Something Stayed Behind

Six Months Earlier…

I didn’t fall back asleep. I’m not even sure I woke up. Maybe I did for a second—eyes open, heartbeat fluttering—but it didn’t last. Next thing I knew, I was right back in it. The same world, but being pulled. Slipping. Sliding.
Much faster this time.

The scream wasn’t there anymore, not like it was. It was faded like it was passed. Something stayed behind. Something I could still feel under my ribs. Not pain, not quite. Just… pressure. Like a bruise that never fully healed. The kind of ache you don’t notice until you’re quiet long enough to feel it again. I didn’t think about it then, but now—now I wonder if it was from the fall. The one where I didn’t bounce. The one that felt real, but it wasn’t.

Everything started moving again. Only faster. Quicker than it should’ve. Like whatever this was had already shown me what it wanted to, and now it was trying to skip ahead. Green hills blurred by, all soft and wrong, like a painting smeared before it dried. Trees stretched tall and then vanished. Clouds didn’t float—they jerked, blinked, doubled.

I knew this place. Not just once. Over and over. The ground remembered me. So it stopped playing coy.

Every time I slipped back, I dropped in later. The land was sharper, stranger. The air got heavier. Not just warm—sticky. Like breathing through flannel soaked in sun. And it showed me things. Not with voices. With layout.

No signs this time. Just placements.

A wide field I hadn’t seen before was full of twisted metal. Bent, rusted. I recognized some of the shapes, even if I couldn’t name them. Like looking at a broken tool from your childhood and knowing you’ve held it.

And then I saw myself. Just standing there. Younger. Still. Watching. He smiled. Like he knew I’d made it farther this time.
Then he was gone.

I didn’t float anymore. I walked. I was heavier, or maybe the world had gotten thicker.

Green faded beneath my feet. Without warning, without a moment to notice, it became red. Earth like dried blood. Hills behind me, stone beside me.

Then night. It didn’t fall. It just happened.

I kept walking.

No fear in my legs. Not yet. Everything around me was wrong, but not wrong enough to stop. It all felt too… familiar.

Houses appeared slowly. They didn’t line the street so much as lean into it. Porch lights hummed. Lawns sloped in ways I hadn’t thought about in years. The shadows didn’t fall in just one direction. Neither did the light.

But that didn’t bother me.
Not yet.

I turned onto the street I always ended up on. Cracks in the sidewalk like veins. The driveway came next—always the same.
The trash cans were out.

Something stood past them. Near the garage. Still. Watching.

It had that same shape. The one I never really looked at, not directly. Not made of shadow. But wrapped in it. Held by it.

Something was different though.

The body—thin now. Almost human. But the head—
Large. Round. Wrong.

It didn’t move.
Not until I stepped forward.

Then it ran.
Straight at me.

I turned and tried to run too— but I was small. The air had thickened again. The same pressure in my ribs clamped down hard when I tried to scream.

I fell—
everything went black.