As soon as I reached house 18C, I stomped straight upstairs and plopped down on the bed like a sack of wet sand. With my face buried in the pillow and the covers hugged tightly to my body, I forced sleep to overtake me.
But it was restless.
I tossed and turned, huffed and puffed until the room felt hot and sticky. Like the teasing mistress it is, a good night's sleep has avoided me for nearly three hours.
Riot still isn't back. There hadn't been the slightest sound downstairs to indicate his arrival. Not a jingle of the door handle. Not the squeak of a door's hinges. Not even so much as a single bump in the night fabricated by my imagination. It's simply silence. And it's driving me insane. More than it ever did down in that godforsaken cave.
Eventually, when the clock strikes 3:00, I
