RELABI
They warn me of the fearful danger of relapsing.
* * *
It's these nights, when the soft sheets of a real bed and the mosquito nets and how he can't tell from here if White's got his eyes open—it's these nights that he feels trapped. He'll stop breathing right, and then he'll sit up like a puppet pulled to attention. His hand will feel a million times big and the sky is purple and red and big big and this is the landscape LANDSCAPE.
"Black?"
Black starts, drawn like a pinprick of light from his dreaming. He is in the daylight, at the beach, staring at a scar on his left foot. White is dressed in his school clothes—he looks too young to be fourteen, but Black guesses that might never change.
"Be happy, be happy," Black intones, wondering what White sees when he opens his eyes. White smiles at him.
It's these nights that are the rarest anymore.