I turned my head and there she was-- big dark eyes and all-- as real as every ache in my body. 

     "Hello Nin." 

     "Hi."
     I groaned as I sat up, the mere act of motion was painful. 

     I reached for my cigarettes but my jacket had been removed from my person-- as had my shoes.

     "Amateurs," I muttered.

     "What was that?" Nin asked.

     "Grave robbers got the wrong brother." 

     "Do you want your cigarettes?"

     "It's unsettling how well you know me already." 

     "What's there to know?" Nin picked up the pack from some place off the floor and handed it to me, "So far you only do two things: speak and smoke. You don't even take time to breathe and apparently you don't sleep. You just keep going until you faint." 

     "How long was I out for?"

     "Uh three-- four days."

     I lit my cigarette with lifted brow.

     "Doubtful. You're wearing the same clothes."

     "I didn't want to leave your side." 

     "I was unconscious. You could've changed here." 

     "For all I knew you were faking it until I got my clothes off."

     "I was not faking it. I've seen you without clothes on."

     "All the more reason for you to want to do so again." 

     "For someone who is so self loathing-- you certainly have a high opinion of yourself." 

     "A few hours."

     "What?"

     "You've been out for a few hours. I took your jacket off because I didn't want you to be uncomfortable." 

     "I've slept hugging an 8x10 cabinet with a pedal board digging into my lower back. I know discomfort. Wait, was I asleep or passed out-- doesn't matter. I was wearing my jacket then, too."

     I grew dizzy again and slumped down into the pillows. I closed my eyes against the world. 

     I felt Nin slide the cigarette from my fingers then move from her chair to a seated position on the bed. 

     "I dreamt that I made you up," I murmured.

     "Was it a relief?" She touched a damp cloth to my face.

     "Almost as much as you might think-- Ian was there. I had to choose whether to stay asleep and with him or to wake up and make you real--." 

     "You're all romance..." 

     "I would've had to wake up some time."

     "Or delirious." 

     She removed the cloth from my face. 

     "I didn't know it was a dream-- I hate those dreams. The ones where you don't know that you are asleep. It's cruel." 

     "I know what you mean," She replied, darkly. 

     "Do you have those dreams often?"

     "Every night." 

     "'Bout what happened?" 

     "Sort of. The dreams are either so horrific that they bring me to tears or so boring and emotionless that waking up from them makes me cry." 

     "Ah."

     "Ah what?"

     "I was wrong."

     "About?" 

     "I assumed that you woke up crying because you were upset to be alive. I didn't know that it was the dreams."

     "It's always the dreams. It's dreams that shake you from sleep."

     "The dreams that shake you from sleep...," I mimicked her in a whisper. 

     The blankets felt heavy like lead and caused me to become acutely aware of the weight of my body. The heat that enveloped me was constricting and instantaneously I became grateful to Nin for having taken my jacket.

     "Thank you."

     I felt her breath against my temple but I hadn't felt the shift of her having leaned in. Her lips touched lightly against the skin below where she breathed. It tickled almost like an itch but instead of jerking away from the annoyance, I craned my head towards it in the hopes that it would create more pressure and cease the irritation. She pulled back slightly, leaving me with the exact same sensation. I hated the feel. It caused me impatience-- a great anxiety that made me want to crawl out from my skin or kill myself in a rash act because I couldn't endure the stress that this act caused me.

     I lifted a hand to her hair and attempted to guide her with my fingertips just behind her ear at the nape of her neck. My fingers could recall how thick each strand was by the way that they rested between them and even this seemed to be something else that was causing me too much weight.

     Her lips drew to the inner corner of my eyelid-- up against the bridge of my nose. Her lips were sticky--too sticky-- and left behind what felt like a thin film on the thin skin. 

     "Nin?" 

     She set her mouth at mine-- but it was not like a kiss. It was as though her lips were asleep or dead-- completely relaxed and merely fallen at mine. It did not even have to be my mouth; it could have been the floor. She dropped her mouth to my mouth in the same way that she had dropped to the cemetery ground the night before. 

     Our teeth clicked. I tried to lift her from me but didn't have the strength. 

     She tasted of cake icing-- not terrible, like an after taste as if it was what she had eaten, but thick like the soft flesh inside her mouth was made of the stuff. 

     I attempted to coax her lips into moving-- kissing and reciprocating-- with no avail. She was as irritating as she had been at the start. 

Nin craved death. It lingered in her actions. Laziness bore more energy than this-- her breath was a funeral procession that slowly marched between my parted lips. I felt the mourning in my tissue cells. This was where the terrible ache had come from-- this was the source of the weight. I had become the earth-- the ground. The heels of polished black dress shoes uprooted my green grass in clumps and sank into the dense brown mud but the feet were never lifted; only shuffled forward in sorrow. 

     The sky existed above where my body did not. My skin was a fine line called 'the horizon' but 'the horizon' only existed when one looked on at it from any distance. It never seemed to exist directly below where one stood. The sky was an infinite gray blanket that covered all without warmth. A small box-- a box much smaller than I-- a casket! was slowly lowered down into a hole that had been gouged out of me. 

     I locked my jaw shut against it. 

     My person was uncontrollably shifted-- a shaking-- a quake. 

     The mourners scrambled. From this I was born the son of fury. I tore my eyes opened; enraged.

     Nin was gone. She had been no where in the room.

     I wiped foam from the corner of my mouth with my thumb knuckle. 

     My mother jostled the bed as she pulled the sheets taut over myself and the mattress. 

     "Drink your tea--," she muttered it as though she were upset with me. Worried to the point of agitation, "It'll help you feel better."

     "Where's Nin?" The question came out as a dry cough. 

     "Spendin' the night at Sylvie's." 

     There was a pain at my right hip. The source of the discomfort was Ian's phone. I freed it from my pocket and checked the time. 

     1:47 in the morning. 

     I set the phone on the night table then picked up the tea mug and brought it to my lips. The liquid was room temperature and the bag was disgustingly limp. 

     "Why aren't you in bed?" I asked mum. 

     "On my way there now," She replied. 

     Then she exited the room and closed the door behind her.