Spiral

Red

(I've been insanely busy, sorry for not updating, also I want to put a trigger warning on this chapter)

Syler sat on the roof outside of his window, it was three in the morning again, and he had awoken from another nightmare. Syler had a cigarette in his mouth and he had his lighter in the other hand. He lit the cigarette quickly, as if without it he'd just collapse right there. He brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. He let the nicotine calm his shaken nerves, then he breathed out the smoke. The night was warm, and school was due to get out that Wednesday. This was a blessing and a curse to Syler, as his sleep schedule wouldn't mess with him as much, but he'd be haunted much more with the shadows and the dreams that he had. Syler feared this and his mind, he didn't know where it would wander once the stress from school diminished and his brain could concentrate on things that it wanted to and less on the stress of being a student. Syler knew his mind, and how every summer it became worse, he'd become paranoid. He'd start fearing that someone was following him, or that there were people out to get him. With the events of the recent weeks, this fear had become worse in his mind. He couldn't be in a dark room, he'd hear the hooded figure and it's haunting voice, he'd hear his own thoughts pounding through his head. He feared himself mostly, his own brain, and the world it had created inside of itself. Syler was never aware and he never knew that the mind was such a powerful thing. Syler put the cigarette up to his lips again and took another drag, his nerves calmed down again. The crickets that chirped through the night made the silence feel less deafening to Syler's ears. He thanked them for that, since his mind would start yelling, at least that's how it seemed to him. Syler looked up at the sky, the clouds had cleared up, and the moonlight was very bright, which was surprising to Syler, since clouds hd plagued the sky for the week prior. Syler hated the clouds, they reminded him of his dreams, which had become worse and worse as the time progressed. He was very aware of the dreams and their effect on the real world that Syler lives in, he knew that everything he did somehow reflected itself in his dreams in a sense. Syler didn't know why it was all reflected, but his brain was never the most logical thing anyway, and he knew that. He learned to live with his thoughts and his irrational fears and delusions from the time he first started to have them. He was very young when he had started to first realize that these weren't a normal way of thinking, but he never dared to tell anyone, as they would lock him up, and he'd be pulled away from normal society, like an insane person, or a serial killer. Syler knew he wasn't like that, he wasn't crazy, sometimes he thought he was, but in his mind he knew he wasn't. He hadn't snapped, at least not yet. The images in his mind scared him, they were terrifying to him. That's why he was kept up at night, from the images that played out in his mind. Syler took another drag from his cigarette, he inhaled the smoke, then tipped his head back and then exhaled the smoke into the musty air of the night. The house was quiet, so was the neighborhood, everyone was asleep with calm dreams of things that weren't half as bad as the hooded figure that haunted Syler on a day to day basis now, he swore he saw it everywhere. Lurking in the woods behind his house, hiding from the daylight. Syler needed someone to be with him if he were to go into the woods, just in case the hooded creature resided there in any sense. Zane expected this of Syler, he was watching Syler unravel right before his eyes, yet he didn't know what to do. He feared Syler would go past return before he could take any action to help Syler. Syler looked across all the rooftops of the small neighborhood that his house resided in. Syler's house resided on the top of a hill, so he had a sight of the whole neighborhood from his window, or in this case his roof. The sky was clear, and that made Syler feel at ease after the nightmares he had experienced for the few days prior. He then pulled his phone out of his pocket, as he was curious about the time. He pressed on the home button.

3:43 am

He hated how much time he spent awake these days, and how the lack of sleep made him feel. He could rarely concentrate on anything anymore, and the fact that his school was going through finals week all week did not make him feel much better. He knew he was going to fail most of them, and he had accepted that. He didn't care anyway, all he wanted was for the dreams to finally go away, so he could live in peace with himself and the world again, but he knew that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. The night was still going strong, and Syler didn't know what to do, he didn't want to go back to sleep, he knew he probably couldn't anyway. Syler sat on the roof and sighed before he took another drag of his cigarette. Smoking was his way to pass the time now, it calmed his mind after the dreams and their effects on his brain and his psyche. Smoking reassured him that the dreams were not reality and that there was a split between his mind and the real world.