Page 82 of Somno Slave

He’s here.

For a second I don’t think. My body does it for me, breath catching in the back of my throat. Every muscle tightens at once. The old instinct arrives first, hot and immediate, the need to get up, get away, put distance between me and whatever this is.

Then the rest of it follows.

The knowledge that I am in bed. The stillness in my limbs. The peculiar weight of sleep pressing down through me like another mattress laid over the first.

I know this feeling now.

I hate that I know it.

“No,” I panic, and my voice sounds wrong in the room.

There’s a pause, long enough to force a tremble through my body, and then the pressure lifts from my eyelids. I open my eyes, and find him, leering in the shadows next to my bed. The shape of his shoulders. The rough fall of his hair. The bruises under the electrodes, blotched and deep along his skin, the colour of them dragged into strange relief by the moonlight.

He doesn’t move toward me. He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, watching. And it’s somehow worse than if he did break the silence.

“You’re not real.” I whisper as though the words might save me.

He smiles, voice stroking my thoughts. “You say that as if it helps.”

The air changes under that gaze. My body registers it before my mind can decide what to call it. A low awareness moves through me as if every nerve has turned its face toward him. I grip the sheet beneath my fingers. The fabric is cool and slightly rough against my skin. I focus on that. On texture. On pressure. On facts.

“Go away. This isn’t right.”

Amusement spreads across his face. “If you wanted me gone, you would stop looking.”

He takes one step closer and the intrusion feels physical.

“You dragged me through your thoughts all day,” the answer hits somewhere deeper than sound. “Of course I’d come back at night.”

Heat rises through me so fast it feels like anger. I want it to be anger. I want it to remain clean enough to name. Instead, it tangles almost immediately with something else, something heavier and harder to deny.

“How do you know—”

He points at his temple. “I’m in your head. None of this is real.”

My breath shudders, brain whirling as it fails to catch up.

No.

No, he can’t be—

But he’s here.Again.

The realisation hits too fast. My eyes drag over him like I can disprove it if I look long enough.

My ribs suddenly feel too small for my lungs.

I’ve done this. I’ve brought him here. This ismyfault.

Regret blooms.

This isn’t just stress. It’s fucking obsession.

“Doctor,” his voice licks the edge of my mind. “You keep trying to turn everything into evidence.”

I jerk as if the adrenaline might be able to snatch me from the nightmare, but again, nothing moves.