Chapter 11. It’s Getting Dark

YANK. Something grabs back.

The force almost pulled his shoulder out of socket.

He fell from the toilet in a graceless crash of knees and elbows—scattering old water cups and snapping the flimsy plastic lid beneath him. But his hand—his left hand—remained caught.

Frozen.

Gripped in something.

From the other side of the window.

Something had grabbed him back.

At first, he couldn’t see what—just the shadow, just the feel of warm skin against his own. Warm. Human.

And then—slowly—he came into view.

A face. His face.

No. Not quite.

This man—this version—was lit in flickers of green and faint candlelight, barely leaking in from the warped outside. He stood halfway out of the brush, as if the vines themselves had pushed him through the veil.

He was young.

That was the first, and most unfair detail.

Short black-brown hair, damp and shagged over his brow. His shirt was loose, soft, flowing linen—like something from a festival. The kind you wear to dance, to spin, to be seen. But the shirt was soaked down the front, clinging to his chest.

Roses grew through the fabric.

Soft, wilting pink roses.

Like something romantic—but wrong.

Blooms of grief. Flowers meant for coffins, not gardens.

His pants were tight, the kind of thing you work in—cut close to show a body once made for effort, for labor. And his skin was golden-brown. Bronzed, like someone who once stood in the sun and laughed too loudly.

But not anymore.

His eyes were pure black.

Not empty.
Not void.
Black.

Dead insect eyes. Pupilless. Reflecting only you.

There was no white to them—only a mirror of ink, cold and too still. They didn’t blink.

Shadow curled around his shoulders like living mist. Wisps like long fingers kept close to his arms, teasing the bones, flickering where the light tried to touch him. As if the shadows loved him—danced with him—claimed him.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was his chest.

Or rather—the absence of it.

Half of this man was simply gone.

Something had eaten him.

Something had torn through his chest like meat, shredded muscle, snapped ribs like twigs—and in place of blood or organs, roses had bloomed.

The roses breathed.

As if each petal was a second chance, wilting and rising again in time with something that no longer lived.

The petals opened like lips.

And behind them, somewhere in the gory cradle of his heart, something moved.

Something smiled.

The man said nothing.
He just stood there.
Holding the hero’s hand through the window.

Not hurting him.

Not pulling harder.

Just… holding.

As if to say:
"There you are."

The hero could feel the pulse through the fingers—real. Human. Alive.

But the black eyes never blinked.

The roses never stopped swaying.

And the breath behind them never stopped smiling.
----

The air outside the window was colder than anything he had ever known.
Not wind, not frost—absence.
A grave’s breath. The kind that seeps into bones and replaces marrow with memory.

Their arms were still joined through the frame, two ghosts pretending to be men.
The corpse’s grip trembled. Not with effort, but with the echo of effort, a memory of strength that no longer belonged to him.

When it spoke, its voice came broken—hoarse and dry as a violin bow dragged across cracked strings.

“I just wanted to go home,” it rasped. “To see her again. To feel again. Why did we die? Why…”

The words splintered there, falling away like ash.
Our hero could feel them crumble in the air, smell the faint perfume of roses crushed underfoot.
A soundless wind pressed through the window, carrying the stench of damp earth and something sweet—too sweet, like overripe fruit left on the altar.

Then came the question. The one no man alive—or dead—should ever answer.

“Why are we still here?”

He felt his heart seize, his own voice trapped somewhere behind his teeth.
When it came out, it was quiet, almost a whisper.
“How long have you been here?”

The corpse smiled—or tried to. It looked more like a wince of pain stretched into habit.
“Thousands of years,” it said. “Forever more.”

The words fell like stones into the silence that followed.
Heavy. Absolute.
Even the vines along the shower seemed to shrink back from them.

For a long time neither moved.
The hero’s body shook, though from cold or fear or grief he could no longer tell.
The corpse, half-eaten and half-blooming, only stared back with those insect-black eyes.

And somehow, impossibly, they both smiled.
A faint, resigned smile—two condemned men sharing a joke only eternity could understand.

“It will be okay,” one of them said, though neither knew which.

And then the weight changed.

A warmth spread into the hero’s palm.
Metal. Smooth. Small.
A key, left behind like a final kindness.

He blinked, and the hand he’d been holding turned light—feather-light.
Petals unfurled where skin had been, soft and pink, drifting away in the cold foreverness until only the faint scent of roses remained.

The corpse was gone.
The vines fell still.
And the window was just a window again.

Only the key remained—warm against his skin, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of something that still remembered the sun.