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Moonlight, cast in narrow milky stripes upon the rumpled, damp sheets, printed its pattern on the lumpy, frozen walls through the whimsical tracery of shadows from the tree crowns swaying outside the window.
Feet dangling over the edge of the mattress, swinging freely in the air, touched with their toes the cracked construction varnish that thickly coated the rotten floorboards.
Hissing briefly from a shiver that pierced his body, Mel shuddered and, finally lowering his bare soles to the floor, jerked his shoulders sharply.
Blinking with neon digits on its dark face, the clock, having emitted a piercing beep in the silence rustling with foliage outside the window, showed exactly four in the morning.
And a quiet, restrained sigh escaped his parted lips, the first harbinger of despair rolling in like waves.
A hand, tangled in curling chestnut locks, dug its grown-out nails lightly into the scalp at the very moment his teeth, clenched to the point of crunching, grated against each other.
He had had the nightmare again.
For how many nights in a row now?
His hands, weakened by sleep and not yet fully obeying their owner, reached towards the chair standing by the bed, grasped the back, and pulled the worn, matted terrycloth robe from the neat stack of clothes.
Draping the cool, still damp fabric smelling of soap and powder over his trembling shoulders, Mel rose from the bed.
His legs, betraying him by buckling slightly, tilted his first few steps sideways, forcing him to clutch at the upholstered doorframe.
Rubbing his tired, reddened eyes strained from work and lack of sleep, Mel, feeling for the thresholds with his feet, shuffled into the small kitchen, aware of his heart still pounding wildly somewhere in his chest, beating against his ribs.
A glass, smudged with blurred fingerprints on its frosted surface, settled into his hand with a familiar heaviness.
Groaning on its last breath, the tap whitened with limescale grown into the metal, hissed and clinked, spitting a rusty trickle of cold water into the yellowing, stained sink.
Scorching the skin of his shaking hands with the icy stream, Mel placed the glass in the sink and, bracing his hands on the warped edges, buried his aching, splitting head against the crooked cabinet door, closing his trembling eyelids.
Exploding in colorless blotches, fragments of the recent dream flickered before his eyes and, echoing with a pain somewhere under his left ribs, made his nose sting with moisture gathering in its corners.
— And yet, now it all feels more like a novel.
A restrained, almost ironic, yet still as authoritative as before, calming, magnetic, soft whisper brushed his ears, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
— Doctor Hopkins.
His cracked lips parted mechanically in a disbelieving whisper, uttered the name, and immediately were hastily covered by a damp, cold palm.
His body froze.
And his gaze, clouded by tears gathering on his lashes, darting to the murky windowpane, suddenly caught in the darkness of spreading shadows the distinct, calm figure of another.
Bile, burning his tongue with bitterness, rose to his mouth from his stomach, which had tightened into a hard knot.
His hand automatically reached for his waist, feeling the elastic of his pajama pants, until a thought suddenly flashed somewhere in the back of his mind.
The gun was back in the room.
On the table.
— Mel?
A restrained turn of his head, reflected in the mirror, imprinted on his cornea the silhouette, snatched from the darkness by the moonlight.
His hand lowered into the sink.
And, splashing the rusty ice-cold water over the chipped edges, brought the glass to his parched lips.
Mel took a sip, listening through the haze of his own ragged breath to the silence, still broken only by the howling wind, as if nothing had happened.
The chlorinated taste, searing his receptors, slid down his throat, spreading a soothing cool beneath his diaphragm.
And an inhalation, catching halfway, shook his chest with a bubbling cough.
A warm, calloused palm gently descended between his shoulder blades.
— Are you alright?
And the world, narrowing to the sensation of another's touch, branding his skin, collapsed with the loud clatter of shattering glass.
Scattering in large splashes across the swollen patches of the countertop, the glass, slipping from instantly loosened fingers, hit the bottom of the sink and shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.
Flinching from the foreign touch, Mel jerked and, painfully bumping his hip against a protruding corner, turned around.
— I... Yes... I…
Incoherent, stammering nonsense, uttered by a tongue that could barely move in his parched mouth, hung between them in the blackening silence of the rainy night.
Hands, soothingly embracing his tense body, slid up his forearms.
His eyes, blinking, dropped to the floor.
Softly tilting his head to one shoulder, the man standing before him as a dark silhouette took a step.
— Did you have a nightmare?
Rough fingertips glided weightlessly over his bare, tense shoulder peeking from under the robe.
Air, convulsively sucked through clenched teeth, settled in his lungs with a heaviness in his aching chest.
Digging his grown-out nails into the matted terrycloth, Mel squeezed his eyes shut.
Why now?
— What? I... Sorry... Just…
Words, sticking in his throat, fragments wrested from his feverishly panicking mind, tore from his lips with difficulty.
And it was as if in one second this small, dusty, damp apartment had become too stuffy.
Too cramped.
— What did you dream about?
Smoothing the pale skin covered in goosebumps, fingers slid along his neck, settling neatly on the perfectly defined jawline.
Blue eyes, glinting in the moonlight, insistently bore into his face, contorted with a grimace of pain.
Mel knew he wasn't being asked.
An answer was being demanded of him.
— Doctor Hopkins.
Thin, numb fingers, whitening as they dug into the skin, closed around the wrist of the hand that was forcefully, painfully gripping his trembling chin.
But Mel was pleading.
— What did you dream about, Mel?
Eyes, crystal clear and sky-blue, snapping wide open in the dark, glistening moistly, swept over the other's serene face.
And, mechanically shaking his head from side to side, his body, shuddering in a desperate moan, began to tremble finely.
— I don't... I…
The hand unclenching from his jaw lowered onto the cartilage violently pushing the air that was sticking in his throat.
And, emptied, his head lolled to the side, the room swimming in a blur before his unfocused gaze.
— It's the lambs, isn't it? Freeing Catherine didn't solve your problem at all. You still wake up every night in a cold sweat on crumpled sheets because they're screaming?
Hot, moist lips brushed almost imperceptibly against the ear cartilage flushing crimson with shame and fear.
— That's... Not…
Humiliating, pleading sobs rose from somewhere deep within his rapidly heaving chest.
— Answer me.
Fingers whitening at the knuckles tightened with a quiet crunch on his strong neck.
— Doctor Hopkins…
And hot, burning tears, breaking free from his lashes, streamed down his hollow cheeks, falling in crystalline drops onto his heavily rising chest.
— Do the lambs still scream, Mel?
The hand unclenching from his throat, supporting him, pressed against his shoulder chaotically shuddering with uncontrollable sobs.
— Yes.
Moonlight, cast in narrow milky stripes, printing its pattern on the uneven, cold walls through the whimsical tracery of shadows from the swaying crowns outside the window, illuminated two silhouettes merged into one.
His body, gone limp in the other's embrace, unnaturally fragile, seeming even smaller than it was, emitted a short sigh and, letting fall just one word, pressed its flushed cheek against the other's chest, trembling hands clutching at broad shoulders as if they were a last hope for salvation.
Hot, moist lips chastely touched his disheveled, damp temple.
And the whole world finally fell silent.