“He shoves the papers in my mouth. Makes me eat them. They burn going down. Taste like ash and blood and chemicals. I’m choking but he keeps pushing them in until I swallow. And then I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. The papers are inside me now. Part of me.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Then the water starts. Rising from the ground. Cold. So fucking cold. Hits my ankles, knees, waist, chest, neck. I’mdrowning and I can see her still standing there with him behind her, both of them just watching me drown.”
“Do you drown?”
“I wake up before I do. Gasping. Every time.” I set my mug down. “Then fall back asleep and it starts over. Same dream. Same ending. Until I gave up and came out here to stare at a ring like a totally sane person.”
Alex is quiet for a long moment. That look on her face. The one she gets when she’s reading energy.
“The alley stretching,” she finally says. “That’s the investigation. The more you pursue her, the farther the truth gets. Because Dom made her disappear so completely.”
I nod slowly.
“You can’t reach her because she’s already gone. But she’s still there. Waiting. Still wants to be found.” Alex’s voice gets stronger. “And fur coat guy blocking your path—you can’t get past him because you don’t know who he is yet. Can’t see his face.”
“Okay.”
“Dom making you eat the NDA.” She pauses. Careful. “That’s about internalized silence. It’s not just that you signed it—you’ve consumed it. Swallowed it. Made it part of you. That’s why you can’t speak. The silence isn’t external anymore. It’s you.”
Fuck. She’s right.
Five years of consuming that NDA. Making it who I am. Not just something I signed—something I became. And now when I try to speak, try to report what I heard, my body remembers: this will burn going down. This will choke you.
The NDA didn’t silence me.
I silenced myself.
“And the water,” Alex says. “Dylan, you’re drowning in this secret.”
“I know.”
“But you didn’t drown. You woke up.”
“Because it’s a dream.”
“Or because you still have air. The water hasn’t won yet.” She squeezes my hand. “Though I’ll be honest, that’s some quality nightmare content. Your subconscious is really gunning for that Oscar.”
“My subconscious can fuck right off with its artistic pretensions.”
“Fair.” She picks up the Nine of Swords. Studies it. “Though I wish you were having nice normal anxiety dreams. Like the one where you’re back in high school and forgot you had a test.”
“Or the one where all your teeth fall out.”
“Exactly. Normal terror. Not dreams about drowning in secrets while your boss feeds you your own silence.”
We sit there. Two women in a pre-dawn kitchen. Holding hands across evidence and coffee mugs and tarot cards.
“What do we do?” I finally ask.
Alex pulls out her phone. “We start with what we know.”
Ten
Twenty minutes later,my laptop sits open on the kitchen table with Alex and I crowding around the open screen.
I can feel the obsession over Dahlia building inside of me.
