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Every night, just minutes before he wakes up gasping needlessly for air, like a lifeline from a lifetime he's long forgotten, his own voice lodges in his throat. Blood making its way from whence it came.
And it doesn't sit in the back of his throat like he's about to spit and throw up violently, the way it usually does during a comedown, right after he feels like he's been walking on air. Riding the wind as the flare of the floodlights—seemingly swallowed by an estranged sun—weave blisteringly bright strands into his golden hair. Barely burning him.
This time, when the blood splinters in spindly vines and wraps around his insides, he knows he's not high.
Yet, it's just as visceral.
The warm reach coats his throat like a web, forms into a dustball he can't quite cough out, like a bunch of particles blowing in the wind he somehow breathed in.
It reaches up from his stomach, pulling all the blood he got drunk on with it. Liquid warmth weaves through his throat, up and out until he's spluttering. Viscid, suffocated noises ring shrilly through the mic, and the audience barely moves a muscle. The blood spills like venom as it dribbles out of his mouth and drips, in pitch-black splats, onto the stage.
He keeps choking, wondering when the torment might end, when the vines extracting out of his mouth might finally bleed dry. It reminds him, almost, of the night he was supposed to die.
The dream stretches on, entire eternities having passed since he's been this aware of time.
But then he sees her.
She's standing in front of the still crowd, wearing yellow. Bright and unstained this time. What his mind imagines the dress might've looked like before it became marred with dirt and blood, before it looked as beat up and bruised as she was.
And, she's so young when she looks at him. Those rusted rose gold eyes burrowing into his own undead soul like she wants to see it crack, hear him cry. Just like he did when she died, all teary-eyed, as still as a human when he froze time. He doesn't do either; she laughs anyway. A shrewd and snithing snicker as she shakes her pretty little head.
He wants to tell her to stop, but he can only choke out mere syllables instead.
He knows she finds that funny.
There's a cold distance between them, and he imagines there was once a love that situated itself in that space, never quite full enough to close the gap.
For once, he reaches a hand out to her, wishes he had done it the time she'd had her very own callous crowd watching her. Gawking. Laughing, voices tripping over the very sound, just as she did to him now.
She almost flinches when he nearly succeeds, the ghost of his hand just barely grazing a windy wisp of her hair. But then, he clumsily falls to his knees because suddenly, he's got two left feet.
She calls him that, too. Left-footed Uncle Les, she says. Full-on belly laughing until she's breathless.
Beautiful that way, he thinks, hazily. She's never looked so at rest.
He wants to tell her that, but a single red, wayward tear streams down his face and wakes him up before he can. Something else sticks in his throat now, coming out faint and haggard as it trips past his lips.
Claudia.