To Die For (Newt//Maze Runner)

9) Nightmare

"Emmeline! Emmeline wake up! It's a nightmare, it isn't real! It's just a nightmare! Em! Em, you're okay. Wake up!".

Fretful voices fill my head, but I'm stuck helpless in the in-between, not quite awake yet not quite asleep. I squirm against tight invisible bonds, trying to break out of my mind, but all the struggling in the world would do me no good.

I force myself to calm down, to regulate my ragged breaths into deep ones. The calmer I am, the looser the ropes become.

Before long they have fallen away into oblivion, and I push myself off of the ground. I stumble through a dark tunnel, reaching out desperately to find my way back to conciousness.

After wandering aimlessly, my cold hands find a door handle similar to the one in my room. I grab it and pull. An unseen hand tips me forwards, and I pitch over a railing into deep water.

Something is weighing me down, and I'm sinking further and further down, unable to breath.

Unable to scream.

My lungs start to burn like a wildfire, but still I don't stop tossing and turning. If there's one thing the Maze has taught me - taught us all - is that you never give up. There's always another way out.

I shut my eyes for just a second, praying to every god in the shucking universe that this isn't how I die.

And when I open them again, I am back in the Glade.

I sit up abruptly, sweat dripping from me like a waterfall. My hands shake and twitch, as if I'm having a seizure, and my eyes have accustomed to the darkness so much that I have to blink constantly to be able to vaguely see my surroundings.

It is only when I stop feeling like I'm drowning in air, that I realise I am surrounded by a number of worried faces. Alby sits at the foot of my bed; Minho is lent with his head against the wall; George, Gally and Winston stand by my window, worried looks etched across their features; and sat in a chair next to me is Newt.

"What the shuck was that, girl-greenie? We thought you were dying." Minho stands and looks at me, staring at me expectantly. Waiting for me to explain.

"I, I don't know. I heard this horrific screaming in the night, and I opened the door and then I was tumbling through this huge chasm. I landed in the Box but then it turned into this huge meadow. I saw Sonya, my friend from the Field, and when I went towards her, all the other girls were there. But they weren't my friends, they were demons, and black tar was dripping out of their mouths. It turned into a river of, of blood and it rushed at me, chasing me all the way into the meadow again, but the beautiful field I had been in moments ago cha was no longer there. It was the Maze." I say, still shaking slightly.

I glance over at Newt, deciding whether to tell him that he was present in the hallucination. I decide that I should, it's only fair that he knows. "You were there, Newt" He stops staring at the wall and faces me, rubbing his pale lip with concern.

"What did I do? In your nightmare, I mean" he asks.

"You yelled for me to run. I didn't know what from, but you just kept saying run. Over and over. You were frantic too, jumping and waving and all that klunk. I couldn't see you for ages either and when I did, a Creature - or Griever, or whatever you call them - dropped down out of nowhere. I took your advice at that point, and ran. It was chasing me for a while, but suddenly it stopped. All of a sudden I felt these, these pricks all over me and there were hundreds of beetle-blades all over me. Biting me, pinching me, whatever the hell they do. Then I passed out and I heard you all shouting, but I couldn't get to you. I tried. I really tried." I gulp, but Minho gestures for me to finish.