the end
Sometimes, she still pretends that she can dream.
She closes her eyes and imagines, and pretends that the images fool her, that she doesn’t know they aren’t real. She focuses on the faces with their smiling eyes, on laughter, on planning for a future that had not yet disappeared. She imagines pear blossoms floating like champagne bubbles on the effervescent air.
And in some ways, the pretending really is like dreaming should be, as she always returns to the knowledge that she is not in control. Even in the middle of her deepest imaginings, her scars ache, and the Face is there, somewhere inside her mind, pulling strings like an invisible puppetmaster. Shadows coalesce around her like a cocoon, tightening like ropes, and her eyes snap open, because she cannot bear to remember any
