Twenty

There’s magic there. And madness.

Every soul is a portion of both. I fear the balance in mine is shifting. I’ve seen enough. Had enough. I just want to sleep. I can feel a tear on my cheek, but I’m not crying. How? How…

He’s in front of me, it seems an eternity since he gave me that folder with a new life. Their life. Not mine. God, they told me I’d build the country that we dreamed of. And now? I meet shadows in the ruins of a war. A war I started.

He was talking, I wasn’t listening. It’d all be in that folder, another face that I was to follow. Or seduce. Or kill. I wanted to take my gun and eat a bullet. Maybe that would stop the dreams. I had a book about dreams, what they meant, not that I needed it for these ones.

Tess was in my dreams, I wonder where she went? We used to run in that park, eat at that cafe. She painted me once, her brother didn’t approve. She was so good. And now? God knows. Every day I remember the soft light of that world less and less.

I should do it.