Page 60 of Scarlet Thorns
It has to be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Osip
The nightmare always starts the same way.
I’m driving home through Boston streets that shimmer like black water under streetlights. Something feels wrong— the kind of wrongness that crawls up your spine and whispers warnings you can’t quite hear.
The house appears normal when I pull into the driveway. Colonial elegance, manicured lawn, the life I built for Galina and our unborn son. But the front door stands open.
She’s sleeping on the sofa, one hand over her belly, the other dangling against the rug. Lovely. Serene. Dead.
Then I see the movement.
Something shifts beneath the fabric of her dress, pressing against the taut skin of her abdomen with desperate, rhythmic motion. My son. Fighting for life.
“Hold on,malysh,” I whisper, reaching for her belly. “Papa’s here.”
But before I can touch her, he appears.
The masked figure materializes from shadow like smoke given form. Black leather covers his face, but his hands move quickly as he produces a blade that gleams in the light. I try to move, try to scream, but invisible chains hold me paralyzed while he cuts.
The incision is perfect, clinical. No wasted motion as he reaches inside and pulls out—
My son. Tiny, perfect, alive.
“Net!” The word tears from my throat like broken glass. “Don’t take him!”
But the masked figure is already moving, cradling my child against his chest as he glides toward the door. I struggle against the chains that bind me, muscles straining until tendons threaten to snap.
“Pozhaluysta!” Please! “He’s mine!”
The figure pauses at the threshold, turns back to face me. Behind the leather mask, I see nothing— no eyes, no humanity, just void. When he speaks, his voice sounds like Death.
“You don’t deserve to keep what you love.”
Then he’s gone, vanishing into darkness with my son’s cries echoing in the night. I’m left alone with Galina’s cooling corpse and the knowledge that I failed them both.
Always the same.
Always.
I jolt awake in my king-sized bed, sweat-soaked sheets clinging to skin that feels like it’s raw. The digital clock glows 3:47 a.m., its red numbers burning against the darkness of my Buda Hills bedroom.
Bozhe moy.
My hands shake as I reach for the sedatives on my nightstand— little white pills that promise oblivion. Dr. Szabó prescribed them months ago when the nightmares started interfering with basic function.
“Sleep is when we process trauma,” he’d explained in that calm, clinical voice. “But sometimes the mind needs help sorting reality from fear.”
I dry-swallow two pills and lie back against Egyptian cotton that costs more than sheets should reasonably cost. The medication takes thirty minutes to work, thirty minutes of staring at shadows that might be memories or might be guilt given form.
When consciousness finally fades, it takes the ghosts with it.
The next time I wake, pale morning light filters through windows that overlook the Danube. My body feels heavy, disconnected, like I’m wearing someone else’s skin. But my cock is hard as steel, throbbing with need that has nothing to do with the woman currently occupying my guest bedroom.
Instead, I think about her. The masked woman from Room Five, whose name I’ll never know but whose presence haunts me more effectively than any ghost.
