The One That Got Away

Chapter 1

At first, the nightmares were lucid and they were always the same.

He was in the mansion, trying to escape as the Baker family voices teased and taunted from beyond the walls. "Ethan, Ethan! You ain't ever gettin' away!" and "You've got to find a way out of that house" and "I'll kill you! I swear to fuck, I'll kill you!" looped over each other discordantly as Ethan rattled every door knob, feeling hope fade and fear mount with every locked passage. Their footsteps shook dust and plaster from the ceilings. As he dodged and navigated to try and find a way out, the looming black bodies of mold staggered around him, around every corner, and down every hall with hellish, plethoric ubiquity. He didn't have time to pull out that old survival knife by the time the next ones appeared. Most of them he could outrun, and he darted between their dank, fibrous, pungent bodies and wrestled with the handle on the next locked door until they caught up with him. They threw their heads back with open mouths screaming with once human voices and sprayed black spittle into the air. They slashed at him and clicked their teeth with anticipation as they drew nearer to him. He bolted to the next door that he already knew wouldn't open, trying it frantically so it shook silently on its hinges. The voices crescendoed louder and louder until he couldn't think straight anymore. Panicked desperation mounted with every step they took towards him until he resorted to beating the windows with his fist, hoping his wedding ring might help to break the glass. He punched through in the nick of time, sawing his wrist on the shards of glass still lodged in the pane as he grasped for the handle from the other side. The molded were upon him now, sneering and throwing their heads back, lunging. He kicked at them, trying to buy just a little more time as his middle finger graced the smooth brass doorknob. He kicked again, feeling a scream buzz in his chest, soundless under the Baker's voices. One of the monsters slashed at his leg. He felt his hamstring ball up behind his knee. Crossing his arms in front of his face, he collapsed to the floor, and the monsters' box-cutter fingers and needle teeth tore him into a bloody pulp. As the scene faded to red, Jack laughed "you missed a spot! You missed a spot!"

Then he opened his eyes and expected the afterlife, but saw only darkness. The ceiling fan whirred placidly overhead and Mia's somnolent breathing was something to mimic until his heartbeat slowed and the cold sweat dried. He swallowed heavily through labored breathing and sat up slowly, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple. The Dulvey Incident ended last August, but it persisted in his nightmares ever since, and made it feel like it had never really ended. Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, he visualised that black mold buried dormantly in the creases of his brain. Sometimes he could swear he felt it spreading throughout his body like bugs crawling across his skin. He had a scar on his right arm from when he had tried to break out of his own body, but that was before the doctors. That was before things went back to normal, an idea that was only something hopeful people suggested when they couldn't even begin to fathom the hell that someone else had gone through. He had hoped Umbrella would have had some fucking idea.

He laid back down and turned onto his side, clearing Mia's dark hair from her face so her fair, moonlight visage shone dimly in the dark room. The locks of her hair cast a shadow over her face as he moved it, redolent of the spiderweb veins that circled her eyes before her various attempts to kill him. His brow furrowed with the pang of the memory, but he couldn't bring himself to be afraid of her. Eveline was dead, he had given a dose of the serum to Mia, and if worse came to worst, it was the same old song and dance. He brushed another lock of hair from her face and it occurred to him that killing his wife shouldn't be something he had gotten used to.

Mia stirred and inhaled deeply as she awoke. She blinked her eyes half open and smiled softly like she was gazing at a waking dream. She put her hand to his cheek, reaching out to see if he was real, and drew a sigh of gentle relief through her nose as she felt his solid jaw, smooth cheeks, the warmth of another person beside her.