Samantha
Time was a blur.
The days smeared together like paint in water—soft edges, muffled sounds, white walls that never changed.
They gave her pills with every meal. Sometimes blue, sometimes white. Always followed by a nurse's smile and the same hollow line:
"It's just to help you rest."
But Samantha wasn't tired.
She was trapped.
Each time she swallowed them, her thoughts slowed. The world tilted. Her body felt too soft, her mind too quiet.
Sometimes she forgot her own name for a moment. Sometimes she couldn't remember what she'd been thinking just seconds before.
But deep under the fog, she clung to fragments.
The pendant.
The light.
The voice in the trees.
Ron.
She wrote his name on a napkin once. By the time she blinked, it was gone—taken or thrown out. Maybe both.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been here.
A few days? A week?
No clocks. No phones. No contact.
Just smiles and pills.
And silence.
Except sometimes… in the quiet, beneath the drugged haze, she could feel it again.
Warmth in her chest.
Like something inside her refused to sleep.
---
Ron
The hooded figure didn't come back.
Ron waited for hours the next night—lights off, window open, adrenaline rushing—but nothing happened.
By the second day, he stopped sleeping entirely. His eyes stung, his voice rasped from lack of use. Even coffee stopped helping.
He searched. He hunted.
He scoured the internet for psychiatric facilities nearby. Tried keywords: youth mental health, private institution, Samantha Brooke.
Nothing solid.
But he wasn't giving up.
That figure—whatever it was—was real. Which meant Sam was right. About everything.
And if she was right, then he was wasting time sitting still.
He tried everything he could think of to bring the figure back.
He sat in the dark and whispered Sam's name.
Lit a candle and held the pendant photo in his hand.
Played the exact same sound frequency she once used.
Still—nothing.
It didn't want him, apparently.
Or maybe… it needed her.
He stared at the ceiling that night, tears burning behind his eyes, whispering her name like a prayer.
"Samantha. Where are you?"
---
The Dream
It was dark.
Not shadowy—complete. Like someone had erased the world and left only breath and heartbeat behind.
Samantha turned in place.
She wasn't wearing her facility uniform. She was barefoot, dressed in the clothes from the day she'd been taken. Her hands trembled.
"Hello?" she called.
Her voice echoed unnaturally, stretching into infinity.
Then—
Footsteps.
Not loud. Just… there.
She turned again—and saw him.
"Ron?"
He blinked, frozen mid-step. "Sam?"
Her heart leapt. She ran to him—but the distance didn't shrink. Her feet moved, but the space stretched endlessly between them.
Still, he smiled.
Relief broke across his face like sunlight.
"You're okay," he whispered.
"You found me," she breathed.
They reached for each other—
And then, the darkness cracked.
A golden seam split the space between them, glowing faintly—like the vision she once saw in the pendant.
Then—
They both woke up.