I GASP AND SIT STRAIGHT up. I’d been sleeping, sleeping better than I had in a long time. I can still feel the warmth of her against my body, but she is gone. I wonder why this is... why I only felt cold before. She only felt cold. Like Jace. Jace has always felt cold, when I’ve imagined him and talked to him. Something is different.

She is no longer cold, and she is... gone. I am suddenly chilled at the full realization that I am alone.

I want her back, her warmth in tow.

There is a draft, and something flaps against the side of the house. Moonlight streams in through the open corner, and my teeth chatter, but not from cold. White sheeted shadows stand like sentries around the room.

Holy shit, this can’t happen like this. No matter how badly I want it. I should get her flowers or... something before the next time.

I’m naked in a strange bed, and I don’t know what the hell just happened. The air still smells of sex, but there is something I cannot place threading through the aroma, and the creaking house almost echoes the memories of her voice calling my name as she climaxed—breathing hard in my ear, then kissing me all over, pouring ardor into every inch of my skin. Even the broken parts. Again and again. Until nothing existed to me but her.

My prosthesis is a forgotten, lame appendage on the floor.

She had seen it and not flinched. She had bid me take it off, and she still had not flinched.

She’d made love to the broken me, with no pretense.

Her. An un-real, imagined her.

Yet, she was more real to me now than anyone I’d ever been with. She accepted me and held onto my body like it wasn’t a mangled thing.

I shudder when the gravity of the thought hits me. That I am approaching the center of a delusion so fierce that it is becoming real. I’ve lost my fucking mind. And, shit, it felt good. So damn good.

I’ve read all the internet articles, brochures, and everything else. I’ve never read about anybody gleefully screwing their hallucinations until they passed out from the exhaustion of spent lust. Yet, that’s what I had done.

Losing my mind.

Losing my fucking mind.

My lips tingle, almost a sharp pain that brings a flash of her into my mind.

The curve of her breasts. The softness of her stomach. The rosy paleness of her neck and how my mouth had felt burrowing against it.

Shaking my head so hard I think I might dislodge my brain, I lean over and retrieve my leg, pushing it onto my ugly stump with little grace. I look at it and then glance down the length of my body. My appraisal terminates abruptly. I’m hard again. God, there’s something wrong with me.

I sit in an empty room in a bed that’s as old as the house on sheets that are racked with decades of filth.

First thing in the morning, if I’ve not slipped into raving lunacy by then, I’m calling the doc. Rubbing my eyes, I stand up, put my hands on my hips, and balance myself to make sure the leg is on properly. I then lean back, relishing the sound of my spine cracking and popping. I’ll head out to the trailer and get some sleep, that’s what I’ll do.

I’m almost out of the bedroom when I hear thunder rocket through the sky and, a few seconds later, I see lightning glow outside which highlights the ominous clouds blanketing the world.

“Shit,” I grunt, thinking about the roof and the state the workers left it in. I know they didn’t cover all the holes they’d found before calling it a day.

***

IT’S PISSING LIKE CATS and dogs still, the sky dark and thunderous, and I hate that the damn roof’s still not finished. It wasn’t supposed to rain for the next ten days. Yet there it is, coming down like the world has been in a drought for a year and the earth is dry as a bone.

The attic is a wet mess—boxes of things left by old owners getting soaked. It wasn’t the first time though, I’d gathered after a quick inspection. Half the items were growing mold and smelled like gangrene.

I’d called the foreman as soon as I’d heard the rain begin to fall and the first drops sneak through the uncovered holes they’d left in my damn house. The foreman had apologized, swearing up and down that he’d thought the weather would be clear as a bell. I’d thought the same thing, so my anger had been short lived. I’d been further pacified when two of his workers had braved the wet roof and weighted down several large tarps to keep more rain from coming in.

Of course, it had taken them an hour to come back to the house, thirty minutes to get up on the roof with supplies, and another twenty to actually stop the splattering of water into the attic. I’m sure working in the dark of night didn’t help.

I didn’t plan on spending the night dealing with soaked belongings of ancient, long gone residents to my house. The whole situation has me pissed the hell off.

My face as dark as the weather, I slam another piece of damp cardboard into a large plastic bag. I hadn’t been to a doctor since back home, before moving here. I needed to be seen, but I couldn’t waltz into an emergency room and say ‘Hey, I’m seeing dead people... at least, I think the woman is dead. Can you help me?’ No. I needed someone who understand me, understand my damn symptoms. Definitely not my day. Another angry thrust, another piece of destroyed box. This revealed the contents of the box I was in the process of chucking. A porcelain doll dressed in a faded peach-hued and lace-trimmed dress. A stack of postcards tied together with a man’s necktie. More memories gone from someone’s life.

Even though I don’t know the people, throwing such things away tugs at my heart. The penmanship on the letters is masculine and I imagine the words are those of a solider writing to his sweetheart. Sending little pieces from across the water so they’d feel together.

I mull over keeping them for a moment, but eventually I toss them in with the rest of the shit I’ve compiled. They’re someone else’s dreams and faded hope. I have no need of them. I carry enough of my own baggage.

Partway through a box that’s in worse shape than any other as it’s been positioned right under one of the holes in the roof for God knows how long, I feel a touch of cold creep up my legs, across my back, and settle along my shoulders. It’s like a freezer pack, intentionally placed for aches and pains. Yet, this gives me no relief from my pain.

Instead, it causes my blood to turn to ice. My pulse to race for warmth. My vision to go bleary as the delusions threaten to attack my sanity once more.

“Spencer?” The voice is soft and feminine, floating through the chilly air to find my ears.

No, I shake my head, the thought a violent blast in my brain. I won’t be overcome by my sickness again. I won’t succumb to the past in this way, no matter how appealing it is. I feel her hands though, or the hint of them, along my hips. They thread beneath my arms to wrap across my stomach. She is embracing me.

No! Nothing is embracing me! Jesus, please leave me alone!

“Spencer, please. Please help me.” So faint, so desperate. “Please see me. Please. They’re here now. They’re here.”

“Marie! Where are you? Marie!” I call her name as I stumble to a standing position, my stump only half-seated in the prosthesis. I hear her soft call once more and I try to walk forward, but I lose my balance, falling hard against the floor.

As I black out, all I hear is her scream. And it is not quiet or distant. It is right above me and so very loud. So very scared. I’ve heard it before. She is terrified and the sound splits my heart.

When I’ve blacked out in the past, there’s been nothingness until I regain consciousness. Not this time though.

No, this time I fall into a dream, into a netherworld of brutal darkness. I can feel the weight of something heavy in the air, a fog shifting over my body like a too-warm blanket made of wool and fire. It smothers me until I shift my body into a ball, as small as I am able, and I will myself to not be where I am. I want to wake up. The bedroom.

Marie.

Marie screaming.

That thought causes me to unfold the length of myself, my arms stretching outwards, my fingers flexing, my legs...

My legs. I cannot feel my legs. In a panic, I fumble in the blackness to reach down and find my good leg, my unbroken leg. It is gone. All I can feel is a stump, similar to ugliness of my severed limb.

My heart begins to race faster, pounding with a pressure that will make it bust through my bones and flesh and skin and jump out into the nightmare that has caught me in its clutches.

I need to wake up.