maybe it hurts more because I thought it would be easy
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I dreamed of a river of blood.
What I saw was bizarre—they weren't nightmares, but they certainly weren't dreams, either. The land I stood in was a place of knives of glass and bullets of bone, of monsters with shimmering faces and eyes that spoke better than mouths did. No, they weren't nightmares—at least the monsters didn't pretend to be someone they weren't.
Scenes flashed in my mind's eye like undeveloped photos in a reel, unconnected and mismatched, not all there, like I could recognize the locations and places but not well enough. Lay with a glass of ecstasy in the Dragon's Tail. Baekhyun with a wolf tattoo splayed on his shoulder blade. Seulgi in a shimmering gown, a wearing a mask over her bloodstained face. Vernon, a butterfly sitting atop the bullet wound on his shoulder.
They came one by one, stayed long enough for me to comprehend but not enough for me to remember. Strangely enough, I was at ease even when I saw my hands blackened and burnt on the wheel, and for the first time, the car I drove didn't have flames closing in from all sides. Somehow, my mind was at peace—not the perfect kind, but the one where turmoil lived just beneath the glossy calm of the ice, deceptively solid. Waiting for one false step so the icy water could claim you in its arms.
"Wake up," murmured a voice in my ear, and I shifted restlessly. A hand rested on my forehead, brushing away a strand of hair sticking to my face with sweat. Warm and nurturing. "Honey, wake up."
"Dad," I mumbled, squeezing my eyes shut as I turned away from the hand and snuggled into the pillow, trying to catch the retreating waves of the pleasant, dreamy feeling that still lapped at the shore of my consciousness. "Five more minutes."
The hand froze on my cheek, and the coherent part of my brain caught on to that detail and held it tight. The inner eye closed, and I opened my senses to reality—the dark corner of my pillows, which weren't soft like I'd thought. The mattress was hard. My eyelids felt glued together, and I imagined tearing off a band-aid as I opened them.
"Y/N?" Taeyong asked, hesitant.
I gave myself ten seconds to pull myself together, then got up, sitting up on the bed with a blank look on my face. He was seated on the mattress beside me, a distraught and guilt-ridden look on his face, like I'd caught him doing something he shouldn't do.
"Did you call me 'honey'?" I asked, still feeling a bit out of it.
"No," he replied, then frowned. "Why? Did you hear—"
"Never mind," I said, cutting him off, and swung my legs over the side of the bed, making to get off, but stopped at the last minute. There was a tightness in my throat, but I didn't want to acknowledge the feeling, which was like discussing an embarrassing past with a total stranger. "What time is it?"
