The Lemon Meringue Boy

Part 13

I was confused. I couldn't see anything, but I felt my insides migrating towards my throat. It felt like I was in space. I was falling. My stomach clenched with the sudden urge to throw up. My lungs were crushing against my heart, and although the space was completely empty, the blood rushing to my head was causing a symphony so grand that even the folks at Carnegie Hall couldn't top it. 

In the darkness I began to see spots and colors. Faces I'd never seen. Places I'd never been. They didn't mean anything except that I was hallucinating. I was about to die. My brain would burst through the top of my skull, causing a grand red fireworks display that nobody will ever see. There were no people in that empty void. Just as the pressure became unbearable, I stopped falling. Just stopped.

 As soon as I was able to think straight again, I began to feel a strange déjà vu. The falling. The void. The realization hit me like a train gone off the rails. This was the same dream I'd had the night before. The only difference was that my body was not handled with as much care. The force that brought me to the ground was getting weaker. Or crueler. For my sake I hoped it was the first option. 

I soon recognized that, there was a second difference. The fog that had filled the empty space before was no longer there, leaving me to stare into the unforgiving abyss with no protection. I was on my own. 

It made me scared at the time, but what came next would make me wish I still was. I should have expected it. If every aspect was the same, it was undoubted. The voice would come back. I suppose I didn't want to imagine it. Its sinister chuckle still occupied my thoughts, though I tried to repress it. That voice did not return, but another one took its place.

 "What a surprise. I thought you might come crawling back you pathetic little twig." 

My blood turned to ice. The world spun around me. I knew that voice. It was a voice that haunted my dreams. A voice that demanded I never sleep without its essence echoing about my brain. It was a voice that I stored in the back of my mind where I keep harsh realities I never want to think of. I couldn't be him. I had heard wrong. I trembled as I slowly parted my lips to confirm my greatest fear. from them slipped a name so innocent and simple. A name laced with trauma and regret. My voice shook as the single word hung in the emptiness.

"Bill?"

"Did'ja miss me?"