Making this decision took a lot of thought. The idea of getting help, or just being helped, or not being alone — isn't this what he wanted? But wanting and having are two different things, and he tells himself it's not that he's afraid of the unknown, it's that nobody deserves to be subjected to what goes on when he sleeps. He has secrets he tells himself are important. He tells himself it's considerate. Someone could get hurt.
Someone else could get hurt.
So he does something on the roof, which is where he always goes to do magic, something that feels like the slow building pressure of diving into the deep sea. And after that, no dreams. He could call it a fence, but no, it's a wall around his head, so high it blocks out any sky entirely. It's invisible but still somehow there, somehow solid, and somehow at once both transparent and opaque. On the sides, you can see the imprints of his dream sometimes in the form of graffiti: nonsense words, a dead girl, a painted hole opening to the other side not actually there, a little boy with his face pressed against it, blowing on it and drawing shapes in the fog. They're gone afterwards, like the police come by to paint over them.
This was a few weeks ago.
He keeps odd hours, so it's not unusual for him to already be in the kitchen this early in the morning, having already knocked back half a glass of shitty box wine. It's still nearly dark outside, false dawn turning the sky into a pale grey that washes everything out. He looks up when he hears footsteps through the threshold, blinks bearily, then smiles wryly, like it takes his face a few seconds to keep up with his mind. To be fair, it is the asscrack of dawn. "You too?"
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Someone else could get hurt.
So he does something on the roof, which is where he always goes to do magic, something that feels like the slow building pressure of diving into the deep sea. And after that, no dreams. He could call it a fence, but no, it's a wall around his head, so high it blocks out any sky entirely. It's invisible but still somehow there, somehow solid, and somehow at once both transparent and opaque. On the sides, you can see the imprints of his dream sometimes in the form of graffiti: nonsense words, a dead girl, a painted hole opening to the other side not actually there, a little boy with his face pressed against it, blowing on it and drawing shapes in the fog. They're gone afterwards, like the police come by to paint over them.
This was a few weeks ago.
He keeps odd hours, so it's not unusual for him to already be in the kitchen this early in the morning, having already knocked back half a glass of shitty box wine. It's still nearly dark outside, false dawn turning the sky into a pale grey that washes everything out. He looks up when he hears footsteps through the threshold, blinks bearily, then smiles wryly, like it takes his face a few seconds to keep up with his mind. To be fair, it is the asscrack of dawn. "You too?"