Echoes

Are you really you?

Since you returned, you've felt this... strange presence at your back. You never feel alone. Almost like you can feel the weight of your own shadow. Your senses are somewhat smothered, as if the rime from that fateful winter has yet to shake off, and a gentle fog rolls through your mind that can make it hard to think. Surely, just side-effects of returning from the dead... right?

---

One morning, you're sitting across Sadiya, the both of you sipping coffee on the porch of the sole cafe in town, both enjoying the snow bundled up in several layers. The day has begun to burn off, and Kattua falls quiet around you both as you talk, sunlight replaced by lamplight that fills the countryside with a dull orange haze.

As you look over at her, you notice her coffee is really more milk than coffee. Immediately, she can sense your disapproving stare.

"Listen, I can drink my bitter bean water however I want, okay? I like it sweet! I have NO clue how you drink it like that, it just tastes like dirt..." she protests, pre-emptively.

"Heh heh... I didn't say anything," you lilt quietly, briefly hiding your smug face behind your mug as you take a deep drink. She rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at you.

"Oh, sure. You definitely said something with your eyes! Hey, just because they're all white now doesn't mean I can't still see where you're looking, you know." She smiles, waving a hand. "Speaking of, um... how are things going? Are you still doing alright? I can't imagine this has all been easy on you, y'know."

You shrug. "I don't feel... too much different. Just little things. It's... nothing to worry about, really," you say, eager to dismiss her concerns. It feels like the more you think about it, the stronger it gets...

You look up, finding yourself in a completely different place. A long and wide gash of clearing through the forest, latticed with the shadows of looming transmission towers in moonlight that seems to come from a completely empty sky. You look across from yourself and see, sitting where Sadiya was, the vaguest silhouette of a human form. It sits there, shaking, looking back at you with ghostly white eyes.

You open your mouth, trying to speak, but nothing comes out.

The figure bursts into hysterical tears, curling into itself and hiding its gaze from you in its hands.

Suddenly, you startle awake, sitting up in your bed. You look around frantically, drenched in sweat and completely out of breath. Fumbling around for your glasses, you find them atop a note on your bedside table. Putting them on, you see that the note reads:

"Hey! You passed out on me... I thought you looked pretty tired!!!!!

It's fine! You just have to do me a favor and get coffee with me again soon, OK?

<3 Sadiya"

You stare at the note for a moment in silence, a deep sorrow embedding itself in your heart.

---

One day, you wake up and find yourself standing in your kitchen. As reality washes back in around you, the first sense you notice is a dull throbbing in the back of your head and a sharp ringing in your ears. Your chest feels tight. Shaking off your deep slumber, you look down and see yourself standing on unsteady legs. As soon as you're aware of them, they threaten to give out from under you, and you're left clinging to the kitchen counter for dear life.

You gasp for breath, as if you'd just surfaced from underwater, and look around at the mess you've made. The cabinets and drawers are strewn open haphazardly, the shattered remains of plates and glasses dig into your soles, and almost every drawer has been gutted in a desperate scramble with their contents cast across the floor. What... happened?

You stumble out of the glass, tears stinging your eyes as if you'd been crying for minutes now, and they just won't stop coming. You try to catch your breath, but it's as if something is pulling the air out of your lungs. You reach out for your first aid kit, trying to dance over the glass while contending with bleary eyes and weak legs, eventually managing to sweep it off of the surface of your icebox. You get as far as you can on your trembling legs before you collapse to the floor in an unmarred corner of the room, quietly sobbing while trying to bandage your feet.

You look through the window behind your sink, and see the glow of the moon, just beginning to rise behind a curtain of snow clouds.

When you go back to bed, you manage to get back to sleep, resolving to deal with the mess in the morning. Just as you begin to fall asleep, a quiet buzz seeps into your awareness...

---

One night, you can't sleep. You squirm fitfully in your bed, twisting the sheets and covers around you tighter and tighter, trying to find just the right position. Cutting through the steady rhythm of spring rain hammering your window, a low buzz rattles your skull. It almost sounds as if someone is speaking to you, but their voice is distant and muffled. The harder the rain gets, the more it creeps into your awareness, until it consumes your senses whole.

You jolt awake! You look around your room, but all that greets you is a weak shadow of what once was, your bed merely floating in the void. Your windows are still present, cutting a stark shape against the otherwise formless space, but the sky is a sickly green and a wall of churning storm clouds swallows the horizon. You push the covers off, pawing around in the darkness surrounding your bed in hopes of finding your wheelchair...

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry, please... please don't be angry with me..." begs your own voice.

You look up, eyes instantly locking with those of a figure standing in your doorframe. Its eyes look just like yours. Your blood runs cold.

"We have to... it's the price we have to pay... this is a miracle, isn't it? They were so cruel to you..." calls the voice, sweet, sympathetic and somber. It takes a few unsteady steps towards you, struggling to maintain its balance. Like the rest of the room, its form is distorted and unclear, save for its piercing gaze.

"I... I don't know what you're talking about... leave me alone!" you say, backing up against the headboard. You can't see it, but somehow you sense a mournful frown on its face. It drapes itself over the foot of your bed, planting its hands on either side of your legs, and the bed itself begins to sink into the darkness like the rest of the room around you.

Aside from the ominous scene outside your windows, you and the figure are all that remains.

"Don't you hate them...? For what they did to you? Please... please..."

Before you can question it any further, it lurches over you, enshrouding your body with its own. You thrash and scream as loud as you can, fighting not against the weight of the figure but the weight of your own limbs. It spills over you until you can barely move, a brutal chill sinking into your bones as you sob in terror, completely face-to-face with it. Alone.

"I promise... I promise, once it's over... please..." it says.

...

You wake up. All at once, you are back to reality, the stinging cold of night rain jarring you into lucidity. You are in your raincoat, a makeshift mask woven messily into its hood with black cord. Reaching up, you feel at the mask, but the first touch slices your finger open on something jagged and sharp--it takes all your strength not to yelp in pain.

You glance back and forth, blinking the rest of the stupor away. You are tucked into a Kattua alleyway, sitting against a building, hunched over. You move to drag yourself up the brick wall, but in the process you notice the weight of something in your hands...

Your switchblade, blade down.

You tuck it away, and stagger hurriedly out of the alleyway, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes again. Looking back, you find that the building you had been resting against is Nate's house. What brought you here...?

No, no. You have to go before someone sees you. You dart off into the night--your watch reads four in the morning--weaving between homes in hopes of not being spotted as you make it back to your own. With your weak legs, it's a laborious and painful affair, but you don't want to risk having to come up with an explanation for the mask. You duck into your home, slamming the door behind you and hastily prying your raincoat off. At least no one was outside with the storm still battering the town.

Finally, you get a look at the mask. It's... broken glass, embedded into and somehow fused with rough-looking wood. Around the eyeholes, pieces of glass are arranged almost like the petals of a flower.

What happened to you...?