Spiral

Heart

 The early morning air always seemed to haunt Syler, the humidity made his throat close up like it used to during his nightmares. He felt like he was suffocating half the time, mostly from the anxiety of the thoughts. They were drowning him in a sense, taking up his every waking thought.

Syler was smoking his lungs out again, while taking a long walk around his neighborhood. The morning air made him feel as if he was suffocating, it was mainly just his lungs being smoked out, but the humidity added to the feeling. The air wasn't cold at all, and Syler was thankful for that, the cold made him just feel more depressed than he already was. The dreams had started to become more vivid to him, they started to make connections to his real life. It started to really scare him, both mentally and physically. He started to get headaches, and during those he'd see the hooded figure appear for split seconds in his line of site before it disappeared again. Syler could tell that these were just images that his brain was coming up with, but they still scared him, as he knew that they'd progress, just like everything else that has happened so far. Syler would wave to every jogger or other person on the street, he didn't know their stories, but he'd try and make them up. He'd observe their patterns, and he'd make assumptions that way. It was something he found entertainment through, and it relaxed his mind very much so, and so he would make up stories of others, in his head, and sometimes they were sad, sometimes they were happy, but they were always something exciting. Maybe the person was a writer, and they were trying to find inspiration from the morning air. Sometimes he assumed that they were someone with purpose to get their life together, sometimes he assumed that they were on a downward spiral, just as himself. He knew that everyone was fighting themselves in some way, but he knew most weren't fighting the constant shadows and the hallucinations that he was.

Syler had smoked his cigarette to a bud, and almost as if it was out of impulse by now, he placed the burning bud to his skin, letting it burn him. He didn't know why he was doing this, but impulse was a strange thing to many people. Syler pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit another, he made enough money off of his paintings that he could buy packs weekly, sometimes several times throughout the week, he bought enough of them throughout the week that all the cashiers by the local gas station knew him by name, and some even knew parts of his dreams, if he felt the need to share. He took another drag, and the smoke filled his lungs again. He wasn't watching where he was going, he was just trying to get away from his thoughts. Syler was suddenly startled by walking into someone's shoulder. He started to apologize, trying to catch his breath from the panic that he had offset.

"Sorry, I am so sorry." Syler said before looking up to see who he had run into.

"You're fine, I wasn't looking at where I was going." Syler heard the voice of a girl, around his age, he was guessing. Syler looked up, and he observed the face of who he had just run into. She had short, pixie cut blue hair. Her face had freckles scattered all over it. She had done up eyeliner. Syler found her face gorgeous, which was very unusual for him, as he never had found another human being attractive to him.

"No no, I wasn't looking. I'm sorry." Syler said, and she laughed, and she observed his cigarette.

"Yo, you got another?" She asked, hopeful, and Syler pulled out another cigarette and handed it to her.

"You need a light?" He asked, and she shook her head.
"I got my own, thanks though." She said, and lit up the cigarette in her mouth, then she took a drag.

"Again so sorry for running into you, I was swallowed in my thoughts." Syler said, surprised at his ability to communicate with someone he'd never met before and sound even half-coherent.