated groan, an ached hiss. She hummed herself into the morning and he thought of her in everything he saw in the narrow world through his blinds. He saw her face in the clouds, her life in the pale stars. The stars grew paler as the sky lit up.
He opened his refrigerator, picked a case of strawberry juice, and poured himself a drink. Her name stamped itself in his brain. He felt guilty to know it. The nurse tried to take it away from him, but his mind didn't relinquish its grip. His brain was a force of its own.
He knew he was crazy. He gave a self-defeating frown. He had to be. His sanity was left a thousand miles east.
By his door sat a few neatly folded papers, overlapping each other in a shallow pile. The edges had been bent on impact, from the fall sustained as they fell through the mail slot. He picked them up, seeing the topmost letter's address.
"Vampire"
He ripped it.
Across the living room of his small shack was shattered glass pieces, old red stains that splotched the rug violently. It looked like a crime scene, undisturbed but for a body or purpose. His couch was old, had come with the house. The chair was similar. The woman who lived there died.
He'd wished she still lived there. He would have liked her company.
He wondered if he'd killed her. It would surely kill him to know.
He wondered if it was Her.
How crazy he was that he did not know for sure.
A clear stream of piss plopped loudly into his toilet as he leaned his head against the wall, stumbling to keep from hitting the floor as the small room was dark. The window was boarded up, too close to him, he couldn't have that. He washed his hands in the murky water that came from the half-broken faucet, looking at the mirror too broken for recognition. If he saw himself he'd punch it again. The strawberry juice that'd flow from his fingers would not go to waste, though he was not much thirsty to begin with.
The shower had a layer of moss.
He didn't use it anymore anyhow.
He lingered down the hallway of his small home, stumbling over auburn-colored pill bottles obstructed in the darkness of his dark abode. The carpet was alitter with small pills. He felt them underneath his feet as he walked.
At the end of the hallway stood a man, deep in the darkness of himself and under the dominion of an arching doorway, grinning so wide that his teeth glinted like polished marble. His hands were red, deep red, red enough to see in the twilight's blueblack, weakening reach. He stood at the doorway, menacingly, the most twisted man he'd ever seen, a man with the most bitter sickness lingering over his head, a man who slouched under the weight of himself. This intruder stood there, staring, mouth ajar, teeth dripping, skin pale, eyes yellow, looking, staring.
And Britton realized he was not looking into a doorway, but a mirror.
There is a reason, he thought, that I wake up from these dreams. I have to see Her again.
