[Arthur's POV]
My eyes snapped open and I gasped, air rushing into my lungs like I'd been drowning, like someone had held me under and only now let me surface. My hand went to my chest automatically, feeling my heart hammering away too fast, too loud in the quiet darkness of my room.
The same dream again.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to breathe. In through my nose, hold it, out through my mouth. The rhythm I'd taught myself years ago when the nightmares first started, when I'd wake up screaming and find myself alone in a strange room with no family to comfort me.
It didn't work.
It never really worked. But going through the motions helped me pretend I had some control over any of this.
My mother's smile as she fell kept playing behind my eyelids. That final expression, frozen in time, meant to comfort me even as her life drained away. My father's back as he turned to face the monster, that piece of broken wood raised against something he couldn't possibly defeat.
