Six: Wren

The next time I come up for air, it’s like surfacing through a layer of ice. The sweat’s gone cold on my skin, and every joint in my body aches like I’ve been on the losing side of a bar fight. My mouth is dry, tongue glued to the roof, and there’s a taste in the back of my throat like old pennies and wildfire.

I try to focus, but the room won’t hold still. The ceiling’s warped, and the stains have multiplied, crawling across the plaster like the beginnings of mold. I blink hard, trying to reset, and the whole thing shifts—my apartment ceiling strips itself away in ribbons, revealing a lattice of tree limbs, black and raw against a winter sky. They’re so real I can see the frost biting along the branches, the delicate cradles of snow balanced on each knot and joint.

The bed beneath me dissolves to something softer, but not comfort-soft—earth-soft. There’s a loamy coolness seeping up, and when I dig my fingers into the sheet, I feel moss and rot and the sharpness of dead needles. The apartment air, always stale, is gone, replaced by the living, animal exhale of forest. It’s everywhere, clinging to the walls, pooling in the corners like fog.

I close my eyes and count to ten, trying to claw back to the real world. But it’s useless—the new one has already taken over. When I open my eyes, the trees overhead are moving, the moon bobbing between them, impossibly low and wide. It’s the color of bone, swollen until it barely fits between the branches, and it’s so bright it floods the room with a milky, predatory light.

The fever is still there, licking at the edges of my skull, but it’s changed. The pain is secondary to a restless, jittering energy—like there’s a battery inside my chest, overcharged and ready to burst. My heart pounds, arrhythmic, like it’s trying to teach itself a new song.

I sit up, fighting the vertigo, and the movement sends the whole forest spinning. I’m half-expecting to see my shitty dresser or the broken lamp, but they’re gone—swallowed by the woods. My bandaged arm throbs, but even that feels…muted. Not numb, just background noise.

There’s a shimmer in the trees—silver eyes, watching. They’re perfectly still, unblinking, set deep in the shadows. The gaze isn’t hostile, but it isn’t friendly either. It’s curious, like it’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.

I want to laugh, but my jaw is locked. Instead, I ball my good hand into a fist and drive my nails into the heel of my palm, grounding myself in pain. It’s a trick Dana taught me, a way to override panic attacks. I keep digging until I feel the sting, then look down to see crescent moons of blood rising under my skin. It should hurt more. It doesn’t.

“Get a grip,” I mutter, or try to, but my voice comes out alien, stretched thin and flat. Not quite my voice at all.

In the distance—maybe three floors down, or maybe half a mile through the forest—a TV blares. Someone’s watching a game show, and the canned laughter bleeds through the illusion, yanking me back for a second. I cling to it, desperate for something normal. But the moment I stop paying attention, the trees close in again, closer and thicker, and the TV sound fades to static.

The fever ramps up. I start shivering, not from cold but from the pressure building in my body. It’s in my bones, in my teeth. Every cell wants to explode. I grip the moss and it squishes between my fingers, damp and alive. I can feel each needle, each granule of dirt, every hair-fine rootlet trying to wind around my hand.

The silver eyes multiply, blinking into existence all around me. They shift when I move, tracking every breath. The scent of pine and wet fur is overpowering now—so strong it crowds out every other thought.

The moon outside my window is a monster, ballooning until it’s all I can see. The glass warps around it, the frame bowing inward as if the light has weight. It presses against the pane, bleeding into the room until everything is dipped in cold silver. The light isn’t warm or comforting. It’s wild, clinical, an x-ray that lays me bare. It burns through the bandages, through my skin, down to the marrow.

My heart pounds so hard it hurts. For a second, I swear I can feel a second pulse under it—deeper, steadier, not mine but somehow inside me. It pushes against my chest until I can’t breathe, and then something in me gives way, like an old scar popping open.

The pain is exquisite. My back arches, and I feel every vertebra like it’s being counted by something sharp. I try to scream, but the sound never makes it out. The world tightens around me, trees crowding close, the moon swallowing the sky, the silver eyes converging until there’s nothing left but the light.

For a moment, I’m suspended. My body isn’t mine; I’m floating outside it, looking down at the mess of sweat and blood and bandage. Then the floor rushes up to meet me, and I’m back in my bed, tangled in the sheets, the ceiling once again a patchwork of ugly plaster. The taste of earth lingers in my mouth, and the echoes of that other heartbeat slowly fade.

I drag in a breath and hold it, waiting to see what happens next. The fever is breaking, I can feel it, but the strangeness doesn’t go away. It lingers, just under the surface, waiting for another chance to break through.

I stare at my hands, expecting them to look different. They don’t. But I know something’s changed, even if I can’t name it yet.

Outside, the moon hangs heavy, silver and implacable, watching me through the warped glass.

I watch back, unwilling to look away first.