Ecstasy

Epilogue (6)

"I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in the terms of a functional human being you know?" 

- Excerpt from It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini 

LORENZO ANTONOV

My eyes shoot open and I throw myself up into a sitting position.

Looking around I realize I'm in a lounge chair. I feel a water drip on me and I turn to my right to see Brielle.

Oh my god Brielle.

I pull her close to me and I smash my lips on hers, sloppily kissing her.

I pull away and hold her tightly in my arms.

"I thought I lost you," I mumble. Her body vibrates with her melodic laugh.

"What do you mean?" she asks, confused. I take a deep breath in and out, "I'm right here."

Yeah, it was probably a bad and long dream.

Everything was just a dream and it never happened.

Right?

I look down at my hands, flipping them over and over again and I see no wedding ring which I'm also very happy about.

I sit back down on the lounge chair, leaning over to the glass table and grab a cigarette.

I can calm down.

That dream was so vivid.

When I turn back to Bri and bask in her beauty. She looks at me, a smile brightly on her face but soon it slowly drops into an uncanny frown.

"Why did you do that Lorenzo?" she asks. I furrow my brows.

Huh?

"What do you mean?" I ask, I look at my cigarette in confusion, "I've always smoked?"

She doesn't budge, it doesn't look like she's breathing.

To hopefully make her happy, I turn back to the table and I'm startled with Bri, again, looking me dead in my face and an uncanny frown.

"Why did you hurt me Lorenzo?" she says. Her voice sounds much different this time. Like she used special effects in those horror movies to make the demonic creatures seem real.

"I didn't- I thought-"

"I'm gone, Lorenzo."

I back away from her, tripping over the lounge chair from behind me, causing me to tumble back on the concrete.

"Wake up, Lorenzo."

I scramble up to my feet, my dream instantly turns into a nightmare and I continuously bump in multiple Brielle's. Each time I run into her, her frown is worse and worse until her face doesn't even look human anymore.

She continues repeating that she's gone, that I need to wake up, that she doesn't exist anymore and that it's my fault that both our lives are this way. Sometimes she appears bloody, bruised, perfectly fine. It's creepy and scary.

I don't know how to escape and I feel like I'm drowning. Please wake up. I want to. No more, I can't anymore. Brielle-