The End of the Dream

Chapter 1

Waking up was the most gut-wrenching, painful return to consciousness that you had ever experienced.

Your heart was racing, pulse fluttering like a trapped, panicked hummingbird in your tight chest. Your breaths were heaving but too shallow, head spinning, hands trembling. Though no clear recollection of it lingered in your memories, you were certain you had woken from a nightmare. A very long one.

Its residue lingered in your bones, clung to you like a black taint. It sickened you to your core, all the more unsettling for the fact you couldn't remember what had affected you so.

Nor could you remember... anything. Even your body didn't seem to remember itself. Your skin crawled, too tight in some places, too loose in others, as though you had accidentally put on someone else's clothes and they didn't fit quite right.

Swallowing down the heavy, choked lump in your throat, you tried to take stock of your situation. That you were utterly disorientated was an understatement.

You were on the floor. Marble flagstones. Wet.

A display table, once the centrepiece of what appeared to be a spacious entry foyer, had toppled over, sending the vase atop it plummeting to the ground. China shards and long-withered flowers lay shattered around the site of impact.

Initially, you assumed it was water that slicked the tiles.

It was not.

One glance to your other side set your world reeling again.

"Fuck," you croaked—your voice didn't feel right either, more akin to an old record that had been left in an attic for a century to gather dust, but that was the least of your concerns.

Blood. A huge pool of it, still growing, encroaching on where you lay. Your side was already soaked with it.

You skittered back, bile rising in your throat again.

The body... whoever they had been, they weren't recognisable. Not with half their skull caved in. Violent lacerations carved open their torso, deep enough to leave guts spilling in their wake. One arm was nearly ripped off, barely hanging on by a few strips of sinew.

You turned away and heaved. The smell of viscera permeated your mouth and nose.

Someone tutted, and your blood froze.

"Terribly sorry about that," the voice said, sounding barely sorry at all. It was a nice voice; rich, deep, smooth. Charismatic. The sort of voice that would be good for a television presenter. It had the oblique, insincere charm of a presenter too.

It made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

"The Manor gets so defensive nowadays. You're lucky I got you that body as intact as I did!"

As intact?

The blood didn't just belong to the corpse beside you. Your hand drifted to your side, finding the ragged edges of shredded fabric, blood-soaked and half-congealed into your skin. But no wounds. There should have been wounds.

"What the hell is this," you demanded, horror sharpening your words to blades. Better that than having your voice tremble, at least.

A shadow fell across you.

The man it belonged to looked like he could be a television presenter as well. For a red-carpet event, perhaps. He wore a crimson blazer, accented with black lapels and a cravat, with dress pants and shoes, swept back hair, and a tightly trimmed beard and moustache. Although his appearance and every manner seemed to want to harken back to the golden age of Hollywood, they felt as musty, washed up, and imitative as the underbelly of those who hadn't made it.