Return to Rest

The train horn wailed, tearing Adrian from his daze. The steel carriage rattled around him, faces buried in glowing screens, bodies packed together like cattle. He sat rigid, clutching his shoulder where the bite mark still throbbed. Being late for work didn’t matter anymore.

Was that figure in my dream real…?

“Yes.”

The answer came sharp, inside his skull. Adrian yelped before he could stop himself. A few passengers lifted their eyes, staring for a heartbeat, then sank back into the trance of scrolling.

Zombies.

He stepped off into the morning chaos. Nobody looked at anyone else. Nobody cared. At the crossing, he pressed the button and waited. That’s when he noticed him...a man slumped against the wall of a building, mouth slack, drool glistening down his chin.

A young boy poked at the man’s arm out of curiosity and in the next instant the body snapped awake, lunging.

The boy shrieked and fell, his father charging forward. A fist cracked against the addict’s jaw. Then another. Then boots raining down until the broken man howled like an animal.

Adrian stood frozen, watching strangers circle with phones raised, hungry for spectacle, capturing the violence they had ignored only seconds before. The light turned green. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Shit.

He glanced down, it was his landlord. Rent. Unpaid. He killed the call and crossed, weaving into the crowd.

By the time Adrian reached work, the shouting began.

“Do you see how many customers we have today?! What kind of idiot sleeps in on a Sunday?!”

Adrian’s boss was red-faced, spit flying, his voice cutting through the café like a whip. Adrian’s throat burned with words he wouldn’t say.

If only I could do to him what that father did to the homeless man.

“I don’t need you here anymore!” the man roared. “You’re a mess, a disgrace to the place. You’re fired!”

Adrian stared, unflinching. Relief spread through him like warmth. No more mornings. No more alarms. He walked out into the daylight, almost smiling.

But the phone rang again.

This time, he answered.

“Adrian, listen. I’ve given you three weeks. Pay the rent by tonight, or you’re out tomorrow morning. I can’t help you anymore.”

*Click*

Adrian pulled his wallet from his pocket. Empty. His chest tightened.

What am I doing… When did my life become this…?

The streets pressed in around him. He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to go anywhere. Then the voice whispered.

“Over there.”

Pain flared in his shoulder. Adrian winced, gripping the mark.

Where?

His gaze slid across the road. A storefront he hadn’t noticed before. Wedged between a laundromat and a shuttered pharmacy stood a crooked antique shop. The glass was murky, warped with dust and age. Inside, shadows clung to shelves stacked with forgotten relics, clocks, and shapes he couldn’t quite name.

It shouldn’t have been there. He walked this street every day. And yet, now it was waiting for him.

Adrian stepped off the curb, weaving through traffic without thinking. His hand throbbed against the bite, guiding him.

The door creaked as he pushed it open. A dry chime jingled above him, brittle as bone.

Warm air spilled out, thick with the scent of old wood and iron.

The voice curled in his ear, velvet and inevitable.

“Come inside.”

The door closed behind him with a hollow thud.

Adrian stood in the antique shop’s gloom. The air was stale, shelves sagging with relics and rusted instruments whose uses had been long forgotten whilst thick spiderwebs draped the corners like lace, quivering faintly as though disturbed by unseen movement.

Then the smell hit him.

Not dust. Not mold. Something sharper. Metallic. Sweet, sickly. Blood. It clung to the back of his throat, coating his tongue. He gagged, steadying himself against a shelf where a skull peered through the clutter.

His skin crawled. He should have turned back. Yet the air pressed on him like a weight, a presence heavy and expectant. Watching. Waiting.

A flicker caught his eye.

At the far end of the shop, beyond a curtain of hanging beads, a single room yawned open. The light inside was dim, one naked bulb swinging faintly above a chair. The chair was velvet, faded and torn, its wood splintering. Beneath it, carved into the broken floorboards, was a pentagram, faint but glistening, as if freshly etched.

The bulb buzzed. The chair seemed to breathe.

Adrian’s pulse quickened, but his feet carried him forward.

“Sit.”

The voice filled his head, silky, undeniable.

He didn’t even realize he had obeyed until he felt the chair under him, cool and heavy. The moment he settled, the air snapped shut around him. His wrists jerked! The armrests gripped him back, invisible chains biting into his skin. His chest rose in panic.

I'm losing myself...

The floor groaned. From beneath, a chant rose...low, guttural, inhuman. The walls seemed to tremble with it. The bite mark on his shoulder blazed hot, searing his nerves, syncing to the rhythm.

The bulb above him flickered violently. The pentagram under his feet began to glow, faint red lines bleeding through the cracks in the wood.

Adrian’s breath caught. Tears welled unbidden. The sound of the chanting clawed at his chest, prying open everything he had buried. His failures, his loneliness, his life collapsing under debt and disdain.

It’s all gone... My job... My home... Me...

The thought broke him. His throat constricted, his body trembling as sobs burst free. His face twisted, hot tears streaming down, dripping to the glowing floor below.

“Do not weep,” the voice murmured. 

“You are not lost. You are chosen. To rest… to dream… to return.”

Candles flared to life around the room, flames hissing into existence without a match. Their light danced , shadows stretching long and monstrous across the walls.

Adrian tried to rise, but the chair held him tighter, his arms bound in unseen chains. The chanting surged, the glow beneath him swallowing the room.

His eyelids grew heavy. The world tilted, spun and dissolved as he lost conciousness.

"Rest."

The word pulsed in his skull, the final thread binding him. His last tear slipped free as the shop fell away into black.

When his eyes opened again, he was no longer there.

He lay in a wide bed draped with silken sheets, soft as clouds against his bare skin. The air was warm, perfumed with lavender and honey. A ceiling of carved marble loomed high above, gilded and glowing faintly.

And beside him...no, on him...was a woman.

Her body pressed close, bare against his chest, her long hair spilling like liquid gold across his shoulder. Her breath was soft, steady, her hand resting gently over his heart. Even in sleep, her face was so perfect it hurt to look at her. Lips full, lashes trembling faintly, beauty so sharp it burned his eyes with longing.

Adrian’s breath caught, his heart pounding. The ache of his old world, the blood and chains, was gone. Here, he felt… alive. Desired. Needed.

He swallowed hard, his throat dry.

This is real. It has to be.

Her fingers curled tighter against him in her sleep, as if she would never let him go.