Allegedly

Chapter 2: Rowan's Reality

Rowan stood at the edge of Duke Street, his fingers fumbling with the cigarette in his hand. The stale scent of tobacco mixed with the damp air that clung to Hugo's narrow streets. He could see Jackson Street from where he was-a straight shot down the hill. The old neighborhood hadn't changed much since he was a kid. Rusted trailers, sagging porches, and gravel roads that led to nowhere. Yet it all felt foreign now, like he didn't belong here anymore.

The cigarette sparked to life between his trembling fingers. He took a slow drag, the smoke filling his lungs with a strange sense of calm. Rowan could see the remnants of his old life scattered around Hugo, Oklahoma. The bar on the corner where he used to sit for hours, the gas station where he bought his first drink. It was all still there, but it wasn't the same.

He wasn't the same.

Rowan exhaled slowly, watching the smoke drift into the gray October sky. His mind flickered, thoughts tumbling over each other like static. Reality was always slippery these days, a mess of fragments that didn't quite line up. He'd tried-tried to clean up, tried to hold onto something real-but the addiction always had a way of crawling back under his skin. It distorted everything, twisting his memories and leaving him questioning what was real and what was just another hallucination.

There was no one left to call for help-not anymore. Not since his father died and his sister had stopped answering his calls. They'd washed their hands of him long ago, and he couldn't blame them. Rowan's life had unraveled slowly, like a thread pulled too tight. No one stuck around to watch a man fall apart. They left before the crash.

The phone buzzed in his pocket, breaking the silence. Rowan stared at it for a moment, blinking as if the small device might disappear if he looked away. He wasn't expecting anyone to reach out. No one did, not these days.

He pulled the phone out and saw a name he hadn't thought about in years.

Emma.

His heart stopped for a beat, then resumed with a nervous thud. Emma. A ghost from his past. His father had done some work for her once-back when the money still flowed and Rowan wasn't a mess of broken promises and shattered intentions. He hadn't seen her in over a decade, not since she'd lost her sight, but there was something about her that stayed with him. Maybe it was the way she never pitied him the way others did. She always saw him for what he was, even when he couldn't see himself.

The message was brief:
"Come quickly. I can't see, but I know something terrible is going to happen."

Rowan stared at the words, his mind sluggish, trying to process. For a moment, he thought it might be a joke. Maybe it wasn't real. His brain was good at playing tricks on him, distorting things until nothing made sense. But there it was-her name, her words.

He let out a slow breath, his thumb hovering over the screen. Hugo stretched out before him, familiar and desolate, but now it felt like a trap. The thought of leaving twisted something deep inside his gut. He hadn't left this place in years, hadn't stepped outside the tight circle of streets that hemmed him in. The idea of heading back to Texas, to Emma's house, stirred something restless in him.

Yet the message stuck with him, gnawing at his insides. Emma wasn't one to exaggerate. If she said something was wrong, it probably was. He didn't know what pulled him toward her, but something in the pit of his soul told him to go.

But there was doubt too. Rowan wasn't sure he could trust his mind. Maybe the message wasn't real. Maybe he wasn't real. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ground himself in the moment, but the haze of withdrawal was already setting in, blurring the edges of his vision.

He needed to clear his head.

Turning down Jackson Street, he made his way toward a small, run-down shop that sold coffee for a dollar. The caffeine helped sometimes, cutting through the fog that settled in his brain. But as he walked, his mind churned. The past came rushing back-moments he'd tried to bury. His father's voice, the scent of oil and grease from the garage. The nights he'd spent staring at the ceiling, wondering when it all started to fall apart.

He didn't belong in this place anymore, but he didn't belong anywhere else either.

By the time he reached the shop, his phone buzzed again. This time, a wave of nausea hit him before he even looked. The message was the same, but the urgency felt different, like Emma was reaching out from somewhere deep in his subconscious. Was it really her? He squinted at the screen, but the letters blurred, merging into something unintelligible.

"Focus," he muttered to himself. "Just focus."

He stood outside the shop, the door's peeling paint staring back at him like a challenge. The world around him began to shift, the ground felt unsteady under his feet. It wasn't Hugo anymore-it was something else, something unreal. The street twisted, the sky darkened. For a moment, Rowan couldn't tell if he was standing in Oklahoma or drifting into another one of his nightmares. The visions came in waves sometimes, pulling him under until he couldn't breathe.

He blinked hard, forcing himself back into the present. The coffee could wait. If Emma was reaching out, it had to be for a reason. And he wasn't the type to ignore a call for help, not when there was nothing left for him here.

With shaking hands, he typed a reply: "I'm coming."