Façade

Chapter Forty Nine - Neil

I was sleeping soundly at first.

The room was cold, the blankets insulated my warmth, and my pillow was concave against my skull in just the right way.

I was on my back.

My arms were under the blankets as well, which wasn't normal for me.

One of the faceless creatures that I saw on occasion trapped me under my sheets, and as I can usually will my body to move, it wasn't.

That's when I started to panic.

I'm always in control.

This doesn't happen to me.

The long fingers of this being were in my face like the first time I saw it, only now its fingertips went past my vision and into my brain.

It's rearranging something.

It's playing with my mind.

My throat was constricting as I gasped for it to stop.

It wasn't listening to me.

I felt the frigid sigh that it breathed.

We were sharing the same air.

I'm nauseous.

Oh fuck.

Against my wishes, chunks and wedges from that night replayed on the thin skin of my eyes.

And when I kept them open to prevent myself from reliving the nightmare, my eyelids were forcefully dragged shut.

I couldn't control them.

My chest was burning in pain as gentle whispers were being cooed into my ears.

"It's gonna be alright."

"Please don't fight me."

"You deserve this."

I began thrashing as it was my last hope of resistance, and suddenly I was able to see again.

Adrienne's mangled face was inches from mine.

But I never touched her face.

She was beautiful when she died.

Her eyes, undecided in color as they switch from blue to green to hazel, are wide and staring into my soul.

This fucking entity was trying to build her again the way I supposedly saw her.

But it didn't know what I saw.

Because I locked those horrific memories away as tightly as I could.

And now it had to guess.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Of course my voice would be taken.

I like to argue.

Whatever this thing was doing with my memory, it was losing.

After realizing what was happening, I coerce my anxiety to subside and I slip myself back into a deep sleep.

I am very thankful that I've mostly mastered the skill of lucid dreaming.

Yet, too jarred to stay asleep.

•

Johnson and I both had our arms propped up on the edge of the stone hot tubs, sitting about two feet apart — very close for guys like us.