Chapter 434

• I sit up, bathed in sweat, crying out in the darkness. I’m breathing rapidly with shallow gasps, my fingers gripping the sheets cruelly. My heart is beating fast and loud in my ears, fear gripping me as I come to and try to focus on my whereabouts. I was dreaming horrid, awful dreams.
• What the hell?
• I can’t even remember exactly. The dream is already starting to fade as my senses become fully alert. I look around, trying to regain calm from the surroundings, which are so different from where I was moments before in my dream, in Chicago, with my mother. We were fighting … no … talking. I remember the snarl of a face close up; I remember there was blood, but it’s hazy. My mother was sobbing, and then she wasn’t; darkness in the shadow enveloped us both and took her from me … lifeless. She fell to the ground at my feet, and I knew she was dead.