Fight With Fire

11

I walk into the lunch room. Everyone is staring at me with lifeless eyes. I realize that I am surrounded by thousands of lifeless eyes. Everyone is standing in a big circle around me and all the tables are gone. The room falls away leaving the people surrounding me. They start to walk towards me.

"Liar"

"Fake."

"Useless."

I turn looking for the people who had spoken but no one's lips are moving. They are walking silently towards me with their arms slightly outstretched. There's nowhere to go.

I see a black puddle growing on the ground. I notice that the black is ink running from my face mixed with water. I look up looking for the source of the water only for rain to blind me. This is harder than rain and the water flows through me instead of around me. The water washes through my soul running by my feet mixed with my blood and the black ink from my iae. I see a reflection in the dirty water of a girl I don't recognize. She has a plain face with dark hair and dark eyes. I shriek in fear realizing that it is me without my iae.

Everything disappears again and I am falling down, down, down. I start screaming trying to reach around me to grab anything. I make contact with a windowsill. Only it is covered with small blades and cuts my hands up into small useless shreds. When I bring my hands away, they are unrecognizable and I scream louder.

That's when I stop moving. I look around to see that I am floating with the world hundreds of meters below me. Before I can do anything a hand grabs mine making me fall again. I see green eyes and dirty blond hair attached to the hand that is bringing me down. Then another hand grabs my other hand keeping me from falling. I feel like the rope in a game of tug of war between the two hands. The second hand belongs to a small child. The child has the features of two recognizable people. I look into the blue eyes of a thin girl with curly brown hair. She has a small iae on the tip of her nose. It starts as two halves. One half is Telekinesis and the other half is Giver. The girl gives me a smile and her iae starts growing to fill her whole face. But iaes don't grow...

Her grin stretches and her teeth turn to fangs. I scream and let go of her hand only to fall down, down, down with the green eyes that stare right through me.

Down, down, down...

I wake with a start, screaming out. Tears roll down my cheeks while I try to take deep breaths. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

I look around the room trying to figure out what happened. The bed has somehow moved away from the wall and everything near me is scattered. The sheets have flown across the room knocking over a stack of books. The bedside table has toppled over and all the contents have scattered. I take another deep breath closing my eyes before deciding that I won't get back to sleep.

I take a moment to acknowledge how awesome it is not to have a roommate.

I quickly clean up the room righting the table and returning all the contents. I walk to the window and look out. It's hard to believe that I had once found it so captivating to look out. It's also hard to believe that there's any danger. I feel no feelings looking out, just disconnected. It is very dark outside and I can tell that I had very little sleep. I had stayed up very late switching between crying and mentally slapping myself for being so pathetic. Everything is too confusing now.

I turn away and look in the mirror. My iae is still full and hasn't started to fade but I decide to fill it in anyway. I need to make sure no one thinks it's fake for testing. I get everything out on my desk while mentally preparing myself. I really hope no one heard the screaming from my dream. Although it is the middle of the night and the walls are thick enough that I shouldn't have woken anyone. I imagine that my screams woke up Adrian and he came to me from Gwen's room. I force this thought away as I fill my syringe with ink. I am lucky that I keep my ink at my desk and not at the bedside table. Or else I would be cleaning it out of the floorboards. I take a deep breath and stuff the cloth in my mouth. I raise the needle over my cheek about to pierce my skin.