And vomit stings my throat when I see the picture of Iv and me in red Christmas dresses ten years ago. Except... I sit alone in the portrait. A big smile plastered across my face as I look to the left... where a shadowy spot lies empty in my father’s arms.
“No,” I whisper.
The family picture to the right of it is just as unsettling. So much so that I pull the thing from the wall entirely. Mom and Dad smile bright behind me. I sit in the front with a fresh pink scar across my left cheek that no one ever fully looks at. My head tilts in toward someone... but no one’s there.
The quaking in my hands clenches around the black frame before I release it and slam it to the ground altogether. Glass kicks up around my socks, but I ignore it as I walk away. I fucking can’t sit back and accept that she’s gone.
I won’t let her go through the torment I did. The Sand Man will never hurt her the way he did me. I won’t let him!
The quietness of the house is only disturbed by the shaking of the lamp from my feet storming through my bedroom once more. Instead of preparing for bed, though, I pull my black boots on, tie my long dark hair back, and climb into bed.
There’s an anger to the way I stare up at the ceiling. I used to memorize the shapes and strokes of the mundane white surface above my bed. It’s something I’ve looked at a hundred thousand times.
But tonight, it’s different.
Tonight, I summon a monster.
Chapter Three
Bella
I wish I could say this is the first time I’ve called out to The Ruiner since I left the Kingdom of Carnal. It’s not though. I’ve practiced to speak to him as much as I have to avoid him. He’s a monster...
And he’s my friend.
I think about his name. The way it sounds when I whisper it. The way it crawls across my tongue and leaves anticipation pulsing in my chest.
My lashes close softly against my cheeks.
Lucid dreaming isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to be a real control freak to want to be in control of your life during your wakingand sleepinghours.
I guess I’m that special of a fuck-up that I studied it for years. It has helped me avoid nightmares as much as it has helped me enter them.
The last time I did it was the last night Jonathon came home drunk. He blamed me for not making him dinner.At two in the morning. He blamed me for the guy in our calc class for asking for my number. Even though I smiled and said I had a boyfriend. He just... he blamed me.For everything.
Then he punished me.
And then I called The Ruiner.
I shove out the memory of the last time I ever saw Jonathon screaming from the other side of our bed. Our blue comforter still has a tear in the corner from how hard he hung on before being ripped away.
I don’t think of that. I focus.
“Ruiner,” I whisper in my mind’s eye, my thoughts calming sweetly. A blankness of just inky nothingness fills me. I am empty.
All is silent.
The knocking of my own heart is all that’s heard as I fall into a between space of consciousness and sleep. Minutes tick by unnoticed. Maybe he won’t come. He always comes though. He’s the one thing stable in my life.
God knows I’m not.
I sink into the recess of my sleep even more and think about his name once more with hard concentration this time.
Ruiner.
Ruiner.
Ru—