Some Things Refuse to Wake

“Dreams never end cleanly. They cling — to skin, to breath, to the corners of rooms that should be empty.”

"Oh, Karl," I whispered, my voice barely more than a breathless sigh, floating in the heavy twilight air like a forgotten prayer. Across the dimly lit room, the silhouette of Karl stood framed in the doorway, bathed in an ethereal glow that seemed to originate from nowhere and everywhere at once. The faint light wrapped around him like a second skin, blurring the edges of reality, lending a dreamlike sheen to the scene. My pulse quickened, each heartbeat thundering in my ears with primal urgency, as though my body recognised something my mind had yet to name.

His white shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, buttons carelessly undone, revealing the taut landscape of his chest—smooth and evenly trimmed, the light casting a silvery sheen over the defined muscles like moonlight on water. He looked both real and not, as though sculpted from memory, not flesh. My eyes roamed across him, devouring every line, every shadow, each movement sending ripples through my senses. My throat tightened, dry with yearning, as a wave of raw anticipation surged over me—electric, visceral, and unrelenting.

"I've been waiting for you."

Lying on the soft bed, I felt the bare mattress yield to me with an almost sentient sensitivity, cradling my body like a lover who knew every curve, every weakness. The fabric whispered secrets against my skin, raising my awareness until it bordered on pain—every nerve exposed, every breath a tremor. I felt as though the bed had absorbed the ghosts of a thousand unspoken longings and was now breathing them back into me.

The room held its breath. Hushed. Suspended in a silence so absolute it pressed in on my ears, making even the sound of our shared breathing feel intimate—like the hush before a confession. The rhythm of our inhales and exhales was deliberate, synchronised, as though we were bound by a code, a pulse only we could hear.

With each step Karl took toward me, the world seemed to shrink, the edges folding in like pages of an unfinished story. He moved with an unsettling grace—measured and fluid, like a predator stalking a willing sacrifice. The shadows shifted around him, not resisting but yielding, as though even the darkness obeyed his approach. Yet beneath the edge of that command, I saw something softer: the gentleness in the way his jaw was set, the almost imperceptible upward twitch of his lips—tenderness leaking through the cracks of control.

Step by step, he drew closer, silent over the creaking floorboards—his footsteps impossibly light, as if he were only half tethered to the ground. When he reached the foot of the bed, he stopped. His figure loomed, casting a long, distorted shadow that reached up the wall and bled across the ceiling like dark fingers stretching out for something just beyond reach. My breath caught in my throat. Time hung.

I ran my hands over my naked breasts, and they responded as though they belonged to someone else—alive under my trembling fingers, aching with sensitivity. A heat bloomed in my chest, rising in waves beneath a flush that coloured my neck. The night air kissed my skin, raising goosebumps in a slow, delicious contrast to the fire taking hold inside me.

"Do I please you?" I asked, my voice pitched low, laced with a delicate blend of vulnerability and desire. The words trembled between us, fragile and hovering, a truth I hadn’t meant to ask aloud.

"Yes," Karl replied, his voice a rich, resonant current that seemed to seep into the very fabric of the room. It didn’t just touch me—it moved through me, vibrating in my bones, unsettling something deep and unreachable. "You always please me." His words wrapped around me like a cloak, warm and suffocating, pulling me further into the strange intimacy that existed only in this moment—only with him. A connection that defied explanation, that begged not to be questioned.

Without any warning, Karl knelt on one knee. The movement was so abrupt, so impossibly sudden, it stole the air from my lungs and left it caught somewhere between heart and throat, clenched tight and aching. Time stilled. He rested his left arm against the cold iron bed frame, the metal groaning faintly beneath his weight. The lean muscle of his forearm flexed beneath sun-kissed skin, every sinew taut with unspoken tension. That contrast—the chill of iron, the burn in his gaze—struck me with paralysing clarity. His eyes found mine, and in them I saw galaxies: entire constellations of quiet yearning, of futures imagined in silence.

Rolling to my knees, the motion felt instinctive, like a response coded into my bones. The aged bedsprings released a weary sigh beneath me, as though recognising this moment, echoing it from some previous lifetime. I leaned forward slowly, breath held, drawn to him not just by desire, but by something deeper—an ache of need that had no name. Karl’s right hand slid into his trouser pocket with an easy grace, but it was that slight, deliberate motion that thickened the air around us. The temperature seemed to shift. My lungs worked harder. The very atmosphere brimmed with the weight of possibility.

In that suspended second, my heart forgot its rhythm. Everything else—the worn wallpaper, the faint scent of dust and lavender, the chill seeping through the floorboards—faded into the background. All that remained was him, and the widening chasm of hope that yawned open within me. My mind filled the silence with imagined futures: spinning daydreams with gossamer threads, each more fragile and beautiful than the last. Was he about to produce a ring? Something precious and delicate—crafted not just by metal and stone, but by intention. A promise I’d long buried in the deepest corner of my heart, too afraid to name.

"Oh, Karl!" I whispered again. The words trembled on my lips, their edges frayed with emotion. I was overflowing—too full of longing, fear, joy. It was too much to contain. My voice cracked under the weight of it.

Then, without warning, something shifted. Karl’s blue eyes widened—bright, unguarded—an unexpected glint of mischief surfacing. That spark I knew so well, the boyish edge that lived just beneath his disciplined exterior, now flickered to life. In one swift, fluid movement, he tipped backward and dropped onto his back with a loud, jarring thud that split the stillness like a gunshot. The sound ricocheted off the walls, rattling the window in its warped frame. The wallpaper seemed to flinch. My breath caught again, this time with fear. Panic surged through me like a cold current, severing me from my reverie as I scrambled to the edge of the bed, heart hammering like a war drum.

But there he was—sprawled on the floor, alive and whole, a grin blooming across his face like the first light after a storm. It was all Karl: mischievous, reckless, disarming. That smile reached his eyes, forming crow’s feet etched by laughter and wear, by years spent living on instinct and edge. In his hand—steady and sure, hands I’d seen dusted with powder, cradling evidence with reverence—rested a small box. Its velvet was deep, the kind of black that drinks in the light, soft as sin. He lifted the lid, and there it was.

Nestled within, a piece of rose-gold jewellery glowed faintly under the ambient gloom. It caught the light in fractured bursts, flickering like firelight through cut crystal—wild, untamed. The gem at its centre flared as though lit from within, like a distant star blinking through the night. It was beautiful. Haunting. Impossible. A symbol, not just of love, but of everything unspoken between us. Of what might be—what we might yet become, if only the world allowed it.

"Oh, Karl," I whispered again, barely daring to breathe. My voice was a hush in the half-light, more sensation than sound, drifting amidst the dust that danced above the floor. I pressed my palm against my chest, the heat of my own skin a mirror to the fever building within. The yearning crested, bittersweet and consuming. "I love you. Yes! Yes, of course!" The words fell from me like a litany, unfiltered, unguarded. A confession from the marrow, echoing across the room, sealing something sacred. A vow spoken as if it had always been there—waiting to be heard.

Karl's movements were a slow, mesmerising dance of love—measured, reverent, almost ceremonial. He rose with controlled grace, every motion laden with meaning, as though he understood the sanctity of the moment and refused to rush it. His eyes never left mine, and in their gaze, something unspoken cracked open between us. The usual barricades—constructed brick by brick from professionalism, restraint, fear—crumbled under the intensity of his stare. It was a look that didn’t ask for permission; it simply saw me, stripped bare of every defence. He was no longer the man at my side in briefing rooms or crime scenes. He was simply Karl. Mine.

With a delicacy that stole my breath, he took my hand. His fingers were warm and sure, their touch reverent, like a man handling something sacred. Gently, he slid the diamond ring onto my finger. The weight of it was startling—real, grounding. It pressed against my skin with quiet authority, glinting in the dim light like a promise made tangible. Every movement sent sparks dancing along the gem’s surface, lighting tiny fires that flickered in the shadows. It was more than jewellery. It was belief, laid bare. The world shrank down to the space between our hands.

He leaned in, and his scent surrounded me—earthy sandalwood, bitter coffee, and that unique note that belonged only to him. It was memory and presence combined, an intoxicating tether to something both physical and ephemeral. His lips brushed my forehead in a kiss so light it barely registered, yet its impact was seismic. A whisper of summer breeze. A benediction. Shivers rippled down my spine, and my eyes fluttered shut against the onrush of emotion. In that moment, I felt our souls touch—not colliding, but aligning, sliding into place with the quiet elegance of inevitability.

"I love you," I whispered gently again, the words barely stirring the air, more breath than voice. "Oh, I love you… I love you." Each repetition anchored me, sank deeper into the warm space between us, wrapping around him like a second skin. My voice, soft and unguarded, folded into the atmosphere—into him. This wasn’t confession. It was homecoming.

But then, without warning, something shifted. A chill crept in from nowhere. Fear came fast, like a riptide. A cold breeze swept through the room, and with it came the weight of dread—a suffocating pressure that cracked the moment open like glass. The spell, perfect and fragile, shattered with brutal finality. My heart seized as reality surged forward, sudden and cruel. Like a dream yanked away mid-thought, the warmth of Karl’s touch dissolved, the room’s glow extinguished.

The vision of him—of us—evaporated like mist beneath the unforgiving Tasmanian sun. One heartbeat he was kneeling before me, all promise and devotion; the next, he was gone, replaced by absence so vast it echoed. My soul reached for him even as the dream collapsed inward, a black hole consuming everything it had created.

Consciousness returned not with grace but with violence. It clawed at me, dragging me from the comfort of illusion with jagged fingers. I kept my eyes closed, pleading silently for just one more second of sleep, one more glimpse of what could never be. But the heat rising in my face told me it was over. The burn of embarrassment bloomed across my cheeks, cruel and unrelenting. I felt exposed, vulnerable. Hollowed out. The ghost of the ring still pressed against my finger, its weight imagined, but no less heavy. That distance between dream and waking—between desire and truth—yawned wide before me, impossible to cross.

"Are you alright there, my dear?" The voice, soft and measured, cut through the fog of shame with quiet authority. It belonged to an old woman. Familiar. Grounding. I registered the sound from somewhere nearby, and then the rest of the room slipped into focus. The recliner beneath me—the one that had cradled generations—groaned as I shifted. I was curled in its worn embrace, the cracked leather still warm with memory. This chair, once my grandfather’s, had become my refuge. Though he was now passed, his absence loomed large in my life, etched into every scuff and faded seam.

Her voice, though gossamer-thin with age, still held that unique timbre—steadfast, enveloping, eternal. My grandmother. Jane Lahey. A presence as vital to me as breath, as relentless as the tides.

"Hmm?" I groaned, trying for innocence, though I knew the flush creeping up my neck had already betrayed me. I stretched my arms wide, deliberately slow, drawing out the movement until my joints cracked in protest. A loud yawn followed, overly theatrical, stretching my jaw to its limits. It was a poor disguise, but it was the best I had. Perhaps if I played it just right, she'd let the whole thing slip by without comment. I clung to that faint hope, though I knew better. Jane Lahey had a talent for reading people that had always unnerved me—and I was her favourite study.

"You were making quite the noise over there. I was beginning to worry about you. All that moaning," she said, and though her voice was soft, her words cut with precision, like a scalpel wrapped in silk. There was mischief there—a familiar glint in her weary eyes, barely perceptible behind the soft curtain of age. Her mouth twitched, the barest hint of a smile surfacing. For a flicker of a moment, she became the woman I remembered from my childhood—the one who’d chased me through wildflower fields in bare feet, her laughter brighter than the sun. Her tone was playful, yes, but beneath it rested something deeper: understanding. Compassion carved by time. A knowing that could not be faked.

"You may be nearly thirty now, but don't you worry. Your time will come."

Her voice, steady despite the tremble of age, wrapped around me like a woollen shawl in winter—warm, grounding, and threaded with the quiet authority of a woman who had known love and loss, and everything in between. Every word carried the slow wisdom of experience, shaped by decades of heartbeats and heartbreaks, of choices made and mourned. There was no pity in her tone, no false cheer—just certainty. Her faith in life’s timing was unwavering, and for a fleeting moment, I let myself believe it too.

My heart softened at her words, the simple kindness cutting through the fog of mortification still clinging to me like smoke. The remnants of the dream—the imagined heat of Karl’s hand, the weight of that ring—faded, dissipating into the quiet hush of the room. I exhaled slowly, grounding myself in the present, and allowed myself the rare indulgence of looking at her—really looking.

My grandmother sat in bed, framed by the soft, dawn light that slanted in through the narrow window. Age had carved deep lines into her face, but none of them seemed cruel. They were maps—etched by laughter, worry, heartbreak, and years of love freely given. Her eyes, pale blue and rimmed with delicate veins, still held that irrepressible spark. They flickered with humour, insight, and a resilience I’d come to depend on more than I dared admit. She watched me with that ageless blend of empathy and amusement, her gaze as sharp as ever, cutting through my defences with the ease of a woman who’d been disarming me since I could walk.

Each wrinkle, each furrow, told a story—of hands that had held mine through fever dreams and heartbreaks, of nights spent at my bedside whispering lullabies to chase away my fears. I saw the hands that had guided me through baking sessions in her tiny kitchen, dusted in flour and smelling of cloves and jam. The same hands that had shielded me when the world threatened to push me under. She had been my anchor through every storm, her love unrelenting, her strength often disguised as quiet stubbornness.

Lit from within by my own foolishness, her smile was a thing of rare beauty. It transformed her from an elderly woman into something ageless—timeless. A flicker of who she once was bloomed across her face, the same mischievous girl who’d chased me around her garden under the dappled shade of the old oak tree. Seeing her like this, laughing at me, with me, made every ounce of embarrassment worth enduring. I tucked that image away carefully, locking it into the part of my memory reserved for sacred things.

It reminded me, as it always did, of the bond between us—a rope pulled taut by decades, frayed in places, but unbreakable. That bond had held me steady through the roughest passages of my life, and in its strength I had found my own. She had been my salvation when the world had tried to drown me.

It had been five years since my grandfather died. He’d lived well into his late eighties, his departure dignified and peaceful—just as he’d hoped. I still remembered the quiet hush that followed, the strange silence in the wake of his absence. He had left behind more than stories and a battered old chair; he’d left behind a silence that echoed through our lives. In my flat, the wooden clock he’d made still ticked steadily, its sound comforting and rhythmic, a small, stubborn defiance of mortality. His hands had shaped it, carved it with love, and now its ticking reminded me—every hour—that time moved on, whether we were ready or not.

After his passing, my grandmother had moved into a modest retirement home tucked into the heart of Hobart. The redbrick exterior and neat rose beds gave it a veneer of warmth, though no amount of landscaping could quite conceal its clinical undercurrent. Her room, however, was hers entirely. It overflowed with life—photographs in mismatched frames cluttering every surface, trinkets arranged with the tender precision only memory could dictate. It was a room curated with care, not to impress, but to remember. I visited as often as I could. Never enough. The guilt came in waves—persistent, corrosive. I wanted to be there more, to do more. But life, relentless as ever, had its own rules.

We were all that remained now.

My parents had been taken from Oscar and me in a moment that tore the world apart. A celebration of love turned fatal on a rain-slick Italian motorway, fifteen years of marriage ending in a single violent twist of fate. I was nine. Far too young to understand the shape of death, only that it meant silence, absence, a coldness that settled into my bones and never quite left. I remembered flashes—black clothes, murmured condolences, adults whose eyes refused to meet mine, and that cloying scent of lilies that made me nauseous to this day.

It was my mother’s parents—Jane and Patrick—who gathered us into their arms and their home. Their love wasn’t loud, but it was constant. It filled the spaces where words failed. Through them, I learned that strength didn’t always roar. Sometimes, it simply endured.

Oscar had drifted. Maybe he was running from ghosts, maybe chasing something new. A love affair on a backpacking trip had lured him to London, and he’d never returned. Twice-yearly calls, postcards with charming skylines and no return address. He was kind, but distant. As though Tasmania itself had become too haunted to revisit.

My father’s parents had gone too—Tom and Margie—both passing within months of one another, unable to exist in a world where the other no longer breathed. Their love had been the quiet, enduring kind. Their loss another silent erasure from our already frayed family portrait.

And so now, it was just the two of us.

Me and my grandmother.

The last flickering lights of a once vibrant constellation.

Two survivors, bound by blood and love, weathering life’s cruellest storms with our hands still clasped—firm, if sometimes shaking—refusing to let go.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Jane," I said, my voice steeped in playful denial, the corners of my mouth pulling into a grin that stretched wide across my face. The use of her first name was part of a long-standing joke between us—one of many shared rituals forged over years of closeness. It dated back to my defiant teenage years, when calling her Grandma had felt too childish, too submissive, too anchored in a version of myself I’d been desperate to outgrow. Now, it was a term of endearment disguised as rebellion—a private language only we spoke.

I wrestled myself out of the recliner, groaning as my limbs protested the shift from stillness to motion. Every muscle ached with the stiffness of a night spent curled awkwardly, joints cracking as I stretched tall and slow. The chair, a treasured relic of my grandfather’s, creaked beneath me in reluctant farewell. Its worn leather still carried the faint, enduring scent of pipe tobacco and woodshavings—comforting ghosts of a man whose essence lingered in every scuff and stitch. It had become my makeshift sanctuary during these visits, its embrace familiar and forgiving in a way few places could offer.

I bent to retrieve my shoes, strewn carelessly across the floor—evidence of the small, unconscious rebellion I'd enacted the night before. I'd kicked them off with a kind of weary defiance, as though shedding them might also relieve me of the burdens I carried daily. They were sturdy leather boots, well-worn and battered from years of chasing leads across wet pavements, navigating uneven terrain at crime scenes, and trudging through the messier corners of Hobart. Practical. Resilient. Lacking flair but full of purpose. Like me.

As I fastened the laces and straightened, the reality of morning pressed against my shoulders. The moment was drawing to a close, and with it, the fragile warmth of comfort and memory that had wrapped itself around me like a blanket. I crossed the room slowly, each step heavy with the knowledge that time was always working against us.

Reaching the edge of my grandmother’s bed, I leaned down and kissed her cheek. The contact was soft, reverent. Her skin, delicate and finely wrinkled, was warm against my lips. I lingered a heartbeat longer than necessary, the tenderness of the gesture catching in my throat. Her face—worn and beautiful—felt like a parchment of stories I was still learning to read. I wished, as I often did, that I had more time.

"I've got to go home and get ready for work," I said quietly, trying to maintain an even tone, though the words lodged uncomfortably at the back of my throat. Leaving her always felt like something unfinished, a thread pulled taut but never tied.

"I'll let the reception staff know on my way out that you're awake and ready for your morning routine," I added, clinging to the structure of small rituals. They were our anchors, our way of pretending that everything would always be as it had been—that the inevitable wasn’t already on its way.

"Thank you, dear," Jane replied. Her voice, though thinned by age, was wrapped in warmth. There was love in every syllable, a kind of quiet reverence that humbled me more than any grand gesture could. As she reached for my hand, I felt the familiar squeeze—gentle but insistent. Her grip, though softened by time, still carried the same silent reassurance she’d offered me since childhood.

Her hand was cool and light, the skin translucent and peppered with liver spots. Her gold wedding band, once a snug fit, now slid slightly over her knuckle—loose, but never removed. I cradled her fingers between mine, hyper-aware of their fragility. They felt like bird bones—delicate, hollow, and impossibly light—but beneath that frailty was the quiet resilience of a woman who had outlived grief, war, motherhood, and time itself. She was still here. Still her. And I felt the unbearable weight of love swell in my chest, full to the point of breaking.

As I left the small, neatly kept room, a warm smile fixed itself to my face—a brittle mask crafted for public consumption, its edges already beginning to crack beneath the pressure of what I was trying to contain. My hand darted up quickly, wiping at the corner of my eye where a single tear threatened to escape, its salt sting a stark reminder of the grief crouched just beneath the surface. That tear, unwanted and dangerously honest, was the closest I’d come to unravelling since I’d arrived. It burned as it touched skin, the pain real in a way my mind wouldn’t yet let itself be.

The corridor stretched ahead, long and oppressively quiet, dressed in that same institutional beige that seemed designed to subdue emotion rather than soothe it. The air was thick with the cloying scent of disinfectant—sharp, sterile—never quite enough to hide the underlying smells of ageing, medication, and the slow, quiet business of dying. It was a scent that had embedded itself in my memory over the years, and no amount of fresh air would ever scrub it clean.

Jane hadn’t said a word about her diagnosis. Not directly. Not in words. But I knew. Of course I knew. She had to have given her consent to the doctors, and in doing so, had also given me silent permission to carry the burden with her. Last week, behind closed doors and between lowered voices, the specialist had broken the news: cancer. Aggressive. Terminal. A matter of weeks, not months. I’d heard those words before, but never with her name attached. The revelation had sliced clean through me, leaving only numb disbelief in its wake.

What shook me most was the speed of it. The sheer, brutal swiftness. As if the disease had appeared from nowhere, sidestepping years of good health and routine screenings with malevolent cunning. Her medical records had been pristine—one clean bill after another. Then suddenly, devastation. The doctors couldn’t explain it. Their brows furrowed over clipboards, their eyes shifting uncomfortably as though the absence of physical pain somehow invalidated their certainty. But I saw it for what it was—an anomaly wrapped in cruelty.

Jane wasn’t suffering. Not visibly. And for that, I was grateful in a way that made me feel guilty. There was no pain etched into her features, no visible wasting of her body—only a quiet stillness, an acceptance that unsettled everyone who entered her room. She radiated peace in a way that felt both miraculous and unbearable. A blessing I clung to, even as I waited for the other shoe to drop. Because it always did. So I prayed, in silence and in fragments, that the end would remain as kind as the beginning had been brutal.

My steps slowed as I made my way down the corridor, the muffled echo of my boots on linoleum reverberating through the silence like a quiet metronome marking borrowed time. Each footfall was a countdown, every stride a cruel tick closer to goodbye. I could feel the inevitability of it pressing down on me, an invisible weight strapped to my back, dragging me into the reality I didn’t want to face.

The dream of Karl still lingered, flickering like an afterimage in the edges of my vision. His voice, his hands, the impossible warmth of what had never really been—it clung to me like a phantom limb. And now, here in the sterile quiet of this corridor, it felt all the more cruel.

Ahead, the hallway seemed to stretch on forever—bleak, repetitive, endless. A corridor that led nowhere but forward, and forward meant loss. It meant the slow extinguishing of the last light from my childhood. With Jane gone, there would be no one left to bear witness to the child I had been. No one who remembered me before the job, before the trauma, before the hard edges formed. Her death would sever the final tether to a time when love had felt unconditional, uncomplicated. And I would be left adrift in a world that suddenly felt colder, harsher, and impossibly wide.