Learning How to Bend

When I clicked, my surroundings stayed visible. That was how I knew I was dreaming. I stood before my door, but it was not the door to my current apartment but my old one. I immediately knew where I was, and I suspected I knew what was coming, too. With a shaking hand, I turned the key in the lock and opened the door. I closed the door behind me, staying facing it with my hand on the doorknob. My heart started pounding rapidly in my chest as I kept my eyes toward the wooden door.

"Where have you been?"

My hand tightened on the doorknob.

"Out with that other boy of yours?"

The thing about my dreams was that they combined the past and the present. Marcus had asked this of me before. In the past, I was dating no one else. In the present, though, Thaddeus held a big piece of my heart, and I trusted him to protect it. This was my first time admitting that fact, even if it was in a nightmare. I said nothing.

"You should listen to me when I'm talking to you." His words sounded slurred.

"I don't want to listen," I said. "This is a dream. You're not real."

"I am real."

"No. No, you're not." I was trying to convince myself of that, but my voice was shaky with unsureness.

"I don't want you seeing that boy anymore, you hear? You think he cares about you? You think he could care about someone like you? You're blind. You tell yourself you're independent, but you're not. You need him. You need Joe. You need Katherine. You can't do anything by yourself."

"You think there's weakness in that?" I finally turned toward him and clicked. He was sitting on the couch, hands intertwined in a relaxed manner in his lap. I knew better, though. He was ready to pounce at a moment's notice. "Living life alone is no way to live."

"That's what you deserve, though," he said. "Just look at your past. Look at what you've done."

"Joe and Kat know my past. Joe was there for most of it. You were there for part of it, too, and you wrecked some of it."

"Thaddeus doesn't, though." I did not like how Marcus said his name. "Thaddeus would leave you so fast if he knew how much of a weakling you really are."

"If I were a 'weakling,' I never would've broke it off with you," I said.

"You ran away, Liliana. You ran away."

"What choice did I have?" I did not know to which occurrence he was referring. I ran from him a few times.

"You had a choice."

"No. I didn't."

"You could have stayed with me!"

His voice rose. So did he. He started creeping toward me, and I pressed myself against the door. I turned my face to the side, and I felt his warm breath against the skin of my neck. He touched my neck, fingers resting over my thumping artery. He leaned forward. First his lips traced my skin, replaced by his tongue. I desperately tried not to gag.

"But you didn't. You left."

I said nothing.

His hand lightly moved up my front to my neck, fingers clasping around it but not squeezing. "It'd be so easy to squeeze the life out of you right now."

"Then do it," I said. I knew the trend by this point. If he tried to kill me, I would wake up. It was what happened every time, either with these Marcus nightmares or my other ones. "Finish what you started."