“Chiara.”
I opened my eyes. The sky was painted in watercolour blues and grays like an artist’s rendition of a sky within a dream. Or maybe it was a dream’s rendition of art.
Kellen walked past and gave me a languid smile. “Come on. It’s nearly ready.”
My heart sank. “Do we have to do it now?”
Kellen just laughed and beckoned me to follow. I trudged through the field of wheat back towards the house, dreading what was in store. Violent colours lay within those white walls.
“Chiara?” a voice asked quietly, a whisper on the wind.
I turned and saw someone standing in the field. My eyes widened.
“Nick?” I asked incredulously.
He stood with his hands hovering at his sides. His face looked like the watercolour sky, features mixing together in smudges of colour.
“I…”
I remembered the look in his eyes right before I had slipped into this dream. He had said my name and then something sharp had flown into my heart.
“I don’t blame you,” I said finally. “It’s what I deserved. I only wish I didn’t have to relive this again.” I gestured to the house behind me.
Nick’s expression turned confused. “But you weren’t here.”
I turned back and saw that the house was gone. In its place sat a ruined church, its beautiful stonework and stained glass windows had fallen into disrepair long ago. The fields behind it were roaring with flames and the black smoke darkened the sky to night.
I felt a longing to enter the church and there was a coldness that came with it, right at the core of my chest.
“What is this?” I asked.
“I’m trying to remember,” Nick said softly. “But remembering feels dangerous.”
Something unholy screamed from inside the church and I wasn’t sure if it was Kellen’s creation or something else.
“I don’t think you should stay here for long,” Nick said, staring at me. The flames reflected in his eyes. “I might do something to you.”
A church bell rang from inside the ruins and I felt the loss of someone dear to me hit me like a ton of bricks.
—
My eyes fluttered open and the dream’s dark skies were replaced by a black marble ceiling and hanging glass boxes full of meat. The sorrow remained nestled in my heart and it told me where to look.
I sat up and stared at Nick lying in a pool of his own blood. His body was so thin, malnourished and torn to shreds.
My fault.
Suddenly, plants began to grow out of him, shoring up the wounds. He stirred and for a moment I thought he was alive. But then his head rose off the ground and I saw his lifeless eyes.
“Chiara,” Chase spoke from behind me. “If you want to live and not be a hindrance, come this way.”
This unbearable feeling sat in my chest. That I had messed up. That nothing would ever be okay again. In Chase, I’d found a cure. All I had to do was move closer to him and that feeling of my heart being crushed would go away, along with all the other things I didn’t want to think about. I could be free and all it would cost me was my conscience. That knowledge intensified the guilt and with it, my desire to be rid of it. A vicious cycle that brought me back to him. I was snared in a spider’s web, struggling like a fly as I was pulled closer bit by bit.
Knowing this didn’t make a lick of difference.
A woman screamed, yanking me from my malaise.
Nell.
My heart lurched and I sprung to my feet, possessed by the urge to go and comfort her. In that same moment, Nick’s body also rose and began to walk.
Chase was saying something but I ignored him.
Did I know Nell? It felt like I did. Like a long lost sister from my childhood that I hadn’t thought of until, like a car crash, disaster stripped the unimportant things away and I remembered her again as I was dying.
Another wave of raw, drenched emotion crashed over me. Nick passed me and I felt so awful. LIke Kellen was dying all over again but I had just met Nick and it made no sense but that was just how I felt.
It… it was these fucking flowers. I realized that the ache in my body stemmed from the flowers that had taken root in my shoulders and neck.
I gripped one and gasped as I saw a vision. A mirror. Nick looking back at me, standing in an unfamiliar bathroom, holding the flower on his shoulder.
Then the image was gone and I was left with a feeling. What was wrong with me?
The corpse had staggered all the way to the far wall.
It turned around and I saw Nell’s face on it. Black tangled hair. Large eyes dripping with tears. She bit her lip to stop herself from sobbing. Hands twisting clothes, not knowing what to do with the grief.
I wanted to call out to her. To tell her I was okay, that everything would be fine. But why would I do that?
The pain in my chest pulsated with the waves, like a second heart that beat fitfully inside me as I looked at Nell.
I loved her. No, someone else loved her. Someone who… was inside of me?
“Nick?” the words left my mouth before I realized it.
As if I had conjured him by invoking his name, a second Nick stood next to the corpse. He didn’t have any of the wounds that the corpse did, but there was a perfectly round hole in his head, like a child’s toy with a piece missing.
“What is this?” I whispered, far too quiet for Nick to hear me, yet he answered.
“A trick,” he said sadly. The women and men between us slowly danced in agony as flowers bloomed and thorns cut. Nick didn’t break his gaze.
“One I practiced many times before. Reverse the assimilation process. Give flesh instead of taking and my memories come with it. Although I have never given so much before.”
Chase’s group retreated.
The corpse chased after them, grabbing someone who hadn’t made it through the door in time and pulling them back inside the room.
“You healed me,” I said. But the Nick I was speaking to had vanished.
As if in a trance, I stepped over the victim turned flower bed as thorny plants wrapped her up tight and I met the corpse’s eyes again. Nick looked back through the reflection in its glassy eyes and suddenly I was falling.
And falling.
And falling.
I heard the tinkling of fragments of shattered glass hitting pavement.
The ground rushed up to meet me and my legs gave out.
“Why did you save me?” I asked as my tears fell into the carpet.
“I don’t know,” Nick answered. “That memory isn’t here. Not everything made it across and the things that are here are all out of place and order. Or perhaps there never was a reason…”
He sighed. “Try to forget about it. This is your brain telling you it’s dangerous to mix memories. You might lose yourself.”
I shook my head, feeling the roots grow deeper into my skin. “This feels important, like I’m standing on the precipice of something good. I can feel it.”
I breathed in shakily and stood just in time to be hit by the next wave of sadness, letting it bear its full weight against me.
The walls of the mansion fell away and a heavy guitar string thrummed in my chest.
I sat next to Nell as we watched the sun rise on a broken city. She had been fearless, confident, clever in the face of everything stacked against us. I may have struggled to crawl through the city to reach her, but she had acted as though there was never a doubt I would make it to her side.
The memory passed and I was left with the ache of being apart.
“You love her that much?”
“Loved. I’m dead, remember? Actually don’t. Stop doing that. It would be better for you if you stopped digging deeper.”
“It doesn’t feel like how I loved Kellen,” I said, stepping through the door to watch the struggles of Chase’s followers. The plant-like creations passed me by like I wasn’t even there.
Nick’s ghost stood next to his body. A tiny Nell curled up at his feet. Nick looked at it fondly as his body was wrapped in white leaves.
“We all love differently.”
“But it’s different,” I insisted.
The waves came crashing down again and I felt the source. For a moment, off in a faraway place, I saw the Shape of a woman. I saw the pain spreading throughout the earth, radiating from her as she shared her misery.
Then the room came back. Chase and his posse was gone.
There was a door I hadn’t noticed before. It was painted bright red, with a handle of engraved ivory. Nick stood next to it, watching me closely. The hole in his head looked a little smaller than it had a moment before.
“Is Nell a good person?” I asked, fearing the answer.
Nick raised himself to his full height, a warm smile spreading across his face. He spoke as though he was certain there wasn’t a word before or after that was more important than this one.
“Yes.”
I walked to the door and reached for the handle. Nick caught my wrist.
“Chiara… I understand that you’re feeling strongly about this. But these feelings aren’t yours. They were planted in you. I caution you before you open that door. Are you prepared to throw yourself away?”
I met Nick’s eyes and this time I saw myself. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I could look upon myself with pride.
“I don’t care if these feelings aren’t mine. I will embrace them all the same. Even if they don’t belong to me they do mean something to me. A path forward I couldn’t take before. I had a chance to change and I didn’t. Now it’s time for something new to take my place.”
I opened the door and Nick’s heart flooded forth.