THRIVE

Elisa

I wake up believing, for just a moment, that everything is the same.

The ceiling above me is unfamiliar, but that doesn’t register right away. What I notice first is the quiet. Not the peaceful kind—this is a held breath, a pause stretched too thin. I lie still, waiting for Ethan’s weight beside me, for the sound of him breathing, for the small movements he always made in his sleep.

Nothing comes.

The memories return carefully, like they don’t want to frighten me all at once.

The road.

The trees.

The sound I can’t stop hearing.

My chest tightens, and when I try to sit up, my body resists, heavy and sluggish. A dull ache settles behind my eyes. The room smells wrong—clean and sharp, like bleach and something metallic I can’t name.

Hospital, I realize distantly.

The word feels unreal, like it belongs to someone else.

A woman notices I’m awake and rises from a chair near the window. She moves slowly, deliberately, like sudden motions might break me.

“You’re safe,” she says, her voice gentle. “You’re in Mapleton General.”

Mapleton.

The name sends a shiver through me, sharp enough that my hands start to shake. I clutch the blanket, grounding myself in the rough fabric.

“Ethan,” I whisper, finally. The word scrapes my throat raw.

Her expression softens. She sits on the edge of the bed and takes my hand without asking. Her palm is warm, steady. Too steady.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

I don’t cry. I don’t scream. I just stare at the wall while the meaning settles slowly, like sediment sinking to the bottom of water.

Dead.

Ethan Walker is dead.

They come in pairs after that—doctors, nurses, police officers. Everyone speaks quietly. Everyone avoids my eyes when they say his name. They tell me what they know, which isn’t much. They tell me what they don’t know, which is more troubling.

“Unknown assailants.”

“An isolated incident.”

“You were lucky.”

Lucky?

The word loops in my head until it loses meaning.

I ask the same question over and over, even when I already know there’s no answer.

“Why did they let me go?”

Each time, the room goes still. Someone clears their throat. Someone offers a version of sympathy that sounds rehearsed.

“We don’t know,” they say.

But I do.

I remember the moment clearly—the sudden release, the way every hand let go of me at once, like touching me had become forbidden. I remember the ground beneath my palms, warm and humming faintly, like it was alive.

That memory scares me more than the blood.

They don’t say I can’t leave Mapleton.

They simply make it very clear that I shouldn’t.

The roads are closed for “maintenance.” The investigation is ongoing. I’m advised to rest, to recover, to stay somewhere comfortable. They’ve already arranged a place for me—of course they have.

The bed-and-breakfast on Oak Street smells like cinnamon and old wood. The owners are kind in the way people are kind when they don’t know what else to do. They ask if I’ve eaten. If I’ve slept. If I need anything.

They don’t ask what I remember.

Everywhere I go, people recognize me. Not with curiosity, but with something closer to reverence. They touch my arm when they pass, brief and gentle, like reassurance—or confirmation.

At night, I lie awake listening to the house settle.

Sleep comes in fragments. When it does, it’s thick with images I don’t understand. Roots curling beneath my skin. A presence so close it feels like breath against my ear. I wake with my heart racing, my body humming with a strange, unfamiliar heat that leaves me ashamed and confused.

Once, I wake certain someone is standing at the foot of my bed.

The room is empty.

Still, I don’t sleep again after that.

The therapist Mapleton assigns me is patient and soft-spoken. She tells me grief can fracture perception. That trauma creates patterns where none exist. That my mind is searching for order in chaos.

Her explanations make sense.

The town does not.

Mapleton feels… attentive. Like it’s watching me without eyes, adjusting itself around my movements. Doors open when I approach. Conversations pause and resume as I pass. I feel simultaneously cared for and contained.

A week after Ethan died, I walk toward the edge of town without meaning to.

The road narrows the same way it did before. Trees lean in, heavy with shadow. My pulse quickens, but my feet keep moving.

The air grows warm. Dense.

I stop where the pavement begins to crack, where the forest thickens into something unreadable. The ground beneath my shoes hums faintly, the vibration settling into my bones.

For the first time since the night Ethan died, my thoughts go quiet.

The fear doesn’t disappear—but it softens, held in place by something steadier. Something patient.

I don’t know how long I stand there.

When I finally turn back, the relief is immediate and crushing, like I’ve escaped something I don’t fully understand yet.

I tell myself it’s shock. Grief. Exhaustion.

But as I walk back toward the safety of streetlights and familiar faces, I can’t shake the feeling that something has noticed me.

And that it is willing to wait.

It starts with the dreams.

At first, I don’t realize that’s what they are. They feel too vivid, too deliberate, like I’m stepping into a place that already exists without me. I fall asleep exhausted and wake up unrested, my body heavy with the residue of something I can’t name.

In the first dream, Ethan is alive.

We’re back in the car, the road stretching endlessly ahead of us, the trees set farther back this time, giving us space to breathe. He’s talking about Oklahoma—about the place we’re supposed to stay, the things we’ll do when we get there. His hand rests on my thigh, warm and familiar, grounding.

I want to tell him to stop the car.

I don’t.

I never do.

When I look at his face, something is wrong. Not visibly. Not enough to justify the dread creeping up my spine. But his eyes don’t quite meet mine. His smile lingers a fraction too long, like it’s being held in place.

“Elisa,” he says, gently.

The road begins to narrow.

I wake up with his name on my lips, my chest aching with the hollow certainty that he’s gone. That he will always be gone. My body curls inward, grief pressing down until it’s hard to breathe.

That’s when I feel it.

Not a touch. Not a voice.

A presence.

It settles into the room quietly, like it’s always been there and I’m only just now aware of it. The air feels thicker, warmer. My pulse slows against my will, responding to something deeper than fear.

I close my eyes and tell myself I’m imagining it.

I don’t sleep again that night.

The second dream is different.

Ethan isn’t there.

I’m standing at the edge of the road where the pavement breaks apart and the forest takes over. The ground beneath my feet is bare earth now, dark and rich, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. I should be afraid, but I’m not.

I feel watched.

The sensation doesn’t come from behind me. It comes from everywhere at once—from the soil, the trees, the air pressing against my skin.

You survived, something seems to say.

The words don’t reach my ears. They bloom inside my chest instead, heavy and intimate, like they’ve been waiting for me to be quiet enough to hear them.

I turn, expecting to see Ethan.

I don’t.

There is only the shape of someone standing just beyond the treeline. Tall. Still. The darkness bends around him, reshaping itself to fit his outline. I can’t see his face, but I know—without understanding how—that he is looking at me.

My body reacts before my mind does.

Heat curls low in my stomach, sharp and unwelcome, followed immediately by guilt so strong it nearly breaks me. Ethan is dead. I shouldn’t feel this. I shouldn’t want anything. Anyone.

I try to step back.

The ground warms beneath my feet, steady and reassuring, like it doesn’t intend to let me fall.

You are not wrong, the presence says. You are alive.

I wake with my heart racing, my sheets twisted around my legs, my skin humming like it’s been touched too closely. My hands shake as I press them to my face, trying to breathe through the confusion.

I don’t tell anyone, not even my trusted therapist, about that dream.

The days blur together after that.

I talk about Ethan constantly—to the therapist, to myself, to the quiet spaces in my room. I cling to memories of him like proof that my life belonged to me before Mapleton. Before the road. Before the warmth beneath my hands.

But at night, something else waits.

Sometimes the dreams mix. Ethan’s voice overlaps with the presence, familiar comfort tangled with something deeper and more dangerous. I wake up crying, unsure who I was reaching for.

Once, I whisper Ethan’s name into the dark.

The air grows warmer in response.

I press my hand to my chest, shaken. “I’m losing my mind,” I murmur.

The room remains silent.

Still, I feel… acknowledged.

A few nights later, I dream of Ethan standing at the edge of the forest.

He looks the way he did the first year we were together—softer, less worn by time. He smiles when he sees me, but there’s sadness there now, too.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“I didn’t choose this,” I tell him, tears burning my eyes. “I didn’t want to survive without you.”

He steps back, toward the trees. The darkness thickens around him.

“I know,” he says. “But you did.”

I reach for him.

Something else reaches back.

Not a hand.

A pull.

I wake gasping, my heart pounding, my body caught between grief and something that feels disturbingly like longing. Shame settles in heavy and cold.

I press my forehead to the mattress and cry until the sun begins to rise.

The next morning, I catch my reflection in the mirror and barely recognize myself.

I look… awake. Not healed. Not okay. But present in a way I haven’t been since the night Ethan died.

That terrifies me more than anything else.

Because somewhere deep inside, beneath the fear and the guilt and the grief, there is a quiet, undeniable truth beginning to take shape:

Something spared me.

Something is watching me.

And whatever it is, it isn’t finished with me yet.