My fingers tighten on the doorknob. The resulting numbness in my fingers is a too-familiar ache. The scratch on the knob slices shallowly into my finger. “And what sort of mental construct did you build?”

I do not know. I have no control over the form it takes. I supplied the memories I want you to see, and your mind has built a home for them.

I want to laugh, but I can’t quite manage it. My mind has built a home for the memories of an alien ship that creates monsters but is somehow also both lonely and vulnerable. Where else would my brain put someone like that, except here?

I start to twist the doorknob. A compulsion twists at me and I try to shake it off. This is a mental construct, a dream, a hallucination. Whatever the room beyond is, it isn’t real. The door frame isn’t real. I don’t have to tap it.

Except I do. I close my eyes and lean my head against the frame with a quiet thunk. Why do I have to be like this? I’m already dying. Is whatever’s beyond this door really more dangerous than what’s already happened to me?

It doesn’t matter. I still have to tap it. So I do: three times on the left, five on the right, at shoulder height, giving up everything I spent grueling months of therapy working for. Giving up a little more ground, receding a little further into my fears. Just like the coward I used to be. The coward I still am.

I twist the doorknob.

It’s locked.

I frown, then sigh. With my left hand, I dip into my pants pocket and a cool sliver of metal falls against my injured palm. My clothing may be somehow different, but my key is exactly where I left it. It feels strange—the teeth aren’t quite right, this isn’t the key to my loft—but it slides into the door without a hitch.

I turn the key. Click: the lock disengages. I pull the key out, hold it gingerly so it doesn’t touch my wounded palm, and nudge the door.

It opens with a creak. Yellow light spills out, carving a bright rectangle through the shadows that stretch out behind me.

A pile of dirty plates spread out across the Formica counter. Four mismatched chairs are pulled up to the table. The centerpiece is a potted fern. Ugly gray and pink floral curtains hang limply over the window that overlooks the front yard. I hate those curtains. I hate this window. This is where I always stood when I waited for Mom to come home, my little nose pressed against the glass as I scanned the darkness for someone who often didn’t show until long after Ty had pried me off and sent me, protesting, to bed.