Revenants and Hallucinations

15 - Time Sits Still But I Cannot

'It's not in your head Chan'

Chan could've sworn he heard breathing this time as he sat up, it making him shiver as he felt the remnants of a breath against his neck. He looked around the room to wait for his eyes to adjust.

As per usual, there was nothing there immediately, no boy and no woman. He still didn't know who this woman was, but she must've also been in his head.

Realizing he wasn't going to get back to sleep; he stood up to grab his brand new sketchbook, heading for his desk. It was a fresh sketchbook to draw the people he's been seeing. He enjoyed doing portraits, but he'll admit that drawing these made him feel uneasy.

He started with the boy, the kid's face was ingrained in his mind from the many times he appeared in his room. Chan even wrote down the dates he'd seen him (yes he spent a long time working it out) and then tried to move onto the family of three at Hyunjin's house, but he paused whilst writing the date after realizing he had a very vague memory of them, meaning they would probably be difficult to draw.

After about 2 hours of basic sketching, he got a sudden urge to scratch his leg and so he did so. His calves felt uncomfortably itchy and he didn't know why, as if little ants were crawling over them.

He nearly did a double-take when he brought his hand up again, looking at the nails that now held fresh blood and scratched scabs, some on his fingertips.

Chan looked down as he rolled his chair back, pulling up the black fabric of his joggers, gasping at what he saw.

There was a bunch of vertical cuts ranging from shallow to deep, all over his calf. They almost looked like, scratch marks? And because of his scratching, a lot of them were bleeding.

Did he do that in his sleep?

Surely not. People do some weird shit in their sleep, but Chan was always a really deep sleeper and barely moved when he would finally fall asleep after hours of tossing and turning.

He pulled up the other side of his sweatpants and it revealed the same thing. How the hell did he get them? Surely he would've felt them on his skin and woken up.

He tried to demystify it in his made but it didn't make anything more clear. There was really no logical explanation for it. Yes, there were those times where he'd wake up with a bruise or two, unknowing as to how he got them, or maybe even a singular scratch on his arm.

But there were too many of these, it couldn't have been a coincidence but Chan also thought that it couldn't have been him either.

He didn't sleep the rest of the night, forgoing an excruciating headache, it seemed like just a regular one this time, and then a slightly more bearable nosebleed.

School made him frustrated, he wanted to concentrate but he just couldn't. There were too many thoughts in his head and 90% of them were unanswered questions, none of which were for school.

"Psst" there was a voice behind him and immediately knowing it was Felix, he turned around to see what the boy wanted. Minho, who was sitting next to him, was concentrating solely on the work.

He sent Felix a 'go on' look and the boy smiled.

"Do you have the answer to question 8? Neither me or Min could get it" Chan looked to his own sheet, eyes drifting over the printed paper, none of which contained his blue pen. He hadn't answered any of the questions.

"Well, I guess none of us are answering that one" Felix had leaned over his table to gauge where Chan was, only to discover that his friend hadn't answered any of the questions they were to finish by the end of class.