He was breaking. Breaking into little bitty pieces that no one would even be able to find. It hurt so bad he wanted to scream, but he couldn't do that. If he made a noise, they would know he was free.
"Cape. Out. Home."
He dragged his aching body to the panel beside the invisible door. "Cape." That one word meant freedom.
He found it. The door opened. He was getting so close to being free.
Another door. Another panel. "Cape. Out. Found it."
The door opened, revealing one of them standing on the other side.
Rage... fear... revenge. He sprang upon the creature and slammed its head against the wall. Again and again and again. He laughed as it fell to the floor, and he looked down at his hands.
Blood. Red blood.
Daniel snapped back to reality with a jerk. He'd been laughing out loud, and tears were running down his face. It took him a moment to realize where he was. He was sitting up in bed, safe and sound. Not back in that place. He shuddered as the images from his nightmare flooded back into his mind.
No... not a nightmare. A memory. His escape. He'd dreamed about his escape. It had really happened. He'd really killed one of them. It made him feel sick to think that he'd even touched it. He shook his head to clear it of the graphic imagery and the lingering smell of blood in his nostrils and rubbed his face with his hand.
His wet, sticky hand.
Everything inside him started turning somersaults when he realized that the room was filled with the strong scent of blood. It wasn't just a lingering memory from his dream... his hands were really covered with blood.
Daniel gasped and felt beside him for Janet. She wasn't there. Her side of the bed was empty. Where was she?
He quickly leaned over and turned on the lamp beside the bed. He soon wished he hadn't. The blood wasn't just on his hands - it was everywhere. On the pillows, on the headboard, on the wall behind the bed, on Janet's bedside table...
"Oh God... Janet?"
He was afraid to move. He knew deep down what he would find when he looked over the edge of the bed, but part of him didn't want to believe it. God, he wouldn't have hurt Janet. Would he?
"Janet... please, God, Janet?"
His quiet, panic-stricken voice sounded so small and insignificant that he wondered if he'd faded away to nothing. He wished he had.
But he hadn't. He was still here, and he had to find Janet. Slowly, he rolled to his side so he could lift himself up onto his hands and knees, and crawled across the bed to look over the other side.
There she was. Janet. His beloved wife, lying in a pool of blood on their bedroom floor.
Daniel screamed and dropped down beside her. He chanted her name over and over as he passed his hands over her lifeless body, finally pressing his fingertips to her neck to check for a pulse. "God, no!" he cried when he felt nothing. Nothing at all. Not one beat of her heart, not one breath... nothing.
He somehow had the presence of mind to start CPR, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He'd killed her. Oh God, he'd killed Janet.
Panic started to set in then, and he felt an overwhelming need to run. He had to get away from the blood, the smell, the body. He had to get so far away that he'd just forget. He jumped to his feet and ran out of the bedroom into the hall.
One of them was standing right outside his door.
"D...Daniel? What's going on?"
It sounded like Cassandra, but he wasn't fooled. He grabbed it by the neck and slammed it against the wall.
"Daniel, stop! Please, you're hurting me!"
He was hurting it? Damn right he was hurting it. He remembered all the fear, all the humiliation, all the pain, and he just let it go. He threw the creature to the ground and took out all of his rage on its ugly face.
"Daniel! For God's sake, stop!"
He froze at the sound of Janet's voice. Janet? How... "Janet?" he whispered.
"Daniel, please!"
He craned his head to look over his shoulder. There she was, standing alive and well in the middle of the hallway, holding a terrified Cassie close to her chest. "Janet?"
The confusion was so overwhelming that he felt dizzy. He looked down to see a blood stained floor beneath him, but no creature. He looked at his hands. They were covered in blood, but it wasn't Janet's. It was his own.
"What... what's going on?" he asked. "What's happening to me?"
Janet let go of Cassie and dropped to her knees beside him. She grabbed his hands and looked them over, her own hands shaking uncontrollably as she did so. "I don't know whether you were dreaming or hallucinating," she said, "but whatever it was, you scared the hell out of us."
"Did... did I hurt anybody?" he asked, a feeling of dread settling in the pit of his stomach when he remembered the details of his dream. "Oh God... Cassie," he said as realization dawned. The creature in his dream had had Cassie's voice. She was standing in the shadows as far away from him as she could be without disappearing into one of the bedrooms, so he couldn't see her face clearly enough to see what kind of state she was in. Had he hurt her?
"You grabbed her, that's all," Janet said quietly, laying a soft, reassuring hand on his shoulder. "She's a little shaken up, but you didn't hurt her."
Somehow, that didn't make him feel much better. "Did I hurt you?"
Janet shook her head. "Come on, let's see to your hands," she said. She stood up and stooped down to help him to his feet.
Before they even moved one step towards the bedroom, Daniel grabbed Janet's arms and turned her to look straight into his face. "Janet," he said anxiously, "you have to lock me up."
"Daniel, it's alright, we'll figure out what's going on, and we'll fix it. No one's going to lock you up."
"No," he said, his voice shaky but firm. "I'm serious, Janet. You have to lock me up right now. I'm... I'm changing." Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, it was becoming clearer to him what was going on. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it days ago, but he'd been trying to deny it. Now... he'd almost killed the people he loved the most. He couldn't deny it any longer.
"I'm dangerous, Janet. I... I'm turning into one of them. Please, you have to call Jack right now. You have to lock me up before I hurt somebody!"