Page 26 of Devil Inside

The moment I wake, jolting upright in bed, covered in sweat, I swear, for a second, just a breath, the voice comes from right beside me. Whoever said it is resting just next to me, their voice at my ear, breath spreading down the back of my neck.

Is it Lilith?

I can still feel the residual limbs grabbing at my waist, one last remnant of this recurring dream reaching out for me. Even now, the nightmare is still doing its damnedest to pull me back, but it’s just the covers tangled around my torso.

I’ve been wrestling against my bedsheets, not some leviathan of limbs.

Just a dream.Fuck, it felt so real...

Always does. How many times have I had the same goddamn nightmare by now?

Nearly every night.

But it was different this time, wasn’t it? Somehow the dream had changed, altering itself.

That voice...

The bed is empty beyond me. Nobody else is here.

I’m alone.

Lilith is long gone, if she was even here at all. I can’t find her clothes anywhere. She’s not in the bathroom. There’s not a single hint of her spending the night.

She totally ditched me.

There’s a soreness running through my muscles that feels fresh. Talk about a marathon. Sex may be the best form of physical therapy yet. I’m paying for it this morning, though. My muscles are all rubber bands, stretched beyond their own elasticity.

PT is going to kill me... if I ever go back. I got enough exercise last night, didn’t I? Maybe I’ll just skip another week. Or two.Twenty.What does it even matter anymore?

I was technically dead for a total of two minutes and thirty-three seconds in the middle of the street. Not a record, but still. Not bad. The paramedics were ready to call it—bag and tag me—when one of them felt the faintest pulse. They collared my neck. Boarded me up, tossed me into the back of the ambulance andawaaaay we go... Off to the hospital.

Surgery supposedly lasted several hours, reconstructing my body. Putting it all back together again. A puzzle with a few too many pieces.

I woke up in the hospital room in a cold sweat, completely oblivious to where I was or what happened. I wasn’t in the streets where I should be. This wasn’t Shockoe Bottom. And I didn’t get to deliver my goddamn package. I must’ve lost that bet. Now I was down twenty bucks.

Where am I? What hospital is this?I was nowhere near my bike.Where is it?

The ache followed. The dull throb in every stitch. My bodywas a tuning fork, each bone resonating in a pang that vibrated out from the rest of me, seething through my skin.

Death would’ve been a blessing. I should’ve stayed there.

Now I’ve had to heal. Return to the land of the living.

Good luck with that.

My friends visited, taking turns staring at the sherbet-green walls. The constant drone of my pulse on the heart-rate monitor set the sludgy pace, like a clock ticking from the corner of the room. Deak kept me company as my body convalesced in that stiff bed. It was like I could feel my muscles losing their grip, the sinew slackening. Almost dissolving. Whatever tension I had in my skin, whatever strength I may have possessed, I lost all of it. My speed, my agility, my very sense of being, it completely atrophied.

What’s left of me, whatever got wheeled out from the hospital weeks later, is this untethered rendition of myself. I’m a floppy doll now. Not a human being. Not me anymore.

So what was last night all about? A one-night physical therapy stand?

The sun seeps through the window, casting this graying pall across my room. It’s still early. I can hear the first scraps of traffic outside. The city’s about to clot up with rush hour.

A quick glance at my clock for the time. It’s not even seven.

When did Lilith leave?

I’m half convinced it was all a dream. That last night didn’t happen at all. Lilith was simply some fever dream between me and my fifth whiskey. All I have to show for myself this morning is a pounding headache. Feels like someone took a hammer to the back of my head. My skull’s throbbing. The nail must still be back there, poking out somewhere, lost amongst all the other screws and pins holding my body together. What’s one more hunk of metal to add to the mix? I’m nothing but a pincushion at this point, anyway. A busted toy.