Sleep. It weighs her down, muddles her thoughts. She can’t let it drag her under. If she falls asleep now, she’ll die.
She can feel the creature salivating in the shadows, waiting for her to tumble into its toothy maw. It’s hungry and wants to feed.
Sleep. It sings of peace, promises solace and renewal even as it threatens obliteration. The world tilts as she turns her head. She can sense the creature in every corner, hiding just beyond the range of her perception, an ambassador from the underworld who will steal her life the moment she departs from the waking world.
But her eyes are heavy. So heavy. Like tiny iron curtains, closing over the final act of her life.
Consciousness gutters like a dying flame.
She can hear its voice.
You are mine.
Yes, she thinks, too drowsy to resist. I am yours. And she finds herself drifting toward the dark, drifting toward death, heedless of the annihilation that awaits.
Come to me.
She closes her eyes.
You are mine.
A cold embrace. Then darkness.
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“Mommy loves you very much.” She bent down to kiss his forehead, then walked back to the doorway, where she paused for a moment before turning off the light and closing the door.
Jerome stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows change shape. Too young to form cohesive thoughts, all he could do was feel the lingering love of Mommy like a warm blanket as he drifted to sleep.
For a moment, he teetered on the edge of the waking world. Then he plummeted and all was dark.
* * *
Jerome woke on a bed of straw. He was not an infant but a man, elderly and gray, with an off-white beard that stuck out of his face like a clump of weeds. It was here, in the space between time, that he could remember who he was once again.
In a far off realm, in his true body, he lay dying in a hospital bed. But a woman, a young doctor he’d been sure he knew from somewhere but whose face he couldn’t place, had given him a special gift.
“A life for every dream,” she whispered so only he could hear.
He asked her what she meant, but she only shushed him and told him to go back to sleep.
She whispered something else, a baritone rumble that swallowed the world in a primordial language he felt more than understood. He closed his eyes. When he awoke, he found himself here, on this very same bed of straw.
Now, every time he closed his eyes, he woke someplace new. He would be a different age, exist in a different year. Each step on his sojourn through the cosmos was a flicker, a snapshot in time. Yet a billion snapshots later he was still drifting, with only these brief interludes in his bed of hay to remember who he was.
Someday, it would all come to an end, for a dying breath could only be stretched so far and so thin. But for now he would linger, unsure if what he’d been given was a gift or a curse.
Who would he be the next time? Jerome lay down and closed his eyes.
