My brother looks up, growing pale. "What did you say?"
I stare at the wall in front of me, eyes stinging. My fingernails scratch at the kitchen table, wearing away the protective wax.
"I-I said," I begin, and clear my throat. "The world... is burning."
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November 12th, 20XX
XXXXXXXXXX, Vermont
United States
6:30 AM
The burning red sun, though rising, sinks behind the mountainous wall of stone as I glide down the hill. My bike creaks and clicks, the sound whisking away in the wind. I'd forgotten to take my headphones out of my backpack before I took off, and did not want to delay by stopping to do so, so I was stuck in my head.
Unable to listen to my own labored breathing for much longer, I begin whistling. My powerful lungs force the sound out, reverberating through the canyon, rattling my ribcage. Birds fly. A stark black feather, previously floating down from its startled, long-gone owner, is struck by my left knuckle as I fly by. I wince at the sting.
Tears are forced out of my eyes. But through the blur, I see the towering concrete building down below.
My path takes me all the way along the side of the canyon wall at my right side. Down, down, down, to the ground hundreds of feet below. Like a highway's looping roundabout, I think to myself.
My destination is the building in the middle of the loop. Electric fencing looms a dozen feet into the air. Metal towers, bones of steel rising nearly twice as high, are placed around the corners, topped with outposts and spotlights.
The only way in is the large, solid steel gate at the front. It's lined with security cameras, metal detectors, and every system of identification currently known to man, plus a few more.
Well, that and a small tunnel around the back, running beneath the fencing, and coming up in a storage closet - the opening hidden by a trapdoor made of the same dead grass as the rest of the area.
This is my school.
This is where I bike to every day, and learn.
Not math, though. Or geography. Or history, or literature, or science, or any other "normal" subject. No, here I learn something very different.
Here, I learn how to kill a man.
YOU ARE READING
Twisted Dreams
PoetryA collection of short stories, poems, and half-written ramblings. ~•°•°-----------------------------------《☆》 dream \ ˈdrēm \ 1 : a series of thoughts, visions, or feelings that happen during sleep ~•°•°-----------------------------------《☆》 night·m...
