Page 17 of Midnight Between Us

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My name.I think.

Another voice now, sharper.Closer.Urgent.

“Keir, stay with me.Don’t you fucking die on me or I swear ...”

I turn toward it, but there’s nothing there.Just fog.Her face.That same look—too much emotion behind it, not enough explanation.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I say.“Tell me who I am.”

She stares at me, her voice quieter now.“You forgot?”

The rain keeps falling.The light keeps blinking.

“I’m trying,” I whisper.I’m not sure who I’m talking to anymore.Her.The voice.Whatever’s beyond this place.

I try to stand.I can’t.

“Keir.”

The voice cracks through the haze.Urgent.Real.

I squeeze my eyes shut.Try to hold onto it.Cling to anything that might pull me out.

But nothing comes.

So I stay.Trapped in a body that won’t move.In a dream, I can’t escape.

Staring at somebody who I might use to know.

Waiting.

Maybe dying.

ChapterFive

Keir

There’s buzzingbehind my eyes.

Like the static just before the power cuts out—that half-second when the world forgets how to hold itself together.

Nothing makes sense.It’s all wrong.Off.Like a dream I can’t control or a life I don’t recognize.Not that I remember what mine looked like.Did I even have a life?

It’s been so long.Too fucking long.

I don’t know anything.I’m everywhere, nowhere, and in between.Sometimes, I can move.Others, I’m stuck, having trouble breathing or even keeping myself afloat.

I’m not on a rock this time.Just a staircase.Concrete, old.The railing is rusted, with paint curling off in long strips, like it’s trying to shed its skin.Thank fuck my legs work this time.I take one step.Then another.

My shoes echo through whatever surrounds me.A building?A castle ...who knows.There’s just a loud, haunted, hollow sound.This feels real, and yet not real enough.Like I’m walking through a memory that someone else built.

Each door I pass is the same: gray, bolted shut, without knobs.Every landing blend into the next.I could walk forever and still be right here.

I stop.Press my hand to the wall.

It pulses.Not with life.With memory.

A flash.

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