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I stared at the looming building, wanting to never reach it, to stretch this moment, but life was waiting.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find him. We’ll bury him.” She exhaled softly, her voice brushing along the quiet night.

“It was hard to do it all alone, Diya. Now that you’re here, it doesn’t feel so horrible, and I don’t feel like I’ll simply pass out from the pressure.”

She parked the car inside the compound, avoiding looking at me.

My walls were already down, but I knew hers weren’t. Even if she trusted me, she’d never let me in, not fully. Not like her sisters.

“Don’t… don’t look at me with those eyes, don’t tell me things that would complicate this.”

“Why?”

She avoided looking at me as we got out.

When we reached the main entrance of the building, I turned to her with a smile. “I enjoyed our date, Little Poison.”

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe tonight.”

“You won’t. We’ll be working.”

“I love a proper work-play balance.”

Scoffing, she shook her head, walking toward the nurse station to complete the sign-in paperwork.

“Well, you’re not getting one this time.”

Dear A,

It’s all in my head.

IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD.

I tell the doctor about the monster, and he says, it’s all in my head.

Doctor T promises respite from the nightmares. Gives me little pills, perfect circles, chalky on my tongue. I don’t want it, but he says they’ll help me sleep, and says the dark won’t swallow me whole if I take them.

He helps me. He tells me you will come soon.

The nightmares don’t stop even if I take the pills. They change. The shapes shift, the colors grow bright, the screams, louder. I can’t close my eyes, I have to look, and I have to see.

It’s too hard to breathe through smoke. My lungs hurt.

It’s too hard.

I stumble and fall.

I hate everything. Everyone.

I hate… cigars. Tea. No. I don’t want to drink tea.

Monsters in the woods.

Horns and hands.

I hate it. I hate it.