I don't sleep anymore.
Every time I close my eyes, the keys start clicking somewhere, not loudly, but enough to make me think someone else is awake with me. Sometimes it's the laptop. Other times, it's just the echo of my heartbeat pretending to be typing.
I tell myself I'll rest when the words stop. But they never do.
At night, the air feels different, heavier, like the whole apartment is breathing with me. I can hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, the wind pressing against the windows, the creak of the old wooden floorboards expanding in the cold. Every sound has his rhythm now. Kane's rhythm.
Once, around 3 a.m., I saw him.Not clearly. Just a shape outside my window, half-hidden by the streetlight. Too tall, too still. I blinked, and he was gone, but the condensation on the glass looked like the outline of a handprint, a fresh one.
That was the first time I whispered to the dark, "What do you want from me?"
The dark didn't answer, but the screen did.It glowed awake, even though I hadn't touched it.
A single sentence appeared in the open document:
"You, awake, is how I live."
I shut the laptop, threw it to the floor. But when I opened it again, stupidly, inevitably, the same words were still there, pulsing. The cursor blinked like a heartbeat.
Now I sit up most nights, watching that blinking light, waiting for the next line to appear.I drink coffee until my hands shake. I read old drafts I no longer recognize. Sometimes I hear his voice reading them aloud, low and calm, the way he used to read when we edited together late at night.
I can't tell if he's haunting me or helping me finish.I can't tell if there's a difference anymore.
Morning doesn't mean safety. It just means I'll see him again, not clearly, not enough to touch, but enough to know. His reflection in the kettle, his outline in the window glass, his name spelled out in condensation.
I haven't slept in four days.And still, I can hear him breathing somewhere in the dark, slow, steady, patient.Waiting for me to close my eyes so he can keep writing.