The shape moves again, and I wipe the water from my eyes and spin, ready to cast Isla down to hell if I have to. But before I can even move to set her on fire, the recently warmed water turns icy and sputters out of the shower head. Dark, brackish water pools around my feet and I shout in surprise and duck out from the stream as a swarm of bees emerges from the shower drain. I stumble back, losing my footing and falling hard to the tile, my heart racing.

When I look back up, the bees are gone. There’s no movement at the corner of my eye. The water is clear and warm again, like the seawater was never there.

I’ve never been a crier, but as I sit, sore and scared on the floor of my shower, the overwhelming urge to sob washes over me.

It hasn’t always been like this. It used to be just nightmares. Unsettling dreams, strange memories, occasional headaches with odd figures flickering at the corners. Then it was a vision once a month, or doing double takes as things shifted around me. But now there’s no division. These hauntings have bled into my life so much that I’m at a point where I can no longer tell what is real and what is nightmare.

I just want it to stop. Fuck all of this.

I rush through my shower and get out quickly, scrubbing too hard at my body with the towel because sometimes the sudden pain of reality helps to ground me. I barely bother drying my curls; no matter what I do, it will dry into an untidy, scruffy mess, so what’s the point?

When I dress, I pull out several extra changes of clothes, shove them into my rucksack, and then head to the kitchen.

Isla is awake and standing at my counter, currently in the process of folding an entire piece of toast in half in order to properly fit it in her mouth. She looks disgusted, but I can’t imagine why. I’m the one who should be horrified by what I’m witnessing.

“You have no food,” she scolds, her mouth full of bread. “How do you live like this?”

“I’m leaving the country soon,” I respond, deliberately avoiding looking at her as I edge toward my coffee maker. It appears to be the one thing in this kitchen she hasn’t dug through.

“So your plan is to just not eat until you do?”

“Something like that, aye.”

“Your life is sad, mate,” she grumbles, finishing off my last piece of bread.

She’s not exactly wrong.

My hands go through the calming motions of setting up the coffee maker, and then I turn back to her. My kitchen isn’t big enough for us both to fit comfortably, but Isla doesn’t appear to care. She just stands her ground and stares up at me. All earnest confidence, like it’s not even a possibility things won’t go exactly how she wants.