"C'mon, it'll be fun!" Brooke insists.
I look at her with disbelief in my eyes. She glares back at me puzzled, as if she can't read my expression. Or she's just trying to ignore it. "Every single time you have said that to me, it has never been fun."
Her mouth opens in shock when I say this. "What? Name *one time where that has happened."
I sigh. "Just one? Maybe when you convinced me to help donate canned food for the church! Guess what happened when we did that?"
Her expression relaxes, all of the excitement in her face disappears. She looks like she's been stabbed or something. "I'm sorry Julia, I try not to blame myself-"
"Stop." I interrupt her. "I'm sorry. It's nobody's fault that we died except for those stupid boys that lit the church on fire. Don't think for a second that you're to blame. I just don't see the point in going to this place just to experience an enhanced dream."
Tanner looks at me, confused. "It's not an 'enhanced dream', it puts you in a relaxed mental state and you can control your dream, like lucid dreaming. It feels like you're actually in your dream, or so I've heard." He smiles at me. "C'mon, we didn't walk all the way over here for nothing."
I sigh in frustration. I don't have the courage to tell them that I'm actually nervous to do this. It sounds pretty cool, but I don't trust that my mind won't wander to a horrible place and I would dream about something horrible. I can't take any more trauma, death is already enough.
"Fine. You owe me." I point at Brooke and walk past her into the science building. I have never heard of it before today; apparently it consists of museums and astrology type things. And what we came here to do of course, the lucid dreaming thing.
As I pass through the doors, Jack leans into me. "It's not that bad, if you don't want to do it, just keep the emergency button in your hand."
"Thank you." I whisper back. At least somebody has some empathy for me.
The entire building is dark so far. There's a front desk visible as soon as we walk inside with signs that hover over it. There's nobody at the desk, which gives me an eerie feeling.
To the right is the museum, which I heard from Tanner is huge. Straight ahead is a thin hallway full of curtains on both walls in place of doors, where we have to go.
"Does nobody run these things?" I ask as Tanner and Brooke carelessly walk down the hallway.
"Nope, it's all machine run." Tanner replies. "Now pick a room."
I sigh. That makes things so much worse. "Wait, I don't know what I'm doing."
"Me neither." Brooke replies. Tanner pushes through the curtains I was standing next to and Jack walks over to assist Brooke.
Behind the curtains is a large chair, like one you'd find at the dentist. It's black and leather, and there are a bunch of computers next to me.
"Have a seat." Tanner instructs, causing me to jump. I do as he says. Once I lie down completely, Tanner smirks as if he was going to do something to me "Now I'm going to strap these things to your body, okay?"
"I can do it myself, you know." I arch an eyebrow.
"Good point. Do it then." He takes a step back and crosses his arms.
I was hoping he would leave so that I could just wait until everyone was finished and pretend that I did it. "Uhh."
I don't know where to begin. I don't recognize anything, and there's a bunch of straps hanging off of the sides of the chair.
There's a few pieces of metal and a small computer close by.
"That's what I thought." He says and I smile nervously.
He grabs a few chords with straps at the ends of them. They're long and thick, and the strap has metal coils inside that freeze my skin. I exhale slowly, trying to stop the nerves from flowing through my body.
Another chord goes around my other arm and a third one is to be taped to my forehead. "You okay?" He asks, noticing that I close my eyes and begin to breathe manually.
I nod.
"You're all set." He opens my hand with his, then something cold is placed inside. I open my eyes and see an oval shaped device with a large red button, which I assume is the emergency button to end the experience.
On the side is a switch. "You're going to flip the switch to get it working. It's going to take a while but you're going to start to feel very tired and that's when you know it's working. Press the button to end the experience. Got it?"
I nod.
"See you in a few." Tanner leaves, then pulls the curtain closed.
Maybe I can just sit in this chair and pretend that I did the lucid dream experiment because actually doing it makes me feel uneasy.
What bothers me most is how brave I used to be when I was alive. I did anything without question because I wasn't scared of anything. Now I felt like the tense one who backs out of everything.
I guess I flew around the sky with a pair of artificial angel wings and jumped off of a cloud, but it was the little things like this that made me anxious and I had no idea why.
If I can jump off of a high place with the risk of falling through miles of sky, I can do this one thing I suppose.
I grip the device in my right hand and flip the switch.
A soft humming fills the room and I close my eyes, just waiting for my body to become tired. I feel relaxed, the pace of my thoughts begin to decrease.
All I can think about is how cool it feels to have almost no thoughts in my mind, though I do not have the brain capacity to process if that is good or bad.
I wake up from what I think is the trance I was put in, but I'm standing up in a grass field. I glance down at myself, at my same white dress and same small fire scar engraved on my wrist. The grass is dead and short, it looks dry.
I scan the familiar place around me, wondering where I am. Why does my brain choose to come here out of all places? I recognize the brown grass that scratches my ankles.
I'm in Chicago. I'm near my home.
I can't see very far in front of me, everything that is more than ten feet away is blurry, but there's a large brown blur to my right, and it spikes my curiosity.
I reach my arms out as I walk in fear of accidentally walking into something. I can't hear, see, or feel anything, but I can sense that something is off. I can't walk very fast, there's some sort of force slowing me down.
Once I reach the big blur, I realize what it is. It's a building, but not just any building, it's a church. The church.
I step away from it, stumbling as I do so. I can't walk properly, my equilibrium has been thrown off. My body is moving faster than my brain can comprehend it, which makes it impossible to adapt to my surroundings.
The church is on fire too.
"Run!" A male voice shouts. My head jerks over at three boys running from the church. Their voice echoes in my head. They're running so fast that they stumble over.
"I thought I heard a scream." One of them stops, looking back at the wood crackling as it burns.
"It doesn't matter, it's too late now." The first one replies, grabbing the other man's shirt and the boys run off.
I fume with anger. They had the chance to save us and they didn't. I could be with Nick right now, with my parents. I wouldn't have to suffer everyday thinking about how I had to leave everything that I knew.
I dodge towards the fire, blocking my face from the scorching heat. One of the windows from inside breaks and I see a girl stick her head outside.
It's me. I'm watching myself burn to death.
I see myself gasp for air, my face covered in ashes. Brooke lies next to me, she's weaker than me. I can tell. Her hair is burnt, her glasses are fogged up and her mouth is open in an attempt to gasp for air.
It's probably because she has asthma. Now it makes sense.
The smoke is visible from outside, it swarms the two girls inside of the building, the blonde one doesn't even look like me.
I try to step forward to pull myself out of the church, I can't help it.
But my feet are stagnant, they can't move. I begin to panic, being unable to move or help myself, but the sight is too horrible to watch, yet I watch it. I watch myself die.
A pair of hands are at my forearm, they squeezed it tight. My eyes break open and I'm back in the room, back where I'm supposed to be.
I'm panting hard and my arms are shaking. "It's okay." Tanner is next to me.
"I had... no control." I inhale and exhale loudly.
"It's okay, none of that was real." He assures me, then begins to take the straps off of me. I no longer feel chained down in that chair.
I can feel my heart beating so quickly, like it could pop out of my chest at any given moment.
"I watched myself." I tell him, my voice trembling. "I watched myself die."
His eyebrows narrow. "That's really strange. I'm sorry, Julia, none of us thought that would happen."
Brooke and Jack enter the room, their eyes wide with fear. "Who is getting murdered in here?" Brooke questions.
Tanner turns to them. "She couldn't get herself out of her session. She was dreaming about the fire." I'm glad he is the one to inform them because I don't want to.
"Oh my god." Brooke's hand comes to her mouth.
"It's fine." I rise from my seat, bothered by the unnecessary attention. "How did you know?"
Tanner sighs, his shoulders lowering. "You were screaming."
I raise my eyebrows and look at Brooke and Jack for confirmation, and they nod. "I didn't even realize."
"You didn't press the button, I had to do it for you."
I look down at my hand, which is still gripping the device tightly. "I couldn't move. I felt like I was in my dream."
"I know." Tanner nods. "It happens sometimes. Rarely. We better leave in case somebody heard that."
The four of us leave the building, not saying a single word the whole way back. I'm definitely not going to sleep tonight, or maybe ever again.
Ahh Julia's worst fear has come back, I feel so bad for her.
Make sure to comment and vote! Expect a sudden change in the next few chapters!
SM