Chapter 4 of 5

Two Worlds

Wilson's POV

My throat clenched as an awful smell assaulted my senses. I wrinkled my nose in disgust, mind quickly fluttering through different ideas of what could be causing the stench.

Winona didn't seem bothered, although I couldn't tell if it was because she couldn't smell it somehow or it just didn't affect her as much. For me, it made an awful sensation burn in the back of my throat and sinuses, similar to the sensation of being punched in the nose.

(Which had happened to me. Multiple times. My nose was a bit crooked these days from my companions' habit of going straight for it.)

"What is that?" I wondered out loud, catching Winona's attention. She paused and tipped her head back at me with a questioning hum.

Her overalls were stained with grass and her boots were dusted with dirt. Smudges of said dirt lined her arms and smeared across her face. For a moment, all I thought about was that I couldn't believe she didn't seem bothered by how dirty she was. Though, truthfully, she and I had been exploring since sunrise, and the sun was angled towards the west now, so I probably didn't look much better.

Everything we had seen so far enforced our original ideas of Maxwell's motive. Trees so heavy with fruit that their branches dipped under the weight, grass so plush you could almost mistake it for cotton, animals that simply watched as we passed by without a care in the world as if prepared to be killed and eaten without a fight. I could tell that the mechanic was getting a little frustrated at our lack of progress, though to be honest, I didn't expect to find anything. This world was clearly hand-created to make us fall in love with it. I wasn't expecting to find some grand issue with it that made Maxwell's motives obvious.

That was, until that smell.

I covered my nose to try to block it out, but it leaked through the spaces between my fingers and the threads of my clothing. It was familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time- like deja vu more than an actual memory.

"You really don't smell that?" I asked incredulously.

"I don't smell anything other than the same citrus that's been chasing us for the past two miles," she answered. "You're not the one I expect to talk about smelling things."

I shook my head roughly and pushed forward, suddenly anxious to find the source of the stench. It made the hairs in the back of my neck stand up, warning me of something I couldn't describe.

Another strong breeze from the hills slammed another wave of odor into me, and I couldn't help but stumble under the force of it.

Honestly, it was probably for the best that neither of the animals- animal or hybrid, whatever- of our group were here. I could only imagine the fuss that Wilbur would put up, mainly because the monkey took the opportunity to complain about everything that wasn't Webber.

Tyler.

Whatever.

I took the lead from Winona, motioning for silence, as I pressed forward. Something felt distinctly wrong about this place, although it wasn't visible to the naked eye. In fact, all that was visible was rolling hills with too-green grass and too-bright wildflowers. Occasional trees dotted the land, leaves tossing and twisting in the breeze. It looked entirely normal.

And yet, it was something I felt deep within my chest. Coiling around my spine and teasing the corners of my vision. Movements that didn't belong to animals. Blank white eyes, quietly observing us, but vanishing the second I looked their way. The shadows felt darker, thicker. An artist suddenly shading with black after basing their whole art style on shading in blues and purples.

Winona seemed oblivious to it all. Then again, she didn't have inky ice growing inside of her chest.

I followed an invisible tug, leaving the vibrant orchards far behind as I led my companion deeper into the darkness. The sun hung quietly in the sky, far from midday but far from sunset.

"The birds went quiet," Winona suddenly muttered. Just like that, I snapped from the trance I had fallen into. My spine straightened as all sensations of coiling darkness exited through my pores and faded back into the daylight. I turned my attention to her, noticing a certain jumpy nervousness about her now. "There's something dangerous this way."

"Then it's something Maxwell doesn't want us to find," I said confidently without even a pause. I knew the man was too clever to expect the four of us to simply twiddle our thumbs and wait to be eaten. He had a trap in place in case we did get curious.

"We should go back and get the others."

"Absolutely not," I said immediately.

I knew that the sword was harmless to me. I remembered demonstrating that very characteristic myself by slashing the blade across my own skin, leaving nothing but a memory behind.

I knew that, even if he hit me, nothing would really happen.

"You think I want to hear them complaining?" I continued, waving my hand. "Nope. We're fine on our own."

"Are you still upset about losing that fight?"

That didn't mean anything, though. Even if you knew, logically, that you would be unharmed by such a blow, perhaps it was the unexpectedness that had panicked me so badly.

Looking down, seeing a sword plunging into my stomach, held effortlessly by a child that barely reached my chest.

The expression on his face made it even more real. It wasn't the expression of someone triumphantly showing off the powers of their weapon in the most extreme way possible. It was the expression of someone who wanted their target to die. It was just a split second, just a moment where I saw so much grief and anger and hatred that I could genuinely believe he meant to kill me.

"I'm not upset about losing a fight he cheated on," I growled, wrapping my fingers around the bandages lining my arm. A gentle squeeze to the area reminded me that the wound was still there, unhealed, but I had been diligent in making sure it didn't get infected. "And besides, I feel like Wilbur would complain worse. You know how he is."

"To be fair, you did go for his blind side first."

I still remembered what it felt like, even after all this time. I forced myself not to think about it, because if I did, I wasn't sure I'd be able to prevent myself from gagging.

But truthfully, it is one of the most god-awful sensations to gouge someone's eye out. The knife wasn't all that sharp, so what was lost in edge was made up for in brute force.

It wasn't a clean cut by any means because of that. No, it was messy and shaky and thick. I had expected blood, maybe some fluid. Many people in my field of work had dissected the odd cow eye or two.

But those knives had been sharp, and this knife was not.

Those eyes were from deceased animals, long since separated from their host, and this one was not.

To make it even more difficult, I was used to working with still subjects. Long-dead animals, reeking of preservatives but perfectly still unless I actively tugged on a tendon.

He wasn't still, by any means. He thrashed and screamed and kicked and cried. Most of my strength was being put into keeping him in my hold. The very second the knife split one of the smaller eyes above his own, his screams abruptly shifted into awful whimpers and desperate gasps for breath.

Only moments after the primary eye was split in half- the sound, the sound- did his chest convulse and rob the last of the breath from my victim.

It was only my quick movement to prevent the further dirtying of my clothing. The moment he was released, he collapsed into a tiny ball with his forehead pressed into the ground as his stomach reacted to the trauma he was enduring.

The only thing going through my head at the time was a mild curiosity. Did he not realize a position like that would cause a considerable amount of his own vomit to end up stuck to his fur?

Looking back at the memory now, though, I noticed more than just that. Namely, the foul, thick globs that spilled from the ravaged eye socket, leaving behind only a little of the original organ in its spot that would have to be removed later.

My hands were slick with blood not my own, and pulp that squelched uncomfortably between my fingers when I clenched my hand.

"He's been half-blind for months now. He should know how to handle it," I scoffed. The sensation in my sinuses grew stronger, and I could see Winona's nose start to wrinkle as well as if the smell was finally reaching her. "If you're so concerned, we can at least get a look at what we're dealing with and go back if we have to. I'm not running away when it could just be something like a dead rabbit or some weird-smelling flower."

The mechanic shrugged, though I could see her hands tighten slightly on the spear she held in her hands. It was the same one Wilbur had thrown together for me to fight with. Even if she wasn't experiencing the full sensory onslaught as myself, it was clear something about this place made her uncomfortable.

The first time I had ever seen a corpse, it had been for classes. Uncomfortable with a crowd, I hung towards the back of my classmates, shifting on my feet. The smell of preservatives was strong in the air, almost minty. Some part of me wanted to stay back, to not see the unfortunate soul who had passed so long ago and donated their remains to study. It felt unnatural and wrong.

Eventually, though, I had to look, even if it was so I didn't royally fail my tests. I took a deep breath, nearly gagging at the preservative smell, before looking down.

It was strange. I had expected to feel much more repulsed by what I was looking at, but instead, it simply… didn't feel like looking at a human. It lacked facial features, part of its skin peeled back to reveal the muscles and arteries and veins in the chest. The professor seemed entirely unphased by it as well, cheerfully referring to the cadaver as 'Mister Yellow' and acting as though it was just another prop in the room.

One of my classmates murmured something about being ill and left. I hung around, vaguely interested in what the professor was saying and pointing out. A band of muscle they casually pulled from the chest cavity, something my mind leaped to identify as the diaphragm even before the professor named it. A slab of flesh they calmly identified as the stomach. Tendons and ligaments and blood vessels.

It wasn't until much, much later that night that it really hit me. A human cadaver. Someone who once lived a full life, with family and friends and jobs and a name that wasn't some anonymous pseudonym.

I didn't sleep much, and when I did, my dreams were uncomfortable and odd. Dreams of peering down at the cadaver and seeing a family member lying there instead of a stranger.

Dreams of looking down and seeing my own body, lying open with flaps of skin pinned aside to expose my innards for a gaggle of students to gawk at.

I dropped out of classes not too long after that.

Winona sucked in air between her teeth beside me. I blinked furiously to wash the images from my mind as I turned to look at her. She looked dazed, her mouth opened slightly as if frozen in the middle of saying something. Her eyebrows suddenly furrowed, confusion clouding her eyes.

"Winona?" I pressed, nudging her with my shoulder. The woman shook her head and her eyes cleared, though they looked suspiciously misty. "You okay?"

"Oh. Um. Yeah. I'm fine." She looked down, suddenly focusing hard on the leather of her gloves. She twisted the fingers of her frostbitten hand manually with her working one, something that looked innately uncomfortable but I decided heavily against saying anything about. "Hey, Wilson. I've got a question for you."

I hummed in acknowledgment. I hadn't realized I had stopped moving. I had to force my feet to continue onward.

"Just a hypothetical. Just… curiosity, you know?"

"I'm listening."

"How would you react if you found out that. Like. I left someone behind on Earth. Someone I shouldn't have. And I just. Never said anything about them."

"We've all left people behind since coming here," I pointed out. I picked my way around a root that sprouted from the ground. "So, I guess the answer would be 'not surprised'."

She nodded slowly, chewing at the inside of her lip. "Okay. And like… if I told you that person was a woman."

"Okay? And?" It wasn't like women were some foreign species. I had left behind people of both genders after being brought here.

She was silent for a long moment, as if waiting for me to come to some sort of conclusion.

Winona seemed incredibly uncomfortable broaching the subject. Awkward, but also slightly scared. Like she expected me to react badly to it or something. I couldn't even understand why she would think I would care-

And then it clicked, and I suddenly understood.

"Oh."

She flinched.

"And, er, what made you… think about her?" I asked awkwardly. "It's, uh, kinda random to bring up out of nowhere." Did she think I would care all that much? If so, why say something now? Because she was afraid that the others would judge her worse?

(Did the two natives even have the same concept of that as us from Earth?)

"I dunno," she mumbled after a second. "I just. Can't stop thinking of that night. When the portal exploded."

"Exploded?" I echoed.

She exhaled quietly. "Yeah. Someone was messing with magic they didn't understand. I don't know exactly who it was, but it was hidden away in one of the backrooms. I thought it might've been my old boss, but…" Winona's glove-picking was becoming noticeably more frantic. "I couldn't save him. I lost my hold. Then the portal shut down. Exploded." Her pace was slowing down, and I gently pushed her to encourage her to keep moving. Winona huffed at the pressure. "So, I fixed it."

"You… fixed it. The dangerous evil magic portal."

"Says you." She waved her hand at me. "We all made that same stupid decision, right? It's not like I knew it was a dangerous evil magic portal. And I… I don't know. I told myself that, if I could fix it, if I could save that person, if I could reverse everything that had happened… I told myself that it would somehow come back to my sister. That somehow, I would be able to save her." Her lips quirked into a wry smirk. "Guess I had to motivate all of my actions with that promise. 'Can't find Charlie if you don't get out of bed, Winona'. 'Winona, if you forget to eat, you won't have the strength to find Charlie'. 'Don't forget, Winona, they never found any bodies, so surely William and Charlie are still alive'!"

"So then…"

"I fixed it. Got it back to working order. I think Scarlet noticed something wrong with me. She kept showing up at my doorstep all hours of the night as if to make sure I hadn't keeled over from stress. She would make these little comments about finding hobbies or just joining her on her hobbies. When we weren't working, she used to drag me to the river to skip rocks. I wasn't ever any good, but she could get a rock to skip all the way across to the other shore. I started rejecting her invites around that time though. I think… I think she thought that I was mad at her."

"You weren't, though," I pressed when Winona hesitated once more.

"No. I wasn't. But I was so caught up in my own world that I didn't even realize I was hurting her. The day before I got that portal to work again, she came to me and she just looked… so sad. She told me that I needed to just… let go of Charlie. That it had been years and I hadn't gotten any further. She told me that I would just hurt myself if I continued as I was.

"I ignored her, though. I ignored her. She knew exactly what was happening and how it was affecting me, and I just ignored her concerns. Then I just… disappeared without a trace. Just like Charlie did."

Winona sighed, dipping her head sadly.

"I hope she's doing okay, now."

"I'm sure that wherever she is, she's doing better than we are," I responded wryly. The grimace on Winona's face only grew deeper.

The place was quiet. Abandoned. I stood uncertainly at the door, my hand wavering by the doorknob for just a second. I could hear the sound of a car driving away, my last piece of connection to civilization.

In a way, I had chosen this. I had become so engrossed in my own thoughts, in my own work, that I had chosen to separate myself from family and friends. The decision had been made in a state of mania, desperate and eager to break away from everything that I didn't even consider how… empty it would feel.

Quiet. Alone. Abandoned.

I violently shook my head to shake away the images. I couldn't even imagine why they were suddenly coming to me now, when I hadn't thought of some of these events in years now. I almost turned to say something to Winona… only to stop myself when I noticed the tears silently rolling down her cheeks.

"Whoa, Winona?"

"I should've stopped that show from happening. I knew something was wrong," the mechanic whispered. She covered her eyes, her breathing harsh. "She told me that something was off with William, but I didn't act quickly enough."

I reached out to her in an attempt to snap her from whatever memory had claimed her, but before I could make contact, I felt something physically shift in my head and another blaze of memories blurred across my vision.

The beast was huge. She was gorgeous, all glittering greens and oranges and iridescence. A true dragon, in its most awe-inspiring form.

We were struggling. She was massive, but she wasn't slow. The heat from the summer sun, growing only more intense by the second, lit smoldering embers in tumbleweeds and the short patches of desert grass. I could feel sweat pouring down my neck and back, drenching my collar and causing every bit of fabric to rub uncomfortably against my skin.

I was distracted by the sight of flames licking at Webber's fur and the swish of claws tearing into his skin and a scream of agony. I took a single step towards him, fully intent on telling him to back out of the battle, but WX was there before I was. The robot had appeared at their friend's side in a flash, helping the boy to stand and muttering something to him.

I was distracted. In the middle of a battle with one of the most ferocious creatures in the land.

I didn't notice the danger I was in until I saw Webber's eyes widen in horror, his mouth opening as if to call out a warning. His voice was drowned out by the crackle of flames and the rasp of his own pain.

It was WX's shout that I heard.

And it was WX's shout that would be the very last sound I heard in that life.

"DODGE!" They screamed, but it was too late for that. She had reared up, embered claws glittering like pearls in the sun. It was all I could do to block with my own weapon, but even I knew that would be futile.

After that was usually when the memories blacked out. The sensation of being torn apart was not lost on me, but the pain was non-existent. Before she even made contact with me, my body was going into shock. If I had been in my right mind, maybe I would've turned my gaze back towards Webber and WX, just to see my companions one last time.

Instead, the image burned into my retinas was fire and claws and then nothing.

I felt my feet leave the ground as she threw me into the air, but I never felt my body land. All I knew was that next, I was lying blankly on the ground with ringing ears and an aching chest.

"Ugh…" I muttered under my breath. I reached one hand to touch the wounds that surely spanned across my chest, but my hand came into contact with cold stillness.

Breaths that didn't reach my lungs, and a heart that refused to beat.

I shot up, on my feet faster than I would've expected with how out of it I was a moment before. The sand below my feet retained its shape, undisturbed. Just a few feet away, though, was blood. More blood than I had ever seen in one place, pooling out from a body with a torso shredded beyond recognition.

With shaky steps, I neared the body.

It was my own.

For a moment, all I could think of was a nightmare I had had so long ago, of a dissected cadaver observed by a gaggle of students. And really, it was easy to think of it like that. I had seen gore before- plenty of times now, actually, given how we had to prepare our own meat- but it had been so long since I had seen… human gore. To this extent. It wasn't just blood, although it would be hard to understand what you were looking at if you didn't have experience with anatomy.

A band of muscle I immediately recognized as the diaphragm, spilling from the chest cavity. Sliced into at least two separate pieces, although that was all I could see. A slab of mutilated flesh I identified as the stomach. Tendons and ligaments and blood vessels.

From there, I watched the aftermath. WX found me first, their face painted with a shade of horror I never expected that the automaton could even make. I watched the first time I had ever really seen Webber break down, collapsing under the weight of the events of that battle for days afterwards. I saw the things that the others didn't see. The things that WX thought I never saw. I witnessed the way the robot would remain just within eyesight of Webber but far enough away that he wouldn't be able to hear them grieve if he woke up.

I wanted to stay by them, even if I couldn't interact with them. I took a certain comfort in being near, although I wished more than anything I could let them know I was there. Far too soon, I was beginning to think I would be able to stay in this strange limbo.

And then Nightmare appeared. Or maybe it was Charlie? I wasn't sure. Whoever it had been, they had taken my wrist without warning and dragged me away, taking me to somewhere dark and cold. I shivered, as what was left of my shredded shirt wasn't much help in keeping the cold air at bay. I felt the change almost immediately, dragged through the veil between life and death altogether.

I remembered limping heavily behind her, with ropes tearing at the skin of my wrists. When I had been tied up, I wasn't sure. I was near blind in the darkness, only just managing to keep myself from tripping by focusing all of my attention on my feet. It was better than way. If I let my attention drift at all, I would become all-to-aware of the hundreds of eyes stalking my path through the dark.

There was some sort of music playing. A terrible, grating tune that tore at my already fragile psyche. It hurt to think, and soon it became almost impossible. The further into the labyrinth I was dragged, the louder the music became.

It was so loud.

And it was getting louder.

And louder.

And LOUDER-

"Wilson! Crap- Wilson, look at me. It's not real, snap out of it!"

Winona's voice suddenly came through to me as her hand violently shook my shoulders, snapping through the illusion. With the breaking of such, I realized I was holding my breath the entire time. Black dots swam in my vision and my chest ached with the pressure of carbon dioxide buildup. As soon as the realization came to me, I started to gulp in as much air as my lungs could physically hold. I fell to the ground, hands grasping uselessly at the soggy grass beneath my knees.

It was then I realized how much our scenery had changed.

In the midst of my thoughts, we had stumbled past the plush green grass and come across something much more sinister. The grass beneath me was pale and sickly, each blade heavily weighed down with drops of black fluid that dotted the field like morning dew. The smell was everywhere now, so strong I was certain my nose was bleeding just from the irritation.

A hand grasped my shoulder again, an action I immediately flinched away from. Instead of drawing back, though, Winona only gripped it tighter and shook me. "We need to get out of here. I don't know what this place is but- I don't know. We need to leave."

I looked up.

The land we had woken up in was lush and beautiful and vibrant. Filled with colors all across the spectrum and scented with citrus.

It was as though all of the life had been drained from this place in order to fuel that vibrancy.

Sickly trees, with only a few browning, dying leaves hanging from their spindly branches replaced the towering birchnuts and pines. There weren't any animals that I could see, but the stench of decay made me believe that at least some unfortunate souls had stumbled upon here by accident and paid the price. Everything was gray and brown and absolutely saturated in black slime. It wetted the grass, dripped from the trees, weighed the very air down to the point it clung to my skin like humidity.

I had only ever seen one place like this before: the Ancient Guardian's labyrinth. A place where one of the beast's many heads had once ruled before it had been struck down.

I jerked to my feet, all-too-aware of how unnatural my movements were. Winona nodded shakily. Her hand refused to leave my shoulder. Instead, she actually dug her fingers in deeper, and I could feel the tremors running through her arm. Or maybe the tremors were coming from myself.

"Yeah," I breathed. I had to quickly swallow back a gag as the mere act of opening my mouth allowed for the taste of decay to bathe my tongue. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand, eyes darting around the empty landscape in anticipation. "Yeah, let's… let's tell the others about this."

"Are you crazy?" Winona hissed. She immediately slammed a hand over her own mouth and her face grew gray. I shot her a look, one meant to mean 'later'- a message she seemingly got. She didn't seem to be very happy with the idea of telling Wilbur and Webber/Tyler about our discovery.

We turned back the way we came, moving much faster away than we had towards. The second I noticed the plants start to look lively again, I decided to continue the inevitable argument. "How would I be crazy to tell the others about… this?" I waved my hand back towards the wasteland. "This could be our way to the next world! Are you planning on just sitting here twiddling your thumbs for the next sixty years? Weren't you the one who wanted to get them in the first place?"

"You know as well as I do that both of them would charge head-first into a place like this out of sheer stubbornness," Winona argued. "And based on the way you completely shut down back there, I'm assuming you were also seeing the same kind of nightmares I was. Do you really think it's a good idea to let Tyler or Wilbur deal with that?"

"It's not my problem if they can't!"

"Wilson, you shut down back there. Are you telling me the things you've seen are half as bad as either of them? If you had to relive the things they've been through, don't you think even your 'great' mind would struggle?"

"We've all seen terrible things!" I snapped. "All of us! What makes you think they would have it any worse than us, huh? You might not realize this, Winona, considering you got to skip the worst parts, but everything Webber has experienced, I have experienced, too!"

"The worst parts?" She barked an incredulous laugh. "You think I skipped the worst parts? Do you think I came here yesterday?" Winona placed a hand against her chest, her eyes alight with fire. "In case you forgot, I was there when WX-78 died. I held their heart in my hands. I failed to fix them. If I remember correctly, you couldn't even look at them! Did you even see what the wound that killed them looked like? Because I certainly did!" Her shoulders rose as her voice did. "I was the mechanic in the situation, and I was responsible, and I wasn't good enough to fix them! And then! You think I wasn't there when Tyler went missing for weeks after that and we thought he had killed himself? Or during anything that has happened since going through the door that you dragged us into!?"

"You weren't there when we fought the giants, Winona! You weren't there when we fought the Dragonfly! You can't even begin to lecture me about having seen just as terrible things as myself when you've never died before!" The words I spoke no longer came from my head. They skipped entirely past any filter I had and filled the air the very second they were conceived. "I died, Winona! I was ripped to shreds by the Dragonfly, and I died! Whatever Webber or Wilbur would see if faced with their memories, it couldn't be nearly as bad as that!"

"For God's sake, Wilson! You are going to make a child relive all of his trauma because he 'should be able to handle it'? Wilson, he broke the first time having to suffer from that!"

"I don't-!"

"He tried! To kill himself!"

"Why does EVERYTHING you and Wilbur say end up about Webber!? Do neither of you care about anyone else? You may as well just forget about Charlie entirely since it seems you care more about some… stupid mutt more than her! Why don't we all just stay here, then? After all, it seems there's nothing in the world that can even compare to how important he is to you!"

Winona opened her mouth to retort, but nothing immediately came out. Her good hand clenched into a fist so tight it sent tremors up her entire arm.

The fire that had lit in my chest was reflected in her eyes

"If he gets 'spooked'," I said quietly, threateningly. "Then so be it. There are more important things to worry about than-"

"Stop. I don't even want to hear it." Winona's voice was sharp enough to cut. I held my ground, even as she thrust a furious finger in my direction. "I don't know what is wrong with you, but I don't ever want to hear you talk about Charlie like that ever again. You don't understand anything about her, and I don't even want to hear you pretend like you do.

"And Tyler-" Another low, incredulous chuckle. "You're so twisted by your own hatred and jealousy that you would take it out on a child. Wilbur and I care about him, and he's so sick that, yes, we worry about him a lot." She jabbed my chest with her outstretched finger. "But that's only because one of us is constantly trying to push him over the edge. And you know what? You succeeded. Your cruelty pushed him over the edge, okay? And yet as soon as he tried to end it all, the second you realized what a mistake you had made, you suddenly cared about rectifying it. Just because you didn't want to be the one who hurt a nine-year old so much that he killed himself. It doesn't matter if we saved him. You succeeded. Congratulations.

"Sometimes, it really is obvious how alone you were for such a long time. It's obvious that you couldn't care less about anyone, except for when it makes you feel guilty or someone calls you out on it. I try to work with you, but every time I worry about someone who isn't you, suddenly it's an issue."

She shook her head, her shoulders slowly falling as she let out a long sigh.

"There is a problem here. But it isn't any of us. The last world might have required Tyler to learn what love was again, but it never was him who forgot it. And the worst part?" Another shake of her head, another chuckle. "I know that, even if you try to be better, you'll only do it because I made you feel guilty and you don't like that. Not because you actually care about anyone else. Because, Wilson, you are the only one that matters, isn't that right?"

And then, she was walking away, leaving me behind with nothing but her words to keep me company.

Her words… and the nightmarish memories I had been forced to relive once again.