I pummeled the plain floor with my fists and it took the aggression without any reaction.
I feared I would never see my darling Isabella again.
I would never see her smiling face or touch her soft skin.
I eased into a memory of us on the farm, hugging and kissing, exploring each other, uncertain about where our relationship might lead.
Somewhere?
Nowhere?
Nowhere now if I remained trapped in this abyss.
I distracted myself from that haunting idea and conjured the feel of her skin beneath my fingers as I gently stroked her, teased myself with the softness of her lips on mine…
I smiled.
Despite the fear, I realized the truth:
There was no way for anyone to take her from me.
She was a part of me now.
I felt her in my chest with that ceaseless pulsing light.
I would much rather she was out there than stuck in here with me.
At least out there she was free to live her life and be happy.
I didn’t want her trapped in this hell with me.
I opened my eyes and found a pair of white irises staring back.
I flew back and scrabbled across the floor on my hands and feet, on the fringes of the mist threatening to take that haunted face away from me.
I came to a stop.
I recognized that face, that delicious curl of her lips in an unmistakable cheeky grin, and the long hair draped over her shoulders…
It was Isabella.
Her features were perfect, but the colors were off.
She was pure white, hardened, and smooth as if carved from marble.
“Isabella?”
Her expression began to fade.
“No!” I yelled.
I got to my feet and rushed toward her.
I bent down to scoop her up but she broke apart in my arms and disintegrated through my fingers.
“Isabella,” I said. “No… Come back to me.”
But she was gone, merging into the mist once more.
I reached into the mist but it’d already taken her from me.
“Isabella? Where are you? Isabella?”
Wherever I looked, she wasn’t there.
I slowed down and wondered if my subconscious was working against me, torturing me.
Or was I losing my mind?
I had seen her, hadn’t I?
I didn’t only imagine her.
She’d been here, a beautiful statue that mimicked every aspect of my memory of her and—
That was when it struck me…
The expression on her face…
Her eyes shut, her lips pursed…
Leaning forward with keen expectation…
Exactly the way she had looked the first time we kissed.
It was my memory that created her…
The gentle curve of her face and the delicate wisp of her lips.
Exactly the way I recalled.
The memory didn’t exist until I re-created it.
I’d discovered a pathway that should have been there all along.
I focused on that same memory and glared at the mist, commanding it to turn into her beautiful body once more.
The mist swirled and began to turn in on itself, forming a smooth surface like porcelain beneath my fingertips.
Just the way she felt when I touched her.
The stroke of her cheek appeared beneath my fingers, turning solid and yet soft and pliable.
I marveled at it, like a fine sculpture by Ralphael or Michelangelo.
I concentrated and, from a single touch of my finger, the scene burst into life, spreading from that single point, like a ripple on a still pond.
It revealed Isabella first, then the fence behind her, a handful of cows in the field beyond, munching grass and staring morosely at the scene as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
And it had been.
Then.
Not now.
Now, it’d been fashioned by me.
It was the recreation of a real moment in time, a moment I treasured.
The mist filled in the other details, forming a porcelain reenactment of the farm.
It was incredible.
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against Isabella’s.
She responded how I recalled.
No, I thought. Her hands had been on my waist…
And just like that, her hands were there!
I gave myself to the kiss, reliving the moment again like a fine wine.
When I opened my eyes, I found her still there, smiling regally at me.
I ran a hand down her cheek.
I knew the moment wasn’t real, but I could still pretend like it was.
I imagined how many people had gotten trapped in their own moment of perfect happiness like this, dwelling on it every moment of every day for the rest of their lives…
I could feel myself easily succumbing to the same sensation but I pulled away and let the memory disintegrate.
My heart yearned for it to remain in place, but the moment was fleeting, even if the emotions attached to it weren’t.
I summoned another memory, the next one that came to mind.
The mist reformed into a muddy verge on the side of a lake and the headlights of the pick-up—Isabella’s pick-up—illuminated the set like an important scene in a stageplay.
I lay unconscious on the ground with my head in her lap.
She cradled me close.
The scene was much smaller and more intimate than the last, the edges rough and difficult to make out.
Probably because I was mostly unconscious at the time, fading in and out as she nurtured me.
But there was one part clearer than the others.
Her face.
It glowed in the headlamps, similar to the porcelain it was now, glowing like an angel.
“Are you an angel?” I heard myself say.
I blinked at my insight even when I was half-dead or close enough to it to make no difference.
I remembered only scraps of this memory, like pieces in a puzzle that fit themselves together as I watched them play out.
Yes, I thought. This was how the scene played out.
This was how it happened.
I frowned.
But wait…
There was something else…
Something before this moment…
What was it?
Something I had said?
Something I had done?
The rain paused in its descent before reversing up into the sky.
The wind unnaturally fluttered Isabella’s dress.
I spoke, but the words were unintelligible.
Was time running backward?
Then the scene worked forward.
Isabella ran her fingers through my hair soothingly, making me ache to feel her touch again.
“The Shadow!” the injured version of me rasped. “The Shadow! Beware of the Shadow!”
The Shadow?
What did that mean?
I had no idea.
But it was clearly important to me at the time.
This was the
