She woke up from her nightmare, abruptly, gasping for air. She squinted her eyes a few times, allowing them to adjust to the stark darkness of the room. She placed her index finger and middle finger on her neck, feeling the rhythm of her heart begin to slow its pace, and she became more calm.

Suddenly aware of the fact that in her hastened awakening, she may have disrupted her sleeping husband, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table, revealing the hour to be midnight. Concerned about the time, she turned toward the man laying next to her in bed, ready to adamantly apologize for any disruption she may have caused to his sleep.

As she reached out with her left hand, feeling for her husband, however, she was startled, when what she felt laying next to her in bed was not the warm body of the man she had fallen asleep next to more times than she could count but instead, a cold, arid, lifeless corpse.

Still struggling to see in the bleak darkness of the room, she squinted her eyes a few times, desperately willing them to adjust to the all encompassing blackness that surrounded her and the dead body laying next to her in bed. As slowly, she began to be able to start to see in what had once been a place of tranquility for she and her husband but was now an atmosphere overcast with gloom, she saw the pool of blood on the white duvet that she and her husband were sleeping under. Confused and horrified, she began to scream.

“Really, Liz, I would much prefer you didn’t do that,” she heard a male voice state, calmly. “You know no one will be able to hear you. Your nearest neighbors live miles away.”

The sound of his voice, a voice she had not heard in so very long but could identify anywhere, sent shivers down her spine, and she looked in the direction it had come from. She blinked a few times, wiping away the large tears on her face, now making out the figure of the man sitting in the oversized leather chair in the corner of the room.

“What have you done?” She asked him, unable to hide the trembling terror in her voice.

“I’ve done what you’ve always known I would do,” he calmly replied, leaning back in the chair, making himself more comfortable.