The thirst did not ebb.
It only changed shape—deepened.
By May, the vineyard had greened into a sea of trembling leaves. The days stretched longer, but I remained hidden, feral beneath the soil. My thoughts blurred into fragments. Hunger consumed everything, even time.
I did not understand the rules of this new body—only that it was ruled by absence.
No heartbeat
No breath
No sleep
But always, the fire in my throat: tightening, tearing.
Always the pull
On one of those pale mornings, I stepped out from the cellar into the mist. My bare feet touched wet grass, it should've been cold.
It wasn't. I didn't know where I was going—only that I had to go.
And then I saw them.
At the edge of the vineyard: a woman in a gray coat, standing with her back to me. Her head tilted slightly, as though listening.
"Marie?" I whispered, throat raw.
She turned.
Not Marie.
But her eyes—God, her eyes were the same. Soft, uncertain. Full of the questions I never answered.
She opened her mouth to speak.
No sound came.
And then she was gone.
I blinked, and the vineyard was empty again.
I staggered back, my throat burned like wildfire. I clutched my chest, willing breath into lungs that no longer knew how.
Another figure appeared by the old cart path: a man in a red sweater.
Nicolas. From Lyon. My first official patient.
He had died five years before.
"You left me in that room," he said, voice muffled like wind through a cave. "You said I was getting better."
I collapsed to my knees. "This isn't real. You're not real."
But he walked toward me.
I smelled him before he arrived—the warmth of blood beneath the skin. A scent I could name now, vivid and specific, as though I'd known it all my life.
My body moved before my thoughts.
One blink—he stood at the path.
Next blink—I was inches from him.
I reached for his throat—
—and touched only air.
He vanished like a fog.
I screamed.
And they came again.
One after another, rising like smoke between vines:
Victorine with her blue scarf and bitten nails. Serge, who never looked me in the eye.
Léa, who brought me painted stones. Gaspard, the boy who called silence a language.
Each one is half-formed and achingly familiar.
All of them speaking at once. Accusing, begging, and bleeding.
I couldn't cover my ears. The sound wasn't external—it was in me. Their voices echoed through my ribs, into the marrow. Fragments of sessions I thought I'd buried.
"You told me to face the darkness."
"Why didn't you see it coming?"
"You called it progress."
"Tell him I danced."
That one broke me.
Élodie. The reason I...
She stood waist-deep in phantom water, hair plastered to her face, lips blue.
"I trusted you."
I turned and ran.
Faster than thought, faster than sound. I tore through vines and trees, over cracked stone and moss-slick steps. The wind couldn't keep up with me, nothing could.
But still, they followed.
Everywhere I turned—faces, bloodless lips. Accusations in eyes that once looked to me for hope. A funeral procession of the broken.
I tried to reason with them. "I tried. I tried to help you. I didn't know—"
But no one listened. Their presence had no logic, no weight. Only ache.
And yet, the thirst... it sharpened. Grew teeth.
Every time they appeared, I smelled them. I felt them. Their skin, their breath, the subtle quiver of living flesh.
I hated myself for it.
And still, I wanted more.
I ran until the sun blistered my skin, until light itself began to stab—unbearable. Then I fled back down, into the belly of the vineyard, where shadow held fast.
Back to the cellar.
I collapsed beside the crate where I had first awoken.
The thirst was worse now—seething, scorching, clawing at every hollow part of me. My veins pulsed with want, my mouth tasted of ash. I curled in on myself, arms over my ears, as if that could keep them out.
But the cellar was quiet.
No more voices.
No more faces.
Only dust and casks and shadows.
My body—if it could still be called that—felt too sharp, too wrong. Like a tool, not a vessel. A hunger given shape.
What had I become?
Not a man, not anymore. But a husk of regret. A creature fed by memory, haunted by its own mind.
And the worst part—
I didn't know if I deserved anything else.
---
Outside, the wind stirred the vineyard. The rustle of leaves sounded like footsteps for a moment. I didn't rise to check. Let the ghosts walk where they pleased.
They already lived inside me.
For now, the cellar held them at bay.
But I knew they'd come again.