Dreams
What are dreams, if not the only place left where the dead can still touch you?
A mirror held up to the fractures inside your soul?
A cruel joke from whatever god watches from the dark?
Or simply the things you buried so deep that even sleep refuses to let them stay buried?
For thirty-one nights now, Askra had been dreaming the same dream.
Same stifling room. Same merciless hour. Same slow unraveling of everything he had left.
Tonight the clock read 2:49 when his body began to betray him. His jaw tightened. His fists clenched the thin sheet until his knuckles blanched. In the dream he was already begging himself—Wake up, please, wake up—but the words dissolved before they reached his tongue. His chest rose and fell in shallow, useless gasps. Sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat.
Then the breath came.
Not the warm, living breath of someone who once smiled at him. This was cold, deliberate, like air rising from an open grave. It dragged across the nape of his neck, carrying the faint, impossible scent of sandalwood and his mother's old jasmine oil.
He woke with a violent start.
The village room was silent except for the clock's steady tick. Moonlight sliced through the cracked window, painting silver scars across the mud walls. For one heartbeat everything felt almost ordinary. Then the mattress dipped beside him.
Aunt Juhi was there.
She wore the red sari he had memorized years ago—the one she had worn the day she came to his parents' house for his sister's engagement, the day he had accidentally brushed her hand while serving tea and felt lightning in his veins. Her hair spilled loose over her shoulders, black and shining. Her eyes, soft and knowing, caught the moonlight the way they always had when she teased him about his studies.
"Askra," she whispered, voice velvet and warm. "You look so tired, beta."
His heart cracked open at the sound of that familiar endearment. For a moment the nightmare forgot itself. He almost reached for her, the way a drowning man reaches for the last light on shore. She had been the only softness left after the fire. The only person who still called him by his childhood name. The only one who made the loneliness feel survivable.
The clock clicked to 2:55.
She leaned closer. Her fingers—cool, impossibly cool—traced the line of his jaw. And then the warmth vanished.
Her smile stretched too wide. The skin at the corners of her mouth split with a wet, tearing sound, like silk ripping over bone. Blackness poured into her eyes until they were nothing but two bottomless wells. Her beautiful face began to peel away in thin, curling strips, revealing raw muscle and something darker beneath—charcoal flesh that glistened like wet ash. Her hair lifted, writhing as though each strand had its own hungry life. The jasmine scent curdled into something metallic and spoiled.
She was still Aunt Juhi.
And she was no longer anything human.
A low, distorted laugh crackled from her throat, the sound of a radio drowning in static and broken glass. "You wanted this," the voice hissed, layering his mother's gentle scolding with his father's disappointed sigh. "You wanted me."
She moved faster than thought. One moment she was beside him; the next she was straddling his chest, knees pinning his ribs with crushing weight. Her nails—long, black, curved like hooks—dug into his shoulders. Blood welled instantly.
"Give me pleasure," she crooned, the words warping, multiplying, echoing inside his skull. "Give me what you never gave your mother before she burned."
She lowered her head. Her teeth—red as fresh blood, jagged as shattered pottery—sank into his cheek. Not with pain. With something worse. A slow, sucking absence. He felt memories being pulled out of him: his mother's laugh when she pinched his cheeks, his father teaching him to ride the old bicycle, the secret nights he had lain awake imagining Aunt Juhi's hands instead of his own. Each bite took another piece of who he used to be. He tried to scream. His throat only produced a wet, strangled click.
She ate deeper.
The room filled with the sound of tearing.
Then—nothing.
He woke at five o'clock to the first hesitant birdsong outside. His body was drenched. The sheets clung to him like wet grave-clothes. He tore off his clothes with shaking hands, flung them into the corner, and kicked them until his bare feet bled. Tears streamed down his face, hot and silent.
The clock still ticked on the wall.
He stared at it—the cheap plastic thing he had bought exactly thirty-one days ago with the last of his pocket money, a silly gift for his mother's birthday because she always complained the old one ran slow. He had laughed when he handed it to her. She had hugged him so tightly he could still feel the press of her bangles against his back.
Two weeks later the cylinder exploded while he was away at college. The neighbor's call had come during his physics lecture. By the time he reached the ashes, there was nothing left but blackened walls and that clock, sitting untouched on the only standing shelf, still ticking 2:49.
The police had bagged it as evidence.
The next morning it was back on the table in his uncle's village room, waiting for him.
Askra snatched it now and hurled it against the wall. It bounced, landed face-up, and kept ticking. Of course it did.
"Damn you," he whispered, voice breaking. Then the dam inside him shattered. "Damn you! You took them! You took Ma's laugh, Baba's stories, the smell of her cooking—everything! I was supposed to be there. I should have fixed the cylinder like Baba asked. I should have been home instead of dreaming about her—" His voice cracked on the word. "Why won't you just let me die too? Why keep bringing me back?"
He punched the wall until his knuckles split and blood painted the plaster. Then he slid down, curling into himself on the cold floor, sobbing the way he hadn't allowed himself since the funeral pyre. The village had been kind—his uncle's quiet meals, the distant aunts pressing food into his hands—but none of them understood. None of them knew the clock watched him every night.
He dragged himself to the cracked mirror. Dark circles had carved permanent hollows beneath his eyes. He turned, craning to see his back.
The markings were darker now. A pattern was forming—slow, deliberate lines that looked almost like ancient script, like the kind his grandmother used to draw with rice paste during festivals. Every morning the tattoo grew a little more. Every morning it felt a little more like ownership.
Askra sank onto the edge of the cot, head in his hands. The creature's red teeth still hovered behind his eyelids. The taste of his own stolen memories still coated his tongue.
Outside, the sun rose over the fields. Inside, the clock kept its patient rhythm.
2:49 would come again.
And Askra would be waiting—alone with his guilt, his grief, and the only woman he had ever wanted, now wearing the face of his worst nightmare.
Askra stumbled into the tiny bathroom, the wooden door creaking behind him like a warning. Even here, away from the bed, the cold breath still ghosted across his neck. His skin crawled as if invisible fingers were tracing the dark markings on his back. That face—the thing wearing Aunt Juhi's skin—refused to leave him. The memory of her red, jagged teeth and the spoiled-sandalwood stench made bile rise in his throat. He doubled over the sink and retched, nothing coming up but dry heaves and the taste of fear.
He turned the shower on full. Cold water hammered down, shocking his overheated skin. For a few blessed minutes he stood motionless, letting the stream wash away the invisible filth—the sweat, the phantom blood, the lingering violation of the dream. His shoulders sagged. A fragile sliver of peace settled over him, thin as morning mist.
But peace never lasted. Not anymore.
He dressed quickly and walked to the local tea stall for breakfast, forcing down two parathas and a glass of chai that tasted like ash. His wallet felt painfully light when he paid. The monthly stipend his uncle sent was nearly gone again. How was he supposed to survive on so little when everything else had already been taken?
That noon, the thought of staying inside the quiet house felt unbearable. Every day he hid there—watching the old television with its fuzzy channels or drifting into uneasy naps. Today the walls pressed too close, echoing with the tick of the clock. He needed air. Real air.
He wandered toward the Senha family's jungle, the dense stretch of trees that supplied most of the village's fresh fruits and vegetables. The path was familiar, shaded and quiet. But today something felt wrong.
Under a banyan tree by the roadside lay a man.
He wasn't from the village. That much was obvious from the filthy, threadbare suit and trousers that looked as if they hadn't been washed in years. The fabric hung off his gaunt frame like grave clothes. Most people would have dismissed him as just another beggar. But Askra's eyes locked onto the man's exposed forearm.
A tattoo.
Dark, swirling lines—almost identical to the markings slowly carving themselves into his own back.
His heart stuttered. *A curse tattoo? Is he… like me?*
The urge to approach was overwhelming, a desperate hunger for answers. Yet something held him back. The man's stillness felt too deliberate, too watchful.
Askra turned toward the forest path instead.
That was when the feeling hit him—like eyes boring into the space between his shoulder blades. He glanced down the road.
There, standing far ahead where the trees thickened, was the same man. His posture had changed completely. No longer slumped in sleep, he stood tall, shoulders squared, radiating a quiet, intimate threat. One wrong step closer and Askra knew he would not walk away.
He whipped his head back toward the banyan tree. The spot was empty.
*How? How did he move so fast?*
Askra took one shaky step backward.
The man was suddenly right in front of him.
Close enough to smell the sour, unwashed stench rolling off his clothes. His eyes were unnaturally wide, pupils dilated into black pits. A slow, knowing smile spread across his cracked lips.
Before Askra could react, the man's hand shot out and seized his wrist, fingers pressing hard against the pulse like he was reading something hidden beneath the skin.
Askra stared. The man's eyes grew even larger, bulging grotesquely. Then the laughter erupted—loud, wild, unhinged.
"Hahaha… hahaha… hahaha!"
The sound drilled into Askra's skull, echoing the distorted radio laughter from his nightly visitor.
"What's going on?" Askra whispered, voice trembling.
The man's grin widened, revealing yellowed teeth. "Boy… you're the lucky one, I see."
"Lucky? How?" Askra's voice cracked.
"Hahaha! Obviously—because you met *me*."
Askra's mind reeled. "Why? Why am I lucky to meet you?"
The man leaned in, breath hot and foul. "Because I know how to stop the dream. Every night. That nightmare. Want to know how?"
Askra's knees nearly buckled. A month of sleepless terror, of waking drenched and broken, of watching pieces of himself disappear with every bite from that creature's mouth. He grabbed the man's filthy sleeve with both hands.
"Please… tell me the truth. Do you really know how to make it stop? I'll do anything. Anything."
The man studied him, smile softening into something almost gentle—except it wasn't. It was wrong. Terribly wrong.
"It's simple," he said softly. "Just die in real life."
Askra froze. "Wh… what?"
"You heard me." The smile never wavered. "The only way to end the curse is to end your life."
The words landed like a blade between his ribs. Askra yanked his hand back as if burned and stumbled away, then broke into a full, desperate run toward the village.
Behind him the laughter chased like a living thing.
"Hahaha! Run all you want, boy! You can't escape Him! He is the god! You've been chosen! You're lucky! You can't run from Him!"
The voice stayed right at his heels no matter how fast he sprinted, as if the man were floating just behind his shoulder. Askra didn't dare look back. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs shook, slamming through the door of his uncle's house, bolting it shut, then racing to close every window and side door with trembling hands.
He pressed his ear to the wooden door, heart hammering. The umbrella from the corner became a pathetic weapon clutched in white-knuckled fingers. *If that man comes… if he comes…*
Silence.
Then—
Askra jolted upright on the sofa, gasping.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
His chest heaved. Sweat soaked his shirt. He staggered to the table, poured a glass of water, and downed it in one frantic gulp.
"It was… just another nightmare," he whispered, voice raw. "Even in the afternoon now. Fuck… can't I have even one peaceful moment?"
Frustration, fear, and a deep, crushing sorrow crashed over him at once. He hadn't died in the dream, but the terror lingered like poison in his blood. He tried to recall the man's face clearly, but it blurred and slipped away—like the dream itself was protecting its secrets, or erasing them to keep him trapped.
He sank back onto the sofa, head in his hands. The clock on the wall ticked steadily.
Outside, the afternoon sun filtered through the trees. Inside, the markings on his back itched and burned, as if something beneath his skin was still growing, still claiming him.
The god had spoken.
And Askra was running out of places to hide.