WITH(OUT)

My eyes widened, but only as much as they could upon first waking up. A curtain must have been pulled back, maybe two, because the rays that found their way in through the patterned gas forced my eyes into a hard squint. My bottom eyelids pinched up by my cheeks, brows furrowed, nose scrunched.

My ears had adjusted slightly to the stillness, a sound so foreign to me, it took a while from it to transition from eerie to tranquil. And eventually, the silence held my anxious bones still. There was a light atmosphere in the room. One so positive, I would've sworn it should have been detrimental to my sanity, or lack thereof. But it wasn't.

It was strange to me. And I couldn't help but yearn to accept it.

And then the full focus of my eyes reeled in to capture my environment.

The sun blared in, illuminating the presence of a clean room. A bedroom taken care of constantly. Cherished. There were no heaps of clothes lined up against the left wall, piling into mountains that met the dresser. And the dresser itself didn't hold an old, broken clock, shell casings, and mold.

Instead, there was a vanity. Untainted and ivory white. Complete with a full mirror and not just surviving shards hanging to splintered pieces of cheap wood. Instead, a myriad of perfumes and makeup lined the surface. Spray bottles organized up by color and brushes by size. A ceramic tree that looked handmade held different gold and silver bracelets and armbands.

I pulled my body up just a bit to sit up and immediately felt an unfathomable level of comfort. A full mattress with smooth, soft sheets under me and warm, vast covers able to wrap around my feet and still reach six feet up to tuck under my chin. I had never encountered such luxury and relief, and yet, it felt oddly familiar to me. Like it hadn’t been my first time in this bed.

Finally sitting upright, I yanked the sheets off of me. I was in nothing but boxer shorts.

And my body was fine.

No knife gash wound on my ribcage from a bar altercation. No four year old burn mark from the barrel of a Sig. No tenderness in my Achilles from taking a wooden bat to the ankle.

I felt fine.

I looked again at the sheets I was holding up, ready for more questions to hit my brain.

Teal. A color I swore I should’ve detested. But somehow, in some weird way, it consoled me. It was brighter than the colors I felt like I was used to–too showy and noticeable for my liking.

But as I noticed it now, I liked it.

"Oliver!" a woman’s voice called.

It came from the other side of the wall and was followed by light footsteps and my panicking. Why did I want to answer to a name that wasn't mine?

I saw the shadow of a figure approaching the door. It was too late to dash to any hiding spot. I only had enough time to glance to the closet on my right and sweep my sight to the left at the locked window.

There was a hand on the handle on the other side of the door.

What was wrong with me? I was usually swift, able to calculate and execute a decision in a split second with little to no warning. But instead I sat on the bed, slumped with my weight digging into the memory foam mattress. Neck propped up by feathered pillows. Bare body under plush sheets.

Finally, the wooden frame turned on its hinges. And walking two silent steps in was a lady. A beautiful lady with brown curls and heart-stopping cinnamon eyes. A simple, silver rope chain slithered down the slope of her neck and rested on her collarbone. A white gold butterfly pendant lulled right above the lace of her pastel green nightgown.

Her pretty pink lips smiled softly–an expression so tender it made me forget my confusion. I no longer felt lost.

"Good. You're finally awake," she said.

And she still looked happy to see me. Like I was meant to be in her life. Like she liked that I was right where I was.

"Violet."

I said the name, but couldn't convince myself I wasn't asking.

Her smile widened.

"Yes Oliver?"

Her voice was flooding with admiration. And her eyes. Those copper eyes piercing through my chest causing my pulse to want to both stop and speed up.

She crawled on the bed, nestling onto my chest. She left no space in between us. Her head on my chest and her legs entwined with mine. Her curls blessed my atmosphere with lush vanilla and a hint of sandalwood. I took the deepest inhale my lungs would permit and wrapped my arms around her. She adjusted herself the slightest bit and exhaled comfortably.

And I didn't move. For the next thirty-six minutes, I watched the steady rise and fall of her back as she breathed slowly. My eyes didn’t leave her. And when she was awake, and those eyes came up and met mine, I laced my fingers in with hers, grasping the tenderness of her soft palm.

At that point, I had completely forgotten that I lost. All that mattered was that what I found would never suffer the same fate as whatever I had left behind.

I wanted to be Oliver, whoever he was. I wanted to be him for Violet. Whoever I was before had no place In Violet’s life. And whoever that was had nothing to offer her. At least as Oliver there was a feeling I could see she felt. One that I had no right to strip away from her. She had done nothing to deserve the type of pain that comes with it.

I squeezed her hand in mine. Her other hand was on my chest.

“You alright?” she asked, her long white nails contrasting against the darkness of my skin.

I didn’t answer. I just squeezed her hand harder in mine and she burrowed her head back into my chest. The tear that had started to form under my right eye was trying to drop too fast. I held my head back, stopping the drop from splashing onto Violet’s cheek.

I took a deep breath and then made the mistake of blinking.

When I opened my eyes, it was still dark. Nothing changed, it was still black.

The stench of both old and fresh blood overpowered the mold and mildew. The mix was excruciating.

The tear finally dropped from my left eye as my vision desperately adjusted to the darkness.

And as it did, I started to recognize. I saw the emergence of a dresser in front of the bed. A pile of clothes to its left. Something scurried under a light pile into a bigger pile.

No...

My eyes acclimated more with the low light levels and clarity brought sorrow.

On the dresser was the barrel of some submachine gun I couldn’t fully make out. Three magazines to a standard handgun were sprung out amongst the table with shotgun shells and glass shards scattered around recklessly.

No, no, no, no, no…

The bed under me creaked and my big toe got caught in a hole when I tried to readjust myself to a less uncomfortable position.

No! No!

My eyes darted left to the shattered, barred, and partially-cardboarded window. I was back. I had never left the room but I was back. I shook my head and my neck began to ache as well as every part of my body that moved in an attempt to push myself up to a straighter position.

After one half-try, I gave up and turned my head back to the depressing, scarred wall to my left. There, my eyes focused in. In the middle of a 12 gauge shotgun hole in the cardboard was the prettiest thing in the scene.

The only pretty thing. A butterfly whose wings were so white, the glare of the moon brought a dazzle to them.

Violet.

My mind went to her necklace. I remembered. I remembered it. But not as a dream? As a memory. She was real. In some way. In what way, I really couldn’t tell. But I could still feel and smell her in my head. Vividly.

Somehow.

The sandalwood and vanilla emitting off her. Her warm breath pushing and retreating on my torso. The way she made my soul want to call out her name. Whatever was happening, I needed to get back to being Oliver. I had been given answers and now I had questions.

And something in me genuinely believed that it would start with catching that butterfly.

I moved slowly, freeing my big toe from the temporary hold of the five-by-four "blanket". Timing. There was too big a gap for me to rip off the covers and dash. It would have plenty of time to fly to its escape. I had to be smarter.

But just as I was about to make my lunge, my ear twitched. I forgot about the insect and dove forward, hitting both the floor and dresser hard. Shells rolled over the edge, raining metal down on me.

I opened a drawer that wasn’t as random as I had thought. Snatching up the Kimber 1911, I took my squatted stance.

An instinct had taken over my mind. I held the firearm up to my sight and pulled the slide back, ensuring that a bullet was ready to glide if necessary. Safety off.

It was too dark. It had to be just past midnight the way the darkness hid any implication of a shadow from under the door frame. The door handle twisted and began to groan on its hinges.

Cre-e-eee-ak!

The door flew open and a man in full army gear burst in.

"John—" the man started, but instincts didn’t delay me this time.

I fired twice.