Nadia
I wake in the middle of the night in a full panic attack. I can’t breathe. The clanging of metal surrounds me. Cigar smoke burns my nostrils.
I claw my way to sitting but don’t know where I am. Not until I hear Flynn’s sleepy voice. “Nadia?”
Flynn.
I’m in his bedroom. Tears prick my eyes as my breath gradually wheezes in.
“Was it the cigar guy?”
I’m so grateful at the matter-of-fact way Flynn asks the question. Bringing it out of the shadows and into the light.
“Yeah.” I recall the pieces of the dream. Cigar man was on top of me, choking me with the choke chain dog leash.
Flynn hands me a bottle of water next to the bed, and I take a drink.
“I thought I was going to die. I wished I was dead.”
“In the dream or when it really happened?”
“I don’t know. Both, I think.”
Flynn
