TWO REALITIES COLLIDE IN LOVE

CHAPTER 5

Lucy’s POV

The taxi ride to my father’s studio felt unreal. The city lights blurred across the rainy window, and my stomach felt tight with fear. When I stepped out in front of the plain old building called Studio X, the air felt heavy and strange.

I didn’t take the elevator. I ran up the stairs, two steps at a time. My chest burned, and the hospital I’d just left already felt far away.

Inside, the studio was too quiet. It was usually loud and full of energy, but tonight it felt dead. Blue light from a few computer screens filled the room. The drawing tablets were off. Near the kitchen, two staff members stood close together, looking shocked and scared.

James Porter rushed toward me. He looked terrified.

“Lucy, thank God you’re here,” he said, gripping my arm. His hands were shaking. “I don’t know what to do. The cameras show him going into his office at 7 p.m. He never came out. No one is seen leaving.”

I took a breath and tried to stay calm. “James, people don’t just disappear. Is there another exit?”

“No,” he whispered. “Everything’s locked. The windows are sealed. It makes no sense. It’s like he just vanished.”

I walked to the heavy wooden door at the back. My dad’s office. The place where he created everything. The lock was broken from where they forced it open.

I opened the door.

The room was a mess. Not normal mess, this looked like something bad happened. Books were thrown everywhere. A broken bottle of scotch leaked onto torn sketches.

Then I saw the desk.

The big screen was still on, lighting the room. On it was one image from the comic: a rooftop scene. A man lying there, not moving.

My voice came out quiet.

“Is this… the last scene?”

James stepped into the office behind me. His voice was shaky.

“Yes,” he said. “He was obsessed. For weeks. He kept saying the story had to end with his own death. He called it his life’s wish. Said that as long as he was alive, he’d never be free.”

I moved closer to the screen. I’d seen bad things before as a doctor, but this felt different. Wrong.

I scrolled down.

The next drawing showed a figure in a hood, standing in the dark. A knife caught the moonlight. I couldn’t see the face.

“Who’s the killer?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” James said. “He never finished the last part. He said he’d make it up as he went. He was laughing, Lucy. Yesterday. Smiling while he drew it.”

Cold ran down my back. My dad had always been obsessed with his main character. Too obsessed. But this sounded worse.

I looked around the desk and saw a picture pinned to the board. A dark painting of a father destroying his own child. On the back, my dad had written, messy and sharp:

Rather than be destroyed, I will destroy.

“James,” I said, turning to him. “Call the police. Now. This isn’t normal. He wasn’t okay.”

James nodded and rushed to grab his phone.

I stayed where I was, staring at the screen. The image almost felt alive.

I reached out to turn the monitor off.

But it didn’t feel like glass.

It felt cold. Like moving water.

A shock ran up my arm. I tried to pull back, but I couldn’t move.

“James!” I tried to shout, but no sound came out.

The screen twisted and glitched.

And then a hand, real, pale, and stained dark, pushed out from the screen toward me.

I couldn’t speak. I just stared as he pulled. My arm started sliding into the screen, like it was being eaten. The image swallowed my skin. It felt tight and crushing, like I was being forced through a hole that was too small. I couldn’t breathe.

Everything else faded away. The office. The smell of alcohol. James’s voice in the distance. All of it turned into loud noise, then nothing.

The last thing I saw was the painting on the wall. Saturn’s eyes looked wide and scared, like he was watching me disappear.

Then everything went dark.

And then, I was falling.

It didn’t feel like falling.

It felt like I was being pulled apart.

Then the pressure stopped.

First, I felt rain.

Then cold. Deep, sharp cold that soaked through my clothes and made my skin feel numb.

I sucked in air, coughing. It tasted strange, like metal. My face was pressed against something rough and hard. When I opened my eyes, rain hit them so hard it hurt.

“James?” I called out. My voice sounded weak in the wind. “Dad?”

No answer.

Just a loud, steady thrum-thrum-thrum from a huge machine nearby.

I slowly pushed myself up. My hands slipped on the wet ground. My heart jumped when I realized where I was.

I was on a rooftop.

Below me, the city stretched out in bright lights, glowing in the rain.

I turned around, my heart pounding, and saw him.

A man was lying a few feet away, flat on the wet roof. Even through the rain, I could tell how bad it was. He was wearing a white shirt, now soaked dark.

For a second, everything else disappeared. The screen. The hand. How impossible this all was.

I saw one thing only: someone hurt. Someone who needed help.

I rushed over, slipping a little on the wet ground. I dropped to my knees and felt for his neck, trying to find a pulse.

His skin was cold and pale. His pulse was weak and shaky. That scared me.

I looked at his face and froze.

He was dying.

Blood was coming from his side. He was barely breathing.

“Hey,” I said softly. My hands were shaking. “Can you hear me?”

His eyes stayed closed.

“I don’t have anything,” I said out loud, panic creeping in. “I’m a doctor, and I have nothing.”

I checked my pockets. My phone was cracked and dead. All I had was a roll of medical tape from work.

That was it.

I looked at the wound. It was deep.

“Stay with me,” I said, forcing my voice to stay firm. I pulled off my lab coat, folded it thick, and pressed it hard against his side, trying to stop the bleeding.