Abby's POV
The voices had started three days ago.
Or was it four? Abby couldn't remember anymore. Time had become slippery, like water running through her fingers-there one moment, gone the next, leaving only dampness behind.
She sat on the porch of the house they'd claimed, the wood beneath her worn smooth by decades of feet that were no longer here. Her hands rested in her lap, motionless, while Ellis moved around inside. She could hear him-the shuffle of his feet, the quiet clatter of him trying to find something resembling breakfast in their dwindling supplies.
Kill them.
The voice whispered from somewhere behind her left ear. Not loud. Never loud. Just persistent, like a leak in a pipe that dripped and dripped until the sound became part of the silence.
Abby didn't turn around. There was nothing to see. She'd learned that on day two.
They're not real. None of this is real.
Her fingers twitched. Just once. A muscle spasm, nothing more. That's what she told herself.
The door opened behind her, and Ellis stepped out carrying two tin cups. The coffee inside was more brown water than actual coffee, but it was hot, and heat was something.
"Morning, Mom." His voice carried that careful brightness people used when they were pretending everything was fine. When they were lying to themselves as much as to you.
Abby turned her head slowly, mechanically, and looked at her son. Twenty-three years old. Marine like her, though he'd never deployed. Strong jaw, his father's eyes, her stubbornness wrapped in his bones.
He's not your son. He's part of the dream.
"Morning," Abby said. Her voice sounded flat even to her own ears, like she was reading from a script written by someone who'd forgotten what emotion sounded like.
Ellis sat beside her, pressing one cup into her hands. The warmth seeped into her palms, real and solid and grounding. For a moment-just a moment-the voices quieted.
"You sleep okay?" he asked.
"Fine."
"Mom-"
"I'm fine, Ellis."
The lie tasted like ash. But what else could she say? That she'd spent the night staring at the ceiling while voices told her the town wasn't real, that none of them were real, that if she just ended it all, they'd wake up somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere that made sense?
That she'd counted her heartbeats to drown out the whispers, and even that hadn't worked?
Ellis's jaw tightened. She recognized that look- the one that said he wanted to push but didn't know how. The one that said he was watching her slip away and couldn't figure out how to hold on.
"Dad's going back out today," Ellis said finally. "Into the forest. He thinks he found something yesterday."
Abby nodded. Boyd. Her husband. The man who'd built a life with her, who'd weathered deployments and trauma and the slow grind of building something normal after years of wars and deployment. The man who was now disappearing into trees every day, searching for answers that didn't exist, while she sat here and listened to voices that shouldn't.
He's not real, either. None of them are.
"Good," Abby heard herself say. "That's good."
Ellis studied her face, and she knew what he saw. The blankness. The hollow eyes. The woman who looked like his mother but moved like a mannequin someone had forgotten to animate properly.
"Mom, please. Talk to me." His voice cracked, just a little. "Tell me what's going on. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together. That's what we do, right? We're soldiers. We adapt. We overcom-"
"There's nothing to figure out." The words came automatically, smooth as glass. "I'm just tired, baby. That's all. Just need some time to adjust."
The lie sat between them like a third person. Ellis didn't believe it, she could see that in the way his hands clenched around his cup, but he let it stand because what else could he do?
Kill them all. Wake them up. Set them free.
Abby took a sip of the not-coffee and said nothing.
…
…
Movement caught her eye. Two figures emerging from the forest, small and smaller, picking their way between the trees with the careful exhaustion of people who'd been walking too long.
Levi and Ariana were their names.
Abby watched them approach the town, watched the way the girl's hand found the boy's, the way he leaned slightly toward her like a plant bending toward light. Young. Stupid. In love in a place where love was just another thing that would get you killed. Or not, a whisper replied.
They're not real. Just dreams. Kill them and they'll thank you.
"They went into the forest," Ellis said quietly, following her gaze. "This morning. With that Victor guy."
"Stupid," Abby said. The word came out harder than she intended.
"Yeah." Ellis shifted beside her. "But they came back. Maybe they found something."
Nothing comes back. Not really. Everything here is already dead. They just don't know it yet.
Abby watched Levi and Ariana disappear into one of the houses, the one with the family that had taken the boy in. The Hispanic couple. Miguel and Elena, she thought their names were. Good people. Kind people.
Not real. None of them are real. You're the only real one. You have to save them.
Her fingers tightened around the cup until the metal bit into her palms.
"Mom?" Ellis's hand found her shoulder, gentle, worried. "You okay?"
Abby blinked. Forced her fingers to relax. Turned to her son and shaped her mouth into something approximating a smile.
"I'm fine," she said.
And the voices laughed.
Levi's POV
The walk back had been quieter than the walk there.
Levi's mind was still churning through what the boy in white had said, through the implications and possibilities and the terrible certainty that they'd been warned away for a reason. The people of the town will die. Not might. Will. Like it was already decided, already set in motion, just waiting for them to trigger it.
But when? And how? And what were they supposed to do with a warning that vague?
"You're thinking too loud," Ariana said beside him. Her hand was still in his, had been since they'd left the bottle tree behind. At first, it was simply the excuse of making sure the other didn't trip. Then it was Ariana being scared of the forest.
But in the end, they just gave up on the excuse. "I can practically hear your brain grinding."
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just... maybe share some of those thoughts? Before they eat you alive?"
Levi glanced at her. She looked tired; they both were, but there was something steady in her eyes. Something that said she could handle whatever he threw at her.
"Later," he promised. "When we're somewhere safe. When I can think straight."
"Safe doesn't exist here."
"Then somewhere safer."
She smiled at that, small and sad. "Deal."
They reached Miguel and Elena's house just as the sun hit its peak. The door opened before they could knock, Elena's face appearing in the gap, worry and relief warring across her features.
"You're back," she breathed. Then, louder, over her shoulder: "Miguel! They're back!"
The door swung wider, and suddenly Levi was being ushered inside, Ariana swept up in her mother's arms, while Miguel's hand landed heavy and warm on Levi's shoulder.
"You look terrible," Miguel said, not unkindly.
"Feel worse," Levi admitted.
"Then you eat. You rest. Then you tell us what happened."
It wasn't a request. Levi found himself nodding, too tired to argue, too grateful for the simple certainty of being told what to do.
Lunch was simple, beans and rice, bread that was starting to go stale, water that tasted faintly metallic but was clean. Levi ate mechanically at first, not tasting it, his mind still in the forest. But then Elena placed her hand over his, stilling the movement of his fork.
"Eat slower, mijo," she said softly. "The food isn't going anywhere."
The word, mijo, my son, did something to Levi's chest. Made it tight and warm and painful all at once. He didn't like people to use words that they didn't mean. Because words are a powerful thing.
But Elena meant it, and something in him just gave up. The word son had been absent from his life for so long, he'd forgotten what it felt like to hear it.
"Sorry," he managed.
"Don't apologize." Elena squeezed his hand once, then released it. "Just breathe. You're home now."
Home.
The word shouldn't have fit. This house wasn't his. This family wasn't his. This nightmare town was the furthest thing from home imaginable.
But sitting here, with Elena watching him with that mother's concern, with Miguel's quiet presence across the table, with Ariana beside him radiating exhausted relief.
It felt closer to home than anything had in a very long time.
The afternoon passed in a blur of small domesticities that felt surreal in their normalcy. Miguel showed Levi how to patch some holes in the walls, even though he knew how to. But he kept quiet, wanting to spend time with the man.
Meanwhile, Elena taught Ariana how to make the beans stretch further by adding more water and spices to trick the taste buds into thinking there was more substance than there was. Though there was something definitely going on there, as the mother had a knowing/teasing smile on her face as Ariana tried her best not to look back at her, blushing.
Levi found himself working alongside Miguel, their hands moving in tandem, passing tools without speaking. The older man didn't press for details about the forest, didn't demand explanations. He just worked, solid and steady, and somehow that was exactly what Levi needed.
"You're good with your hands," Miguel observed at one point, watching Levi secure a board. "You do this kind of work before?"
"Carpentry," Levi said. "And blacksmithing. I had a friend, Dean, we ran a restoration company together. Fixed up old houses."
"Had?"
Levi's hands stilled. "Still have. Just... not here, of course."
Miguel nodded slowly. "You miss him."
"He's the closest thing to a brother."
"That's good." Miguel passed him another nail. "Missing people means you have people worth missing. That's more than a lot of folks can say."
They worked in silence after that, but it was comfortable now. The kind of silence that didn't need filling.
Dinner was quieter than lunch. They were all tired, worn down by the weight of another day survived in a place that didn't want them to survive. But there was something peaceful in the quiet, something almost gentle.
Elena served the food, more beans, more rice, but this time with strips of dried meat that she'd been saving. A luxury, here. A sign that they were worth the expense.
"Eat," she said, and this time it was directed at all of them, mother to children, taking care of her own.
Levi ate. Tasted it this time. Let the warmth of the food settle into his bones alongside the warmth of being cared for.
Across the table, Miguel watched him with quiet assessment, the way fathers do when they're measuring whether someone is worthy of their daughter's attention. Levi met his eyes, but looked away as something dark whispered to him. It wasn't a voice or something from the town. It was his doubts and insecurities.
One of the comments from his viral video shot back at him, and his expression turned grim. But he agreed, who'd want a man who'd have to stand on a stool just to kiss the woman? He peeked a glance at Ariana, peacefully eating from her plate, talking with her mother just to fill the void.
She's weird.
He thought and went back to eating quietly. Though Ariana, sitting next to him, would interrupt once in a while when she noticed his empty plate, she shared some of hers, no matter how much he insisted otherwise.
And then, the room would brighten up with arguments between him and her, one saying no, that he'd had enough, and her saying what he had was not enough. Then the parents would join, and Levi would lose the argument.
After dinner, Elena insisted on checking Levi's hands and rips, but everything had already healed up in matter of less than a week. There were scars left on Levi's hands, but that was it.
Levi looked at her, really looked. Saw the gray in her hair, the lines around her eyes, the strength in her hands that came from years of holding her family together through storms he couldn't imagine.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "For everything. For taking me in, for feeding me, for-" His voice caught. "For treating me like family when I'm just some stranger who fell into your lives."
Elena's hand cupped his cheek, warm and steady. "You stopped being a stranger the moment you walked through that door, mijo. You're ours now. Whether you like it or not."
The words broke something in Levi. Something that had been holding tight for too long. His eyes burned, and he blinked hard, trying to keep it together.
Elena smiled, knowing and gentle. "It's okay to need people," she said. "It's okay to let yourself be loved."
She patted his cheek once, then stood and moved toward the kitchen, leaving Levi sitting there with his bandaged hands and his breaking heart and the terrible, wonderful knowledge that he'd found something precious in this nightmare.
And that made it so much worse.
Because precious things, in nightmares, get taken away.
That's why they call it a nightmare.
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AN:
Another chapter! I've been hit with inspiration, and so I've been writing for a couple of days now, and I forgot to upload a chapter lol. At this point, I'm writing more for myself to find out what happens rather than for you guys.
I just zone out during my writing process, picturing the story like a movie and me as the audience. It's an amazing feeling and one I've been missing for a while.
I've got about 7 chapters in stock because of it. So, here's a challenge for you guys!
If we hit 20 powerstones in the next 24 hours, I will upload all seven chapters, INCLUDING the ones I've written by then. In other words, I will empty ALL my stored chapters for you.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed reading so far.