After Josh had left the Benedictine, there had been an odd calm in the penthouse apartment. An uneasy calm, like a cavernous echo. Connor had defaulted to the couch and Sara had gone to the window seat in the study area, both gave each other vacant wandering looks as though they had been planning on doing something fun but their plans had been canceled. They weren’t bored, per se, they had plenty to do, but they were unfulfilled. Sara and Connor had experienced, for perhaps the first time in their lives, a taste of real fulfillment and purpose. Not because they had led uneventful or meaningless lives, but because something about fostering a friendship with Josh met a deep rooted and not altogether natural need within them.

“You feel that right?” Connor turned to his roommate with a mildly confused expression on his face.

“Yeah. It feels like…” Sara trailed off, unable to properly define what she was feeling.

Connor picked up where she had trailed off, “lighter. Like you’re floating in water?”

“Yes. That. You feel it too?”

“Uh huh… Margot’s never mentioned that feeling before, but she has to have felt it. Right? That’s gotta be normal for marked people. It would be weird if it wasn’t at this point.”

Sara lifted herself up onto the kitchen counter to sit next to where Connor was standing as they both looked at the apartment door. “I don’t know. She seems confused about Josh. Like he shouldn’t be able to do the things he is.”

“Has he done anything else than see marks?”

Connor hadn’t been clued in on the dreams. And while Sara didn’t see the harm in doing so, she remembered the promise that she had made. That was Josh’s business and he had asked for help from her specifically. It was not her story to tell.

“That’s not for me to say.” Sara wasn’t sure how else to avoid the question without actually confirming or denying it and not lying.

“That’s fair.” Sara was always grateful for Connor’s easy going attitude. He was never one to pry or make someone uncomfortable.

“But still, there’s something different about him.”

“There is. And I think we’ll see what exactly soon.”

---

When Josh returned to his apartment, Kerry was waiting for him. It was the middle of the day, and his roommate should have been in class. But there he was. Waiting in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, sipping something from a glass bottle—Josh couldn’t see exactly what it was because Kerry’s hand covered the label, but that hardly seemed to matter in that moment. What did matter was that this was a confrontation. His roommate had been waiting for him.

“Back safe and sound I see.” Kerry muttered, his words overshadowed by his piercing glare. “And you look like you’ve had a good time too.”

Josh wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by ‘good time’. He had guesses, but he didn’t want to commit to any assumptions. “What?”

“If you aren’t the picture definition of the men’s version of a walk of shame, I don’t know what is.” Kerry put his drink down and let out a long sigh like he’d just taken a satisfying gulp of whatever it was. “And I have to say I would be proud… I would be, if I wasn’t disappointed.”

“Disappointed? Really?” Josh sighed and started to go towards his room. “What are you? My step-dad?”

“I—”

Josh cut off Connor’s retort before it escaped his mouth. He had seen the childish sneer of a smile that crossed Kerry’s face whenever he was about to make a dirty joke. “I swear, if you make a joke about having sex with my mom, I will break your nose.”

“Fair.” Kerry let out a dark chuckle as if the implication was enough to satisfy him. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you broke your promise to me, J Dog.”

Kerry calling him J Dog was Josh’s final confirmation that his roommate was drunk. And that meant that Josh definitely didn’t have to deal with whatever crap Kerry was about to bring up. But as Josh continued to try and make his way to his bedroom and avoid the half of the apartment Kerry was in, Kerry made a move of his own to cut Josh off. The tiny hallway that both of their rooms were off of connected to the front and back of the apartment, and Josh’s room was closer to the back than the front, so Kerry had a slight advantage.

“You broke a promise, man. Why would you do that? Huh? What happened to if things start getting weird again I’ll leave?” Kerry was blocking Josh’s door now, and taking a menacing posture to stop Josh from trying to push past. “Because I know for a fact you woke up in the middle of the night the other day and freaked out. I know you didn’t sleep the next day either. And I know Sara was in here.”

That had been Josh’s worst fear. But there was no way Kerry could have known Sara was in the apartment. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t even been in the building. The only way he could have known was if he had cameras in the apartment or Sara had left something obvious behind.

“Oh, didn’t think I’d find out about that, did you?” Kerry sneered. “Jenna came by the other day to pick up her bra and saw Sara leave the apartment. She immediately thought I was two timing her and left me a very angry voicemail, she even called me a manwhore.”

“I’m sorry she inferred correctly from bad evidence?” Josh knew for a fact that Kerry didn’t date and any hookup was only a one or two time thing.The odds of him two timing Jenna, whoever that was, were extremely high. It gave Josh the means to present a double standard.

“Shut up, you know this isn’t about that.” Kerry growled in frustration. “No one should be surprised that I mess around with a lot of different girls. And they certainly shouldn’t be disappointed. The world has very low expectations for me. But you’ve never lied to me before now. And you’ve never broken a promise.”

For a moment, it almost looked like Kerry was on the verge of tears. But he growled and wiped the dew from his eyes. He knew he was getting emotional. He had probably known he was going to get emotional as soon as he decided to confront Josh. And that was probably why he was drunk. Kerry and honest feelings didn’t go together.

“Your drunk, Kerry. And you’re starting to sound like me when I’m drunk.” It was a low blow, insinuating that Kerry was being overly emotional, and not one that Josh actually meant.

In fact, Josh actively regretted saying it. He knew that Kerry needed to open up more with his emotions, it was a serious problem for him, and if he needed alcohol to do that it was at least a start. But shutting him down and chastising him for expressing emotions while he was vulnerable felt dirty. And while Josh may have been studying law, he had never fought dirty before. It caught Kerry completely off guard. So much so that in his stunned state an actual tear managed to break free of Kerry’s eye. At least one. Josh couldn’t see if there were more. Kerry had moved out of the way and was making a quick and silent path to his own room.

It was an uneasy few steps to his own room, but Josh knew that if he let himself give in and apologize to Kerry he’d end up telling his roommate everything. So, he moved on. He attempted to forced himself to stay in his room for the remainder of the day. Josh didn’t hear Kerry leave, but by the time Josh couldn’t stand his hunger anymore and breached the safety of his tiny bedroom to get something to eat, his roommate had left. His bedroom door was open and Kerry was nowhere in sight.

Kerry didn’t come back that night. Josh suspected he had gone out to a bar or party to pick up girls and was planning on crashing in the bed of whichever girl would say yes. His roommate had low standards when he was upset. It bothered him more than usual, not that Kerry’s behavior at that moment was usual, because for once Kerry was upset with him. They had shared a space for over a year Josh considered him one of his few friends. But, now, he had legitimately betrayed his friend. He had broken a promise. And he had lied. For good reason, or so Josh told himself, but it didn’t change the fact that he had done something wrong.

The confrontation with his roommate had spoiled whatever good feelings had lingered from his time at Sara and Connor’s apartment. And when the time to sleep came again, Josh was dreading it. He tossed and turned in bed, he ground his teeth as he tried to calm his mind, and he couldn’t seem to feel comfortable in his own clothes. His discomfort was so great, that Josh didn’t fully realize when he had actually passed out due to exhaustion. And he certainly hadn’t realized that he had begun to dream. For he knew, Josh was still wide awake as he tossed and turned in his bed.

“Screw this.” Josh mumbled to himself as he rolled out of bed.

The second his feet hit the floor something felt wrong. The threadbare carpet didn’t feel cold under his bare feet. But that wasn’t something that Josh realized, he only knew something wasn’t right. It was like looking at a very difficult hidden image picture, or perhaps a hidden image picture that didn’t actually have a hidden image. Without actually feeling hungry, Josh made his way to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge. But the fridge was empty. Perhaps more surprising, it was clean. Josh had never seen it clean.

Unsettled by what he had found in the fridge, Josh looked to the junk food shelf that he and Kerry stocked jointly. But though he had seen it full out of the corner of his eye not moments before, it was barren. And the process continued on like that. The dry goods, gone. The booze, not a trace. Even the little half dead cilantro plant by the sink that Kerry insisted was still salvageable, it was like it was never there to begin with. The more things Josh looked for, the emptier and emptier his surroundings became.

It quickly became apparent that he was not in the real world any more. But this, whatever it was, was incredibly vivid. Josh’s mind was not foggy, his movements were not sluggish, and nothing apart from the continuously vanishing objectives Josh sought out seemed to be behaving strangely. As soon as Josh realized this, and the pattern behind the disappearing objects, that he began to feel fear. This sense of reality and alertness in an unreal situation felt almost exactly like the dream he had had of falling in the bubble. And when that thought was triggered,the logical progression that some mark might be on his arm followed. When Josh looked down to see his arm, the pattern continued.

Josh’s arm was gone. He had sought it out and it had vanished. In its place was the strange foreign arm he had seen in his other dream, and the spiral mark was there on the forearm in that same shimmering black tone. Without sense, Josh began to claw away at the mark with his right hand—a hand which he now saw matched the foreign one. But it obeyed. He clawed away and pulled off shreds of skin as though they were dried glue. As he shed the skin, he could see traces of his true arm beneath, familiar and unmarked. But the strangers skin grew back faster than he could shred and peel.

Josh was so focused on his panicked task that he did not notice the world around him shift. He didn’t notice the faint indigo tint that it took, or the translucent quality of it. He was only paying attention to the world around him out of the corner of his eye, and the world around him—his nearly empty apartment—was still similar enough to how it should be that he didn’t register the change. But the next change made him pause.

The ground had begun to swell and warp in small lumps all around him. When Josh looked up he saw the same swelling boils on every surface around him. In an act either brave or stupid, Josh couldn’t quite decide which, he kicked one of the distortions near his foot. It wiggled slightly, like a gelatin, but then with a a sudden and expected wet popping noise it collapsed. The give of the bulge felt like popping a pimple, but instead of puss coming out, something else much worse had. An arm, blackened and twisted as though it had been exposed to fire, burst out of the bulge and began to scrape the ground blindly in search of something.

After the first popping, the other swelling mounds that had appeared on every other surface popped as well with their own disgusting accompanying sounds. Each sprouted the same hand. And each hand, including the first, bore the mark inspired unwarranted fear in Josh’s soul. An arm on the floor grabbed hold of Josh’s ankle, but he was too afraid of the image on it to respond. More arms grabbed hold of Josh, on his shoulder, his waist, his head, his throat. They seemed to be drawing closer to him now that they knew where he was. And with each hand that grabbed hold of him, Josh was pulled deeper and deeper into the space from which they came. Not necessarily through the floor or the walls, but pulled through the space around him like an egg yolk being extracted from inside the white without splitting it.

As his vision of the apartment faded, another sight filled his mind. A new sight. A dark room of pulsating flesh, covered completely in the mark—or rather, an extension of the pattern that appeared on the arms. There was so much more to it now, not just the same repeating pattern, but something alive and spreading. Spreading like mold.

Josh retched at the sight of the world he had found himself in, of the dream he had entered. But the retching was not in the dream. Something, perhaps the terror, perhaps the absolute alien nature of what he had just witnessed, had jolted Josh awake. He had sat upright in his bed and before he had even opened his eyes he expelled the contents of his stomach.