Waking

1

Alice

I should've stayed at home, I knew I was awake too early but it was rare to see early autumn scenery for me. No snow? I mean yeah everything is either dying or already dead but the lack of snow was amazing to see.

But-

As nice and amazing as it was to see I had left the safety of my home to check in with school to see where every one was at in the year. The temperature was rising too quickly and I felt every degree as it rose. I had to leave but the dean was droning on and I couldn't afford to piss him off.

Why didn't I just call the school?

"Dean?" He paused giving me a look of disapproval. "I don't feel well, may we finish this another time?" He immediately nodded and I scuttled out of his sight, I had a condition of sorts. The school kind of knew about it, not the full details but summer and the warmer months are hard for me and as such could only attend during winter. That worked anyway and I was pretty smart, there wasn't the risk of me falling behind so they just let it be.

I smashed into some kid on the way down the hall and slipped on the papers the kid dropped. I went down all knees and stood up as quickly as I had gone down, my vision blurred and all strength I had left my body. I sailed right into the linoleum, the back of my sweater was yanked up, saving my skull and I think they were talking to me but my senses had pretty much fled. A small sigh left my body as the rest of my body hit the ground. Wrapped in the heavy blankets of sleep I could only fret over who I just passed out in front of.

I woke up again in my own room and squinted at the calendar, two weeks, the thermometer sitting on my window told me it was 47 degrees out and sighed. Usually I could feel exactly how warm it was out above 35 degrees.

My condition is rather unique, if that word fits as well as my physician says it does. My family just calls it a curse, I mean a condition that on affects the female side of the family, blood relative only? Sure yeah a hereditary disease but do those put you to sleep the second the temp hits 44?

I don't age while I sleep, I can't get hurt and I can't be woken up. As soon as the temp hits 45 I'm down, regardless, when it's under that however I'm a fully functioning human being. Kind of, I lose movement range and some of my senses around the kill temperature. So I was pretty groggy and muffled trying to move around at the current temp, I had to pee so so bad and I was starving. Pretty normal all thing considered.

Since I don't age while I sleep I look a lot younger than I should. I'm twenty-six in a body of a seventeen year old not that I have an older mind over body type of deal to make up for the crap life I live but no one takes me seriously. The cut I got just before slipping under hurt a little but it would finally heal if given a few days or so. I can't heal, or get hurt more in my case, while stuck in sleep. My mother having gone mad tried to stab me in my sleep just before she fell to it too and couldn't even pierce skin. My grandma once had her house burn down from a forest fire and made it out still under without a single burn or injury. It was super useful I suppose but it was a cause for concern as well. Sometimes scientists will send their interns or some secret agency will send people to try and collect data on the curse since it was kind of like the sci-fi cryo sleep that the future astronauts used to transverse the black abyss in movies. Either that or they want the durability that the sleep granted our bodies to maybe apply to their super soldiers, they dabbled in enough heresy as it was, adding curses to it would damn the world. That but when they can't take samples from the subject they want to they tend to rush things like take the body without permission. Which is kidnapping. I ate some toast and peanut butter and headed outside.

The snow was blinding white as it shimmered and shone in the daylight. The sun was warm and I took in a deep breath of the frozen air and sighed. The sleep made me restless sometimes. What did I miss? What changed? I decided to go out and walk the wood, snow wasn't deep and the temperature was holding just fine. The first few times I was left to wake unattended I wandered around where I wasn't supposed to and got attacked by some experimental things but the temp wasn't stable and I was dragged back under just before I got ripped to pieces.