I SNORT, SMELLING THE dampness of everything around me in the attic. My face presses against the floor slats, and my eyes haven’t adjusted yet. I shiver. Something brushes against the back of my leg, and I snort. The big, deep cartoon kind of noise.

Christ.

Something cold. A hand. A fucking cold hand. And then it’s gone, leaving bits of psychotic memories and the after-feeling of sex. But not just sex, good sex, satisfying right down to my soul. The kind that would have me grinning all day. She yelled my name, screamed it until my whole body broke out in goosebumps, and I could barely keep from finishing right then. Even the recollection affected me in ways no woman ever had. I could use a hand. Even a cold hand.

If only she had been real.

Dammit.

I’ve got to call the doc.

I push off the floor, achy all over as I climb to my feet. Foot. I smirk at my own senseless error. It takes work to get up without two soles to stand on. My prosthetic is missing, but I spy it nearby, turned at an odd angle because it had fallen off mid-stride.

I hop toward it and reach for my plastic appendage and then hop backwards until I am sitting on a haphazard pile of damp boxes; I’m lucky it chooses to hold my weight. A cloud of dust lifts into the air and slowly falls as I slide my stub back into its prison. It shouldn’t be dusty. All the rain that’s seeped into the place should have taken care of that. But everything about this house is odd. It does what it wants to do.

Makes me see things it wants to me to see.

I shake my head brutally. No. I’m not seeing anything that’s not there. I’m not fucking insane. And this is just a house.

The cloud of dust that is settling holds the faintest of scents, and I recognize the smell of sweat and sex and her. Like chilled roses or like walking into a cooler filled with flowers. It shouldn’t smell like that up here in the attic. Jesus, it shouldn’t smell like that anywhere. Because it wasn’t real. I scrub my hands back over my eyes. Not real. It takes work to keep the facts straight in my head.

If I’d really made love to a woman, I wouldn’t be up here in this musty attic cleaning filth. I’d still be with her. Jesus, if I’d have woken up to a woman, I’d pitch the peg leg across the room and drag her back to bed and... Images of Marie flash in my brain, beckoning like the light at the end of the long tunnel.

I’d make her scream my name again.

She had been innocent, but unafraid. Encouraging me forward until I’d moved her beneath me, staring at the fiery haired woman, her milky skin flushed pink from my caresses. If I could have wrapped myself in her, buried myself deep in her, I would have stayed and been happy forever. Maybe insanity wasn’t so bad a thing after all.

When she whimpered, everything feral in me had answered, drawing me toward her. She hadn’t stopped to ask about my leg, she hadn’t even hesitated.

She’d have been... life-changing. Hell. She’s a fucked-up brain cell in my head, and she’s damn near life-changing. I swipe at hot moisture on my cheek, pulling my hand away to study the reflective liquid that covers my fingers.

Tears.

Moved to tears. This has moved me into a whole new level of fucked up basket case. I haven’t cried since... I don’t want to remember when...  Jace’s mangled body flashes in my mind.

Jagged pain stabs through me, making me gasp. I stand up quickly, my stub rubbing uncomfortably in the prosthetic. The boxes that had been supporting me tumble to a heap on the floor. I don’t pick them up. I don’t care. Everything up here is wet and ruined anyways. All I care about is her. I want her. I want her to be real.

I make my way awkwardly down from the attic; I stumble towards the bedroom, the room where I’d been with her... in my head. All in my head.

She could save me. If she were real, she could save me. And like a ghost called hither, I see her, just ahead of me in a relief of pale skin and dark hair. This time, she doesn’t have the vibrant alive-ness I crave.

But I reach ahead of me anyway, grasping at the wispy image of her, wishing to pull her close.

Wishing that I really saw her in that bedroom, only a few feet away from me... just through the doorway... so close...She is floating like an ethereal thing, trying so very hard to be real.

Christ. Why couldn’t she have been real? But there she is. She’s right there. Her face contorts, the pale beauty of it that is nearly see-through, and she looks over her shoulder. When she looks back, she’s saying something.

“Spencer.”

It’s her voice. The amalgamation of fantasies and wet dreams all jumbled into a hallucination. I move forward. I’m going to touch her. We’ll be together. It will be real.

But I walk through the image of her and it moves like fog around me- like gossamer clouds of nothingness.

“Spencer. I’m here.”

You aren’t.

“Spencer. Touch me.”

I won’t.

“Help me.”

I can’t. You want too much.

I can’t let myself slip into that level of lunacy. A part of me wants her to understand what she’s asking, but another part scoffs at my foolishness. She’s crying now. A figment of my imagination is begging me to help her.

I can’t do this.

I keep moving toward the stairs to leave the attic, grappling with the truth. I had sex with a mirage. What kind of sicko have I become?

Then the scarier truth rears its ugly head.

I want her. No, I don’t just want her. I want to make love to her again.

“Spencer,” she says.

“You’re not fucking real!” I shout, my voice sounding gnarled and desperate.

“I am real!” she shouts back at me, but her voice is so quiet now.

I can’t listen. I can’t stay. Or I know I’ll drag her down to the bed and make her scream my name and drag her fingernails down my back. Or I’ll take her right here, our bodies pressed against wet, molding papers and boxes. Everything is overwhelming. It’s too much. Jesus. It’s too much.

I stumble the rest of the way down the attic stairs. I force myself to go to the bedroom. I need dry clothes. I need to get out of here.

I want to make love to her again. No, I want to fuck her. I want to make an apparition yell my name. I’m only a few feet into the bedroom, when I feel the ghost of her behind me. I turn, fast as I can on my wonky leg, and I move. As swiftly as I’m able to slam the door closed, as if that will keep her out of my head. As if a door can keep an illusion away. And I’ve got to get to a fucking shrink.