Available Darkness Season 1

yanked the cord on the ceiling fan. He downed another two pills and fell back into bed, listening to the quiet whir of the blades making their orbit. If he allowed his focus on the blades to soften until they blurred into a singular shape, he would fall asleep like he usually did. He had nowhere to be tomorrow and would stay in bed all day if necessary, in hopes of unlocking whatever memories were waiting to be found.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 15 — John

    John woke to darkness. The last thing he could remember was looking up at Abigail after knocking Larry over.
    He was now lying nude in a bed covered by cool silk sheets. Upon remembering Abigail, he tried to leap from the bed and call out to her. His body refused to cooperate. Panic seized him for a second, until a voice called out.
    “How long are you gonna be?”
    After a moment, he realized it was his voice, though he had not spoken the words, but rather this dream self had. Suddenly, and without thinking it into action, John rolled over in the bed and glanced at the light bleeding from beneath a door.
    “Hold your horses,” a woman’s voice said.
    Hope!
    He tried to get up, but instead found his hand reaching down to coax himself to readiness.
    Though he was seeing through his eyes, could feel the coolness of the sheets, and smell the scent of… what was that, jasmine? … he was but a passenger in his own body. He was experiencing his past, but unable to control the events as they unfolded, for they had already happened.
    All he could do was watch and remember.
    “You promise not to laugh?” she asked again, from the other side of the door.
    “Scout’s honor,” he said and crossed his heart, though she wasn’t there to see it.
    “If you laugh, I’m NEVER doing this again,” she warned, in a slightly serious voice, laced with the laughter he loved. “And this will be the last birthday gift you ever get.”
    The door opened, and there she stood, her milky white skin bathed in the soft blue glow of moonlight pouring through the open curtains. Hope, just as she appeared in the gift of memory given by Abigail, though even more beautiful in this memory. And less dressed.
    She wore a black and white maid’s uniform, the sexy kind you’d find in a costume shop or adult catalog.
    A strong sense of déjà vu flooded John’s brain. A swarm of memories rushed him — both the Past him and the Passenger him. He remembered looking at the outfit with Hope at a costume shop a few months before that night. He joked that he’d like to see her in the uniform. She must’ve taken him seriously and decided to feed into his fantasy. Another memory, this one from earlier that night — they were out to dinner when she whispered in his ear, “I have something special for your birthday.” He was excited and curious. Hope wasn’t overtly sexual. Her charms were usually more subtle, though no less intoxicating.
    Though he couldn’t remember what was about to happen next in this replaying memory, other memories of their lives together began to surface. Her love of painting, how she always carried a book with her, her attempts to play cello, how her nose crinkled when she laughed, and how she got super silly after the smallest sip of alcohol. John the passenger smiled, even if his past self didn’t, at these recollections.
    He looked at Hope with a renewed sense of longing. He wanted to reach out and touch her, hold her, and hug her and never let her go. If he could feel her, perhaps he could somehow wake in that moment and never return to the new nightmare of his life. She was right there, so real he could smell her skin. He desperately wanted his dream self to reach out and touch her, and prayed that the senses he was experiencing as a passenger would extend to touch.
    “Wow,” he said, looking at her.
    She stared back. “Happy birthday,” she said in a huskier-than-normal voice, slowly moving towards the bed.
    The dream John laughed.
    Passenger John wanted to reach through and strangle his past self. Don’t laugh, you ass!
    Hope’s eyes widened as she pulled back, hurt.
    “I’m sorry,” he pleaded, “I’m sorry.”
    He reached out to touch her but she pulled away, standing just out of reach. “I knew I shouldn’t have done this!”
    “No, no, no,” John said, standing up, awkwardly aware of his erection, “I’m not laughing at you. I swear.”
    She looked up, wounded eyes peeking from beneath her dark shelf of bangs. “Then what’s so funny?”
    He