Cure

He woke suddenly, his face slick with sweat. "I had a dream!" he shouted. "I know how to save you, I saw it clear as day! I know how to undo this all, how to go back, how to heal you like nothing had ever happened!"

The night answered him with silence.

"Please," he said fumbling with the tangled, sweat-soaked sheets, "I know you're there! I have the answer!"

He managed to stumble from his bed and then darted through the darkness, tripping over some unseen obstacle and landing against the corner of a desk, opening a gash on his forehead and splitting his lower lip. He struggled for a moment as the night swirled around his vision, then managed to pull himself up to the desk. His hands shot out into the dark, groping desperately for something to write with.

"Fuck!" he moaned in despair, fighting to lock the dream in his memory even as it began to evaporate. At last, he found a marker and he began scrawling his thoughts out on the surface of the desk as quickly as he could, the marker slipping wildly in the blood that was pooling on the table. He dragged his forearm through the blood to clear some space but then his pen stopped moving. The dream was gone.

He slumped in his chair, his heart a dull pounding in his ears, and quietly cried. "I knew the answer," he said to the emptiness around him. "But now it's gone."