“I got you,” he repeated, but this time his voice was clearer, pulling me back from the edge of that dark place.
The graveyard dissolved around me. The black dress faded, the crying mourners disappeared, and suddenly I was back in my apartment. My eyes flew open, and I barely got untangled from the blanket on the floor before my stomach turned.
A violent gag ripped out of me. I scrambled up too fast, nearly slipping over the pillow and sheet twisted around my legs as I stumbled through the dark apartment with one hand clamped over my mouth. My shoulder clipped the wall on the way to the bathroom, but I barely felt it.
The second I reached the sink, bile burned up my throat.
“Fuck,” I choked out between heaves.
Nothing but bitterness and stomach acid came up, but my body kept trying anyway. Tears streamed from my eyes as another gag bent me over the sink hard enough to make my ribs ache.
The smell of funeral flowers still clung to me. Roses. Dirt. Heat baking down on black clothes.
Mama.
My belly cramped again. Cold sweat covered my skin, dampening the oversized shirt I slept in while my heart slammed against my ribs. I turned on the faucet with shaky hands and splashed water over my face, breathing through my mouth while I waited for the nausea to ease up.
It didn’t, and the migraine followed right behind it, mounting behind my eyes like pressure trapped inside my skull with nowhere to go.
I braced both hands against the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. My eyes were red, my skin was shiny with sweat, and I was breathing too hard.
That dream had dragged me somewhere I didn’t want to be, and the worst part was how real it felt. I could still feel Booda holding me together while everything inside me fell apart.
I pressed my palms into my eyes and cursed under my breath. If I stayed inside this apartment any longer, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
I reached for my medication, shook a pill into my hand, swallowed it dry first, then chased it with water from the sinkbefore the pounding behind my eyes got worse. After that, I cranked the shower to the hottest it would go and stepped in. The pressure was weak, but the heat was vicious, and I stood under the water until my breathing slowed and the trembling in my stomach finally settled.
Even then, I still couldn’t shake the memory.
It felt as though part of that graveyard had followed me home.
After washing up, I pulled on a pair of dark denim jeans, a grey hoodie, and my only sneakers before brushing my hair into a ponytail.
On my way out the door, I noticed my keys sitting on the counter in the kitchen. I stared at them for a second. Then I left them there.
I needed air. I needed to move. I needed to walk this off.
The second I crossed the threshold and let the apartment door click behind me, I was hit by the living pulse of the city. The morning air was heavy with humidity and thick with the smell of exhaust and stale grease drifting from the surrounding restaurants.
Someone in apartment 218 was yelling at her kids, and a neighbor a little further down was sitting on their porch, blasting trap music through a dented Bluetooth speaker.
The clang of a dropped glass echoed in the courtyard below. Car alarms sounded in the distance, and tires hissed through rain puddles left from last night’s storms.
The moment I stepped onto the street, I was swept up in the current of people moving toward bus stops and wherever else they needed to be at this hour. My mind was still fractured and trying to piece together the fragments of that dream, so I wasn’t paying much attention to any of them until I turned left down a side street.
It stretched out before me in a state of disrepair that felt familiar, even if I couldn’t place why. Its appearance didn’t determe. I’d been here before. I was comfortable, at least that was what my body told me. But comfortable wasn’t the same as safe. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
Every doorman, every cluster at the bus stops, every old man with his morning cigarette clocked me in a heartbeat and moved on, but I carried it with me anyway.
I passed by a group of kids squatting on their haunches near the curb, arguing over something on a cracked cell phone with two corners taped up. Their voices dipped as I walked by, and one of them made a little cough-laugh, as if to puncture the tension I’d brought with me into their universe.
I kept my chin up and didn’t look their way, but I could feel their curiosity anyway.
The corner store on the next block caught my eye. It was one of those hood stores with the iron bars on the windows and a handwritten sign taped to the glass, advertising cheap liquor and lottery tickets.
I knew that store. My feet slowed as I approached it, and a flutter of recognition twisted in my stomach. Martinez’s. That was the name on the faded awning.
I’d walked through that door with its chiming bell and bought something. Cigars, maybe, or I’d stood outside talking to someone. The specifics dissolved the moment I tried to grasp them.
