Page 31 of His To Erase
But the screaming does.
I jolt upright, gasping—my body tearing itself out of the dream like a man drowning, breaking the surface just to breathe.
I don’t know if the scream came out of me or it was just in my head. No one comes knocking, and there’s no concerned voices, no neighbor pounding on the wall asking if I’m okay.
So either I was silent or they just didn't care. And I honestly don’t know which one makes me feel more pathetic.
My breath shudders out, sharp and uneven as sweat clings to my skin, soaking into the sheets like a second suffocating layer of everything I keep trying to outrun.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes—hard—but the images are still there, burned into the inside of my skull. I don’t know how long I can keep shoving those memories down before they catch up to me.
It’s too hot in here, it feels like the kind of heat that seeps into your lungs and makes it impossible to breathe. The walls feel closer than they should, and the shadows stretch in the corners like they’ve been waiting for me to break.
“You think you can just leave?”
The voice slices through the thick air, sharp and familiar, curling under my skin like it never left.
“You’re nothing without me.”
They echo louder and I gasp as the pieces slam back into place like shrapnel burrowing beneath my skin.
The words don’t hurt, not anymore. But the memory of his hands do. My spine hits a wall, the breath leaving my lungs in a silent gasp. Sometimes I wonder if running was the right choice, and then I have these moments where I remember certain things, and I know I made the right call.
Thunder rolls, shaking the world beneath me or maybe that’s just my pulse.
"I should kill you for this."
My skull was slammed against drywall, I remember the impact sending a sharp crack of lightning through my vision, and the world tilted.
The bus is the next thing I remember.
I don’t remember buying the ticket, and I don’t remember getting on, but I knew that Denver was my final destination based on the ticket in my pocket.
I just remember sitting there, staring out the window as the city blurred into nothing but streaks of light and darkness.
And here we are, months later, and I’m laying in this bed, in this apartment that still doesn’t feel like mine, surrounded by a life I haven’t let myself settle into.
I press my fingers into my thighs, forcing myself to breathe, to move, to exist in the present.
If there’s one thing I learned that night—one thing that carved itself into who I am—It’s that I will never be trapped again.
It’s getting worse. I wake up knowing I was running, and everything else is a blur. Fuzzy edges. Static. Fragments I can’t place, like someone tore up the picture and left me to guess what it used to be.
The full story never comes. Just slivers. And the second I try to hold onto them, they vanish. Slipping through my fingers like they were never mine to begin with.
The fact that I don’t remember—should terrify me.
What scares me is what Idoremember. Not in perfect detail, not in a way I can lay out step by step—but in a way that lingers. The way my muscles still tense if someone raises their voice too loud, or that I still flinch at shadows that move too fast, in spaces that are too small.
I rub a hand down my face and exhale, trying to force the tension out of my shoulders.
It’s 4:13 AM. Which means it’s way too early to be awake, but too late to go back to sleep.
Not that I could if I tried.
I already know how this day’s going to go, like something’s pressing into my skin and won’t let up until I do something about it.
I think about calling Sarah, but it’s too early, and she’ll just tell me to go back to bed—which we both know isn’t happening.
