The fog be­hind your eyes does not suf­fice

To hide the se­cret which I hold so dear.

I can­not let you speak a word aloud

Or even whis­per in your mind’s own ear.

The only se­crets that were ever kept

were those se­crets that were never made.

Con­ceal this…

You re­ally don’t have the time.

So many things to do…

You should be asleep.

You should sleep, do work, do some other work, and then go some­where, and do more work. You are booked solid through next week, and you should at least be do­ing some of that.

But…

Their ten­drils of shadow snake over you, twist­ing, turn­ing, grab­bing, stretch­ing.

The room is stark bright, but these en­ti­ties, what­ever they are, ab­sorb it all.

Arms of shadow hold your hands tight; two more, your legs. You hang in midair, slowly…

You can’t take the power–it’s too much!

You col­lapse to the ground, glow­ing an eerie light, of uniden­ti­fi­able color.

It’s not quite a pain… it’s some­thing else en­tirely. A rip­ping, as if your body is tear­ing it­self limb-from-limb–but ei­ther you…

You call out for help, but there is no an­swer.

It’s a rit­ual, for you. You do it every time it’s quiet. Every time you are alone. Every time you have time to think. Every time you have time to feel.

You don’t know what you need help with. You don’t know…

“He’s wak­ing–his eyes!”

They all scram­ble around the bed, hold­ing their breaths in an­tic­i­pa­tion. The boy in the bed twitches, and again and again.

“Do you think he’ll still think–” “Hush! No way to know un­til–” “Silly dreams he has–” “The de­tec­tive–”…

They say pa­tience is a virtue, but they’re wrong.

If you were pa­tient, you’d have taken an air­plane for the sec­ond time in a week, to travel to Hawaii, to visit The Li­brary once again.

Thank­fully, you are any­thing but pa­tient.

You have no idea what…

You turn the key in the lock and step in­side.

The win­dow opens with a touch, and the wispy cur­tains, so out of place in such a room, flut­ter gen­tly in the breeze.

You al­ways liked such thin, light cur­tains. Cin­e­matic, yet some­how…

They aren’t cur­tains,…

The plan took sec­onds to ex­e­cute. 59 sec­onds.

It was planned for 58. All things con­sid­ered, not too bad.

The process of plan­ning took much longer still. Not dozens of times as long; not hun­dreds. There are over four­teen hun­dred min­utes in a day,…

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

There she was, walk­ing down the street, hold­ing thou­sands of dol­lars of valu­able elec­tronic… well, you don’t know ex­actly what it was. Stuff.

What if it started rain­ing?

No sooner said than done. She yells a…