Departure ↠ Argent [3]

17. Switch Up

Dreams have always been something that I've been fascinated about. Something about the idea of your mind creating a picture that seemed and felt so real was an amazement to me. Whether that dream was something you've always wanted to be apart of or something that never would be real, it was always an idea that your mind created that you didn't have any control over.

As a kid, I always dreamed. The most popular one of mine that I had multiple times involved, believe it or not, pirates. In the dream, I was always on a huge pirate ship as it sailed across the seas, scavenging up gold and other riches as we went along. It only made sense that I dreamed about them, since I was obsessed with pirates as I passed through elementary school. I was a pirate three years in a row for Halloween.

But of course the dream faded the older I became, and it was something I had forgotten about. Dreams such as ones that involved my friends, my teaches, and of course girls, had taken over my brain.

But then came the nightmares.

When I was young, rarely did I ever have nightmares. Every now and again, I'd have one about a man with a demonic face that I had seen on TV one night, but other than that, I wasn't scared at night. It wasn't until I was older that I really started to have nightmares, but with time, even those faded away.

Something was different now.

After putting the pieces together now, after everything I've been through and learned, I figured out that they weren't just nightmares. They were reality...just not yet.

For example, that man that I had thought I had seen on TV, which gave me those nightmares, wasn't on TV at all. My mind made that part up to help me cope with it. But now as I sat here remembering all of the nightmares I've had with that man, I realized that he was actually Deucalion. I'm not sure how I didn't recognize him the moment he had transformed into what he truly was; maybe it was my mind trying to help me cope again, but either way, it was him. I know that much as a fact.

After I put those pieces together and realized that I have been seeing farther into the future for longer than I could remember, I started to wonder if maybe every nightmare I've ever had could be real like that? I tried remembering all of the ones that I've had, but all I could remember was the ones that involved Deucalion.

However, with all of this in mind, I started to question what this nightmare really was too.

I was in the school; I knew that much for certain. It's dark too, but not enough to where I couldn't see the faint outlines of the lockers down the hall and the little dim light at the end of it that was coming from the locker room. I couldn't control my motions; it was a nightmare, of course. You never can control what you do in them.

The moment I step into the locker room, the door slams shut behind me. I jump, but then my eyes go directly back in front of me. The locker room was arranged differently; it was a smaller room for one, and then the lockers outlined the walls of the room with a bench sitting perfectly right smack in the middle. I wasn't scared; I was confused.

That's when the screaming started.

There was a loud voice that was screaming from inside one of the lockers, along with banging fists up against the back of the cold metal. My mind told me to go help, but I didn't move. I just stood there and watched as the scene unfolded in front of me.

"Let me in," I hear a raspy voice speak out, and that was when I saw the gauze man step out from behind me. My body tenses as I watch the creature creep along the side of the lockers, dragging its nails alongside as it screeches in my ears.

I recognized the voice then as Stiles. "Let me out!"

"Let me in, Stiles," the nogitsune hisses lowly once again, sounding more agitated. Fear starts to creep inside of me then, but I was frozen. I wouldn't move.