Repose

Audrey sat up in bed gasping for air that would not come quick enough. Her chest heaved beneath the cotton tank that served as her night shirt. There was that funny feeling in her limbs, the kind that happened when you almost fall but manage to catch yourself before it happened. It was like anxiety, but it wasn't. The stretch of her skin prickled and poked. The shadows in her room felt like they were closing in inch by inch. She hadn't felt anything like this since she was a kid. What did they call it? An impending sense of doom.

She ran her hands through her sweat dampened hair trying to steady her breath. In and out, hold and release. In and out, hold and release. She wasn't even sure what she had been dreaming. She couldn't remember. All that she knew was this suffocating sensation,
violent smothering, and then her burning lungs tore from whatever fitful slumber she had fallen into.

She glanced to the fluorescent lighting of her clock. 3:00 AM the blue numbers read in the darkness.

Audrey swallowed, rubbed her fingers over her right wrist. Though she was hot she didn't dare kick the covers off. She didn't dare reach out toward the window. She simply laid back down and squeezed her eyes shut.

"...100...99...98...97..." Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? She she tried counting the imaginary lambs, feeling small, and with no reason to. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. She could call for Hannah, but she didn't. She counted down and down. "....73..72..." She rubbed her wrist over wishing for sleep to take her to a better dream, one where the swallowing dark was not there.

Up was down and left was right and this was that and life was death.

The lake glimmered in the distance from where he stood in the woods, a spectre barely visible among the trees. He was wary to go near the lake, to flit along the edges where he had taken that ill-fated walk, but the lake still held a pull and he was loathe to let it out of his sight.

It also kept him in sight of that house with the most important person in the world for him.

Looking at it, though, hurt him in a way that made him ache throughout his entire existence. Missed opportunities. Words left unsaid. A happier world that he could have had if he had just-

If he had just-

The spectre flickered and a sound of pain rang through the woods before he flickered and disappeared.