Chapter Text

Chapter 1

“Wake up.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Wake up.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it.”

“No.”

“...”

“Do you feel the blade?”

“It’s a cramp in my neck, I’ve had them before.”

“Do you feel the blood?”

“It’s my imagination.”

“If you keep believing in that imagination you won’t have a consciousness to imagine anything anymore.”

“You want me to wake up with a racing heart, I’ll stand up too fast, fall over, and hit my head on the concrete floor.”

“I could kill you right now.”

“You can’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m alive.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

…

“The mind is a powerful thing.”

“And?”

“I could depress your thoughts and make you stupid as the drunkards you live amongst. I could ruin your motor function and make you stumbling as the drunkards you live amongst. I could make you impulsive as the drunkards you live around, I could make you fall off a roof, I could make you kill yourself.”

“You can’t.”

“You can never know.”

“I can.”

…

“There’s a gun on the table, why?”

“I put it there.”

“For whom?”

“For you.”

“I am not physical, though.”

“You are in my mind, I can make you physical.”

“And?”

“Then I could shoot you.”

“You own an FN 5.7×28mm, it will overpenetrate the wall and kill the neighbor’s dog, worse, the neighbor himself.”

“No it won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Your flesh will take it.”

“You will miss.”

“I will not.”

…

Darkness. I reached for the pistol on my table.

I wrapped my hand around the grip, pointing my index forward.

My arm cramped.

My thumb felt the trigger.

My fingers tightened.

Fuck, no, please.

I tried to shake my body awake, but my fingers kept contracting.

God no, please no.

I could see in the darkness, in the black, 

A click.