There’s blood. I taste it when I swallow, metallic and unmistakable, like the tip of a battery on my tongue, and when I try to cough it up, a hand touches mine and something bleeps.
The idea comes at night, of course. It creeps up the stairs to the bedroom where you sleep, and you wipe it away, this thing which brushes the skin of your forehead. But it finds a way in, and whispers to you, ‘hush, hush.’