Page 68 of Presence

“I guess you don’t have any power here anymore, Claire,” I mutter to myself. It’s more like silent lip movement because my voice is gone after all that screaming around Echo’s cock. Still, it gets the point across. “Intention means shit now, huh?”

The power I once thought I had is meaningless here, in his world, twisted by his whims. I can’t predict what will come next, only that it’s beyond my control. Where could he have gone? Is this another trick, a ploy to get me scared of my own shadow?

“Whatever,” I continue. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he caught me. We have a deal to make.”

The distant roar of the waterfall is ahead of me. It’s faint, but enough to guide me forward through the dense thickets and tangled underbrush.

It’s the only place I know well here. It’s the first place Echo took me. It’s also the only one we lingered in for nights before he took me to other places in this dreamscape.

Sure, it might be a wasted effort to look for him there, but what else am I supposed to do? Just lay between the trees somewhere and wait for a miraculous wake-up?

“Waking up won’t work,” I mutter to myself. “I’ve tried everything—pinching, scratching, squeezing my eyes shut. Nothing worked. And guess what? Echo did all that to me when he fucked me too. Didn’t wake me up then either.”

A bitter laugh escapes my lips, the sound echoing off the trees.

Looks like I’m trapped, huh?

The path ahead clears, and I push through the last bit of thickets, coming out into a familiar clearing. There it is, the waterfall, tumbling down the rocky cliff into a misty pool. But it’s not quite like I remember. It’s darker, gloomier. The water looks deeper and less inviting. The mist covers everything in shades of gray, muting the colors and dulling what used to be vibrant before.

Echo wants me to see it like this.

The thing we have is so sick. Even as I enter the pool beneath the waterfall, still bloodied and hurting, my pussy is swollen, and some dark, messed-up part of me likes it.

Even the darkness, the thing that kept me up at night for the last year, feels different now. It’s more inviting in its chilliness. It smiles at me, reaches out its clawed hands, and I step into it.

But Echo’s not here.

I strip off my torn dress, piece by piece, wincing as it clings to my wounds and peels off my dried blood. Some cuts reopen; others, thankfully, stay closed. When I submerge myself in the dark, chilly waters of the pool, a maroon hue spreads around me, the blood mingling with the liquid. I watch, mesmerized.

Don’t tell me you like the sight of your own blood now, Claire.

But I can’t deny that something inside me has changed. The darkness used to be my enemy, a source of pure fear. But now, it’s different. Now, I feel like I’m leaving a piece of myself in that darkness, marking it with my presence. It’s as if I’m claiming a part of it as my own.

Is this what Echo meant when he said that he, the darkness, is in me? That I chose him?

Well… Over time, his presence became a constant in my life. Maybe I began to appreciate it. Maybe if not for him, I’d feel abandoned and vulnerable. After all, no one likes being truly alone. He spared me that.

Reaching a hand into the mist that hangs over the pond, I feel the cold humidity kissing my fingers. The moon lights up just enough for me to see, but not enough to make the droplets shine on my hand like they did during the warm nights spent here with Echo.

He showed me such beautiful things. He made me feel wanted and beautiful.

Now, he is branded on my flesh, the marks of his bites on my neck and shoulders, and the slashes from his forest, sharp on my skin. I let the water caress each of them, the sting mingling with a strange regret that they’re going to heal at some point.

The slashes on my body are a mark, after all. And marks are meant to stay.

Echo doesn’t come even after what feels like hours following my bath. Lying on the ground and shivering from the cold, I wrap my arms around myself and watch the sky.

It’s unmoving, sitting high above me like a painting rather than something alive and changing. It doesn’t matter, though. I never enjoyed cloud-watching anyway. Unlike everyone else, I could never see anything hopeful in them. All I ever saw were monsters, their faces constantly shifting, always menacing.

So without anything better to do, I feel myself drifting away. Slowly, almost sneakily, my eyelids grow heavy and close on their own. My breathing evens out, and the cold wraps around me.

After a while, I don’t even feel it. I just stop trembling, and my muscles relax into the ground.

Oh, good… I’ll wake up in the real world now…

But I don’t. I drift in the darkness. Weightless. Burdenless.

That is, until I open my eyes again.

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