A Drop of Ink | short stories

In Dreams

Written for the 'Haunted Romance' contest by RomanceSparks

In Dreams

Soft.

That's what her skin feels like beneath my fingertips as they graze her cheek, barely a touch at first.
She opens her eyes, captures my gaze with precision that only comes from years of getting lost in each other.
I'm distracted by the way the light coming from the window behind me casts a ray of sunshine across her face, lights up her irises to golden orbs of molten honey.

Her gaze holds me captive, drawing me in like a moth to a flame. It's like a physical force, a call to my soul and I find I'm unable to resist it. It pulls at my heart, shakes my core and I find myself leaning in, grasping her chin and pulling her closer. Close enough for a kiss, to feel her warm breath feather across my lips, her scent of vanilla and sunshine flood my senses. 

My eyes close on their own accord, fingers sprawling out across her jaw as lips fall upon lips, melting together, dissolving like chocolate on a hot summer day.

It feels like heaven, yet at the same time, there's a tug in my chest. And it's not the beautifully painful skip in my heartbeat, not the crazy ecstatic drumbeat of butterflies against my diaphragm.

I squeeze my eyes shut a little harder, try to ignore the slowly building dread welling up inside of me, fighting to savour the moment and the feel of her warm mouth against mine, her taste on my tongue. 

But instead, coldness starts to seep into me, bleeding from her touch into my skin and I feel her being pulled away from me, slowly retracting from my hold. A sharp pain slices through me, tears through my heart like a lightning and I barely suppress the hiss that threatens to come out of me.

I try to pull her closer, grasp her harder. I'm not ready to let her go, to have her be taken away from me – again.
My fingertips dig into her flesh, hard, almost to the point where it must hurt her. But she makes no sound, doesn't squirm away.
Her lips are still glued to mine, yet they're unresponsive, I don't feel her returning the kiss that I'm clinging onto so desperately. Her arms, too suddenly fall limp around my neck.

I feel her growing cold beneath me. Her body, soft and supple just a minute ago, is like stone, rigid and unmoving.

I fight to hold onto the image of her as I remember her: auburn hair flowing softly in the autumn breeze, eyes full of life and laughter as she let herself fall onto the heap of dried leaves I had just swept up. The scent of earth and bark filling my nostrils as she pulled me down with her. The stretch of goosebumps along her creamy white skin as her blouse came undone. The sighs and hushed moans that came out of her mouth as...

I groan in agony as my eyes snap open. My chest heaves with pain and desperation, as if someone put the organ inside of it in a vice and squeezed, until it shattered and broke.

In my arm lies the body of the woman I used to love but she doesn't move, doesn't breathe. Her skin is ashen, her lips blue, and wet hair is sticking to her forehead in thick dark strands. 

"Baby, why are you so cold?" I whisper, yet I already know the answer. I try to shake her, wrap her in an embrace to warm her up, but deep down I know it's already too late.

Her body transforms right before my eyes. Her skin grows darker, until it resembles coal. The softness of her flesh disappears right beneath my hands. It's like she's dissolving into thin air, withering away like a dry leaf. Until I'm left with nothing but bones. 

The empty sockets of her skull stare right back at me. There's no life, no essence left. Just a skeleton, whose bony fingers are tangled in the hairs in my neck.

I wake, gasping for breath and shivering despite the layer of sweat that covers my body. The horror of my nightmare is latching onto me, chilling me to the bone and almost bringing a tear to my eye.

"Dreamt of me again?" An all too familiar voice says from the foot of the bed. I look up, startled. There she is, so pale she almost seems translucent, water dripping from the tips of her hair and soaking the sheets as it hits the mattress.

I turn away from her. I can't bare to look at her, it reminds me of what I lost and the fact that I'll never get her back.
But the apparition seems undisturbed by my behavior.

"You know, I remember that... afternoon in the garden," she says, "I was pulling dried leaves out of my hair and underwear for hours after that."

I can hear her smirk in that sentence. Why can I sense her smirk? She's not even real!

Again, she doesn't mind my lack of a response and instead, rounds the bed and sits down next to me. Her fingers touch my hand, ever so gently and it's enough to chill me to the bone. She's terribly cold, almost like in my dream.
I pull away, still refusing to look at her, to acknowledge her, hoping she'll go away and leave me alone to mull over my loss.

It's her warmth that I miss the most, how it used to fill the very depths of me. And it aches, it aches to not have her next to me. The real her, not this terrible excuse of a hallucination, this replacement.

"Hey, you're hurting my feelings here!" The apparition says, pouting those lips whose touch I'm still trying to shake from my memory, "I am real, I'm just not alive anymore."

"Only in my dreams," I say with a sigh and the ghost smiles.

[word count: 997]  

***

Any thoughts on this one? Let me know what you think in the comments.

To be honest, I'm not too fond of the end, it feels kind of incomplete and not like a proper ending to the story, not as good as the beginning. But I had to stay within the word limit.
That being said, I might go back and edit/rewrite parts of this story once the contest is over.

Also, if someone feels inspired to make a little banner for this story, just message me!

Thank you for reading!