#wake post.

                      〘Ͻ〙 I had another dream. I was standing at the edge of a lake. It was summer, but it was cold. The water was like ink. There's a woman staring back at me from below. She's singing to me, holding out her hand.

She's alone. She wants me to come with her.

I step into the water, dropping down down down deep like a stone.

I'm standing at the edge of a lake. I'm looking up through the water. The sky is red. The woman is looking down at me, smiling. She's laughing at me. She walks away.

I'm alone.

For as long as he could remember, his dreams have been hostile. Terrible beasts, broken worlds, depravity on a scale unimaginable sprung from the recesses of his mind, chasing him through the night, powerful enough to spill over into the waking world.

Alan recognises this dream, but not the narrator. The voice echoes all around him, bouncing off the walls of his mind, not unlike how he hears his own voice when he holds a manuscript page in his hands, his reading mingling with an echo of a former self, creating a strange feedback loop.

But this, this is no dream at all—rather a memory, the catalyst for the hell he's been enduring for he-doesn't-even-know-how-long.

Just like that, Alan's falling, water as thick and black as tar filling his lungs.

—Drowning, I'm drowning, somebody please—

The days are gone. A figure passes him by. Everything's out of sequence, jumbled, but it shouldn't be, he's already done this, he got Alice out—

Alan looks up, the surface rippling, catching the silhouette of someone half-bent over. His feet are rooted to the ground; he couldn't swim for the surface even if he wanted to. HIs breath catches in his throat, solidifying, and for a moment, he's forgotten how to breathe.

It's a woman. It's the darkness, welcoming him home.

It's a man, one whose face Alan can't make out because the surface of the water won't still long enough to stop distorting his image. At first, his thoughts leapt to Zane, but the scene is all wrong, lacking his usual touch.

they arrive with a loud thud on the fire escape above him, a sound of shifting weight and shaking metal. they lean out from one of the railings, their voice the strangled shout if someone trying to be more formidable than they are.

"KING ARTHUR!"

their teeth bare in a small, sharp grimace, desperate, feral with stress and starvation.

"I AND HAVE MUCH QUARREL WITH YOU, YOU - MURDERING, MEDDLING BASTARD!"

He needs another plot point, another story beat to follow to its conclusion. The last one was a failure—he's still here, it's already slipping from his memory, bleeding off the page, many of the intricate details lost to the darkness, the endless loop.

Tim hadn't had much to offer in the way of ideas—it's not his fault; he's a cop and they're not exactly known for their wild imaginations—but he was a friendly face, patient and endlessly pleasant to talk to, and had offered a suggestion to where to find inspiration. It was a lead, flimsy though as it was.

Not like he had anything better.

Alan jumps at the sound of rattling, shaking metal, jumping back in case the entire thing is about to come down on him. His heart hammers in his chest, roars like thunder in his ears, and he immediately snaps the torch skyward, capturing the person—creature?—in the beam, knuckles turning white from how tightly he grips it. The revolver follows a second after, aimed right at their chest. His hand trembles.

They know him. Or they think they do. Alan frantically wracks his memories, trying to dredge up where he might know them from. They play out to the sound of the typewriter carriage endlessly clacking away, but the words are illegible.

He takes another step back, assuming a defensive position.

"What—what quarrel? I'm not—who even are you? Have we met?"

He had wanted to surprise her. Do something nice to make up for the hours he'd spent squirreled away in the study, his mind travelling the streets of a fictional New York while his body remained here to document what he had seen.

Stepping back into reality, he had opted for the tried-and-true cliche—surprise Alice with a fancy homemade catered dinner with the works. Pull out the old tablecloth that had been shoved into a closet—the one without the faint wine stain on it—light a couple candles, a little ambient lighting, shower and dress up in something nicer than the house clothes he'd been wearing for two days, and grab their finest tableware to lay out a meal lovingly prepared by the professionals.

He hadn't committed to the full suit, opting for classy yet slightly more casual with a dress shirt, tie, and slacks, though he hadn't closed the door to the possibility; the suit jacket was draped over the back of one of the living room chairs.

Seeing Alice there, stunned, brings a flutter of warmth to his chest and steals his breath away to the point where he forgets the act he was going to put on and he's got this ridiculous, loving smile plastered on his face.

"Who else would it be for? But that's only if you like it—otherwise, I have no idea who's responsible for this."