145. “Come back...”

145. “Come back...”
Isabelle Nash

Everything is dark.
Not the kind of darkness that frightens, but the type that swallows. That cradles. That seems to whisper it’s better to stay—that there’s no more pain, no more fear, no more demands. Here, there’s no weight. No sound. No direction. Time doesn’t exist, and the body is just a distant memory, like clothes no longer worn.
At first, I thought I was dreaming. Then, I had died. But even death, I imagine, would have some shape. Some transition. Here, there’s nothing. No ground, no wind, no boundaries. There’s a void that accepts me without question—and because of that, it scares me more than any scream.
I try to remember my name.
I think I was someone. I think I've lived something. But it’s like trying to remember the face of someone who passed me too quickly on the street—there’s an outline, but everything slips away the next second. I cling to fragments. A muffled sound. A touch. The taste of iron in my mouth. The sound of gunfire? Maybe. A shipping container. The cold. The sound of a breath that wasn’t mine.
Simon.
The name comes like a blade. And it brings with it the disgust, the fear, the memory of the wrong touch, of hot breath on the back of my neck, of a gun against my head. I try to run, but I have no legs. I try to scream, but there’s no throat. I try to wake, but there’s nowhere to go back to.
But… something changes.
It’s small. Fragile. But it’s here. A sound. A whisper. A name spoken with a kind of urgency that cuts through this darkness like a needle piercing the void. I don’t understand what it is. But it reaches me. I feel it on my skin, like someone’s trying to pull me back to something I’ve forgotten.
“If you’re in there, listen to me…”
The voice.
That voice.
FELIX.
The name doesn’t come fully, but its sound explodes inside me like a warm memory—a heat rising from my chest. And for the first time, I feel something different. Weight. Gravity. My body, once absent, now exists somewhere. I can feel the fingers of my hands. They’re heavy. My eyelids… too. Something is moving near my face. Light? It’s diffused. It hurts. But it’s there.
Wake up.
That’s what he’s asking.
But waking up means remembering. And remembering… hurts.
Even so, his presence feels like a rope in the middle of the sea. An anchor dropped into a deep well. A hand holding mine, even if I can’t quite hold it back yet.
I want to rise.
But I still can’t.
Something touches me.
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s real or part of this formless dream. But it’s warm. Just a single point. Maybe damp. Skin against skin. And for some reason, that matters. Because that sensation reminds me I have a body. That it’s still here. And as absurd as it sounds, that scares me.
Being here is easier. There’s no pain. No weight. Here, no one traps me, no one threatens me, no one expects anything. I don’t have to speak or react. I… float. But now, with that touch, with that whispered presence, everything begins to shift. As if every memory I tried to bury is waking up with me. The gun. The container. The fear was sliding down my throat like poison—the sound of his voice. The rage disguised as calm. Simon.
My fingers ache. This isn’t imagination. This is nerve. It’s a muscle. It’s pain. A kind of good pain, if such a thing exists—because it comes with the sign that I’m still alive. But why would anyone pull me out of this? Who would drag me back when the world out there only hurts?
And then that voice comes again.
Closer.
Stronger.
Felix.
The certainty hits me like a blow to the chest.
This isn’t a dream.
It’s him.
And that, more than any touch, any light, any stimulus, is what splits the darkness in two. The memory of his face. The way he looks at me when he says nothing. As if he knows. As if he sees right through me, even when I hide. He’s here. And for some reason I can’t understand, he’s still waiting for me.
I feel something warm in my hand, squeezing tighter. A faint tremor climbs up my arm. But my head is still heavy. My body still doesn’t respond. It’s like trying to swim through concrete, like opening my eyes underwater, through something thick.
But I want to go with him. Because I know he would never say it out loud, not wholly, but he’s afraid. And if he’s worried… then something is seriously wrong.
“Come back,” he said.
I’m trying.
But it’s hard.
It’s like pulling back a veil with broken fingers.
Like relearning how to breathe through smoke.
But his hand is still here.
And I cling to that with everything I have left.
Even if the world on the other side still feels like it’s falling apart.
Time doesn’t exist here. But now, something starts to move. Slowly, uneasily. Like an unwelcome presence invading my hiding place.
Sounds.
First, like ownerless echoes. Too deep. Then, sharper. Something that might be my name, maybe. Or muffled screams beneath water. I don’t know. The sound doesn’t come whole. It bends along the way, cracks, touches me, and disappears. But it comes. Again. And again. Like someone calling out.
The light comes too, not as illumination, but as a tear-a white slash cutting through the darkness of my hiding place. It burns. Instinctively, I try to close my eyes—and that’s when I realize: they’re already closed. Tightly closed. Heavy as stone. But they’re there. They still exist. Just like the sound. Just like the warmth of the hand still holding mine.
It’s unbearable and necessary at the same time. Every new stimulus is like a shovel digging into the soft earth I was buried in. It hurts, but it reveals. It shakes. It shows that there’s still something here—alive, pulsing, trying to come out.
I want to run from it. I swear I do. Because I remember, I remember his hands. His words. The taste of fear in my mouth. Simon. That cold, perverse thing that touched me like it had a right. But now, at the edge of that memory, there’s another voice. Quieter. Firmer. A voice calling me back without promising anything, just wanting me back. And that, just that, makes it all hurt more.
I hear someone say my name more clearly.
“Isabelle.”
The voice cuts through the dark. It’s not a scream. Not panic. It’s a command.
“Can you hear me? Are you here with me?”
I try to respond. Nothing comes out. Not a sound.
My chest tightens. I try to move my fingers again. One. Then another. A spasm. A signal.
More light.
More sound.
More touch.
The world starts to force its way in, and my body—still limp—begins to tremble slightly. As if something inside is saying it’s still possible to return. That someone is still waiting for me.
And it’s in that space—in that almost—that I feel the strangest thing of all.
Tears.
They fall before I even understand.
And then I realize I’m feeling.
Not just remembering.