The next morning was like the last three years of school mornings. Painful and terrible and full of many groans and much reluctance. A cool, pale light spilled in and brought the room to this odd visibility where I could see everything, but I couldn’t make out the details. It was nice, but it also made me realize it was about give in to the morning. I was up far too early, but that’s what I got for taking a nap twice.

Sighing, I figured I may as well go to the gym since I had more than enough time to spare. Stretching my limbs out wide in my bed, allowing myself to get acquainted with the world, an odd feeling quickly shot through my bones. All along my spine, all in my knees, my elbows, my knuckles, there was this strange sleeping feeling brought to life by my movement. It was a dark, radiating feeling that sprouted from the spaces between my joints and only grew the more I moved. It was also something I had felt before. Sitting up abruptly, I quickly scanned the room. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was looking for, and I didn’t want to find anything, but I found something anyway, and I froze.

In the corner of my room, standing hunched and huddled, dark and ominous was a looming, crooked figure. I didn’t have my glasses, so its outline was blurred and almost sank into the darkness of the room, but it was unmistakably there. The first thought in my head was the creature from my dream, the one that had attacked Madison Grier. She may have thought those steps as human, but they definitely were not. The silence in my room was suddenly deafening, my heart sprinting in my chest. This had to be a dream; this had to be a dream, but it was there, just like my dresser it leaned on for support. It was there. It stood still as a statue. It didn’t sound like it was even breathing. The longer I waited for it to move, or maybe for me to move, the worse this dread got.

This feeling of malice, of danger permeated from the creature and filled my room like a foul gas. My heart was loud, and I wanted to silence it, just in case this thing heard it, but my breathing seemed even louder as it sped up. The door was closed and the window was closed. How in the world could it have gotten in without my knowing? But there was no way, and I knew that. What I didn’t know was what it was.

My body tense, my jaw tight, I watched intently, wondering what there was to be done next with this hunched, black, crooked figure in my room. I couldn’t make out what it could possibly be except vaguely humanoid. I figured the next should be to at least see what I was reaching for. Even though I had various pens and scissors around my room, I couldn’t just go swinging blindly at it. Swallowing quietly, I made a motion to move toward my glasses, but it was alerted by the sound of my swallowing. Its head snapped up with a sickening crack, and I froze again, my hand hovering just above my thigh underneath the sheets.

The creature began to twitch and sniff as its misshapen head swayed back and forth, back and forth, like a snake searching, tasting the air for its prey. I closed my eyes and took a deep, silent breath as fear overcame me. It took a step toward me, its body bending around the dresser. I could hear a long, sharp nail scratching against the floor. My bones felt like concrete: heavy and unmoving. My blood was ice in my veins. It took another step, those long nails scraped like a jagged axe through my floor. What is that thing?

A frantic, terrified tear slipped away from my eye as I prayed that someone might hear this thing, might somehow sense that something was awry in the house and just call up the stairs or even come up to check on me, but I was alone here. I was always alone, and I wondered if I was going to die here, alone.

The creature took another step closer to me, and it was all I could do to stifle a whimper. My vision didn’t magically clear up like I prayed, and it was at the edge of my bed now. My eyes were wide and my whole body was shaking. My bones seemed to rattle independent of my own fear, and my gaze was unwavering from the creature that was trying to find me. Deliriously, I
closed my eyes, hoping desperately that this was a dream, but this fear was very real, and so was that thing that was now taking another step toward me, falling over the foot of my bed and collapsing on me.

Someone’s hand fell suddenly on my shoulder, and I jolted, knowing that this was the end. I let out a loud and sudden scream, and my eyes shot open to show me my father standing beside my bed, his body tensed and alert.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concern etched into his face as I sat up, breathing heavily. I stared at him for a moment, making sure it was him and he was real. He still had the same oval, brown face with a straight thick nose and a smooth scalp. He was hulking and wearing a black hoodie with his signature workout tights and a fanny pack. I patted his arm to make sure he was real, and feeling his solid muscle beneath and the familiar raised scar on his shoulder, I exhaled deeply and let myself relax.

“Yeah, I just had a really—a really bad dream,” I breathed, running my hands over my face.

“Well, it was just a dream. It wasn’t real, so you’re okay, alright?” he said gruffly, rubbing my back roughly. I opened my eyes and let my hands fall, letting my head roll back as I looked up at the ceiling, trying to actually acquaint myself with this reality, my reality.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” I said quietly, looking back down at my lap, then back at him. “I’m okay.”

“Do you want to go to school today?” he asked, and it was then I realized the warm sun was lighting my room and showing me the truth. There was nothing standing beside my dresser, there was no bad, odd feeling. There was just this odd simmering ache on my back, just beneath my left shoulder blade. I rolled my shoulders back and said, “Yeah. I’ll go. It’s only the second
day.”

“Good,” he said, standing. My bed seemed to sigh with relief. He was a huge, massive, heavy man, and I could always trust him to protect me. I loved my father so much, and it was times like this I really appreciated him. I gave him half of an attempted smile, and he said before he left my room, “I’ll be waiting in the car, okay? And let’s hurry; it’s already seven thirty.”

“Well, crap,” I said, jumping up from the bed.

The teacher looked down at her roster as I sulked quietly into the room, and she said disapprovingly, “Amor, it’s the second day.”

I was thirty minutes late, the feeling in my back hadn’t subsided (actually it intensified), and I was still thoroughly miffed from the dream. I was not having any of that attitude this morning, so I gave her the deadest look I could muster, and said in a blank voice, “No one really asks to get in accidents, but they do anyway, huh.”

Her face fell instantly, and the class grew quiet. I sulked to the back of the class, where there was a spare seat available. I plopped heavily in the ceramic chair and leaned my head back as the teacher tried to restart whatever part of the syllabus she left off on.

“Did you actually get into an accident?” someone asked beside me. Glancing to my side, it was an old classmate of mine from middle school. Monica, I think. Rolling my eyes back to the teacher’s lecture, I breathed, “Nope.”

Crossing my arms, I settled into the seat, adjusting my posture to say, without a doubt and very loudly, ‘Leave me alone.’ I was reeling from this morning’s dream.

What was that? I thought to myself. I thought back to the creature, trying hard to sharpen the image in my head, but in my dream, I wasn’t wearing glasses. Something really made me wonder if it was actually a dream. The fantastical part of my brain wandered into the realm of misunderstanding and shadows, wondering if there was any chance, any slight possibility it could have been real. In my dreams, every single one of them, I could see everything clearly. Why couldn’t I see in this last one?

If it was a dream, I should have been able to recall the images I saw in at least moderate detail, right? But all I could remember was the vague humanoid standing hunched in the corner, sniffing the air and looking for me like some animal. The fear in my heart was real, too. It was more real than any of the feelings I’d had in my past dreams, and my body was definitely shaking. My body hadn’t stopped trembling until I was safely at the school, surrounded by the real human monsters. It had been an effort to just put on the little makeup I wore.

And what about what Madison had said to me? What about her? Of all the people I’d dreamed about, she was the one I dreamt most of, and she actually spoke to me. I assumed Madison lived her life in my dreams and that was that. Granted she seemed to live a very odd and adventurous life, but she lived her life uninterrupted by my audience regardless. I felt I was simply a spectator on something that may or may not be real, either way.

Rationalization tried to set in and tell me it wasn’t real; it couldn’t be real. But how could I know? It was so hard to distinguish my life from my dreams. It’d always been difficult for me to find the distinction between the fantasy and reality when I woke up, but it always corrected itself soon after. This one, however, had me unsettled and uncomfortable in my skin. It felt too real. It felt way too real. Sighing inwardly, I supposed I should have taken the time to look into Madison Grier. If she was real, then everyone else might be, too, and so must that terrible dream.

I shook my head.

I finally pulled out my notebook and started to jot down some notes. She mentioned something about finding certain angles of something, and my mind flickered to triangles. I wondered if the triangle was still there on my own face. Since I was rushing, I didn’t get a chance to see if it changed at all. I’d forgotten that Madison had a similar triangle on her face. It was in the same place as mine, and the same size, too, except hers was red. There was an ominous dread that followed the thought of that triangle. It wasn’t even Madison, but it was the triangle itself. There’d always been an odd connection to Madison, but the appearance of this triangle on her face and mine made it seem ungodly now.

 

The day continued like normal for the most part. School was a drag that I was half checked-out for. The one thing that forced me to be mildly invested was the memory of the dream. I couldn’t shake it from my head. It hung over me like a dark cloud, as if to remind me that it might actually have happened and it was something to be concerned about. The mental burden was made bearable by a persistent soreness on my back. Just beneath my left shoulder blade. It was a soreness that had followed me since yesterday. I wanted to convince myself that it had lessened, but the pain was now starting to deepen and to pull at my attention.

During lunch, I had tried to get a classmate to try to elbow the pain from my shoulder, but it bit back harshly. I had work later on that day, too, which gave me a dreary, almost scornful look at the world for a little while. My mood was heavy and stubborn. There were many days where I was angry and resentful for little more than some discomfort within myself that was difficult to soothe. There were many other, darker days of solitude and quiet. Those were impossible to relieve.

I was in my English class, discussing some pseudo in-depth analysis of The Catcher in the Rye. This was probably as good as any time to really get into it with myself considering how much I hated the book. My mood had been steadily mounting into a silent storm, and my brain spared no time in spiraling quickly out of control. I was aware my thoughts were getting away from me, but I was having a difficult time getting back in control.

My thoughts had begun to flicker haphazardly from one bad thing to the next. I happened to glance at my handwriting, and had the sudden thought that I was somehow going to fail in life because my inability to read my own sloppy writing was a clear indicator I would fail to be a proper functioning adult. My sleeve happened to slide up my arm as my hand glided across the paper, jotting down notes. A light, raised scar popped into view, and my stomach rolled gently.

I tugged my sleeve back down past my wrist.

I wasn’t normal, and I knew this. Days and moments like these made that rudely clear. I really wasn’t that different from anyone else, but most people didn’t have a scraped up arm like I did. Most people didn’t think about or have to deal with the darkness that stirred in the recesses of their thoughts, or deal with the crashing waves of endless, uncontrollable feelings and emotions. I was but a pebble in the vast sea of my mind, constantly reminded that I was at the whim of how my brain felt that particular day, and I guess today it wanted to come down on me today.

Without meaning to, I happened to catch the beginning of someone’s contribution about how their depression had been hectic not too long ago, and normally I wouldn’t have thought too much on it, but I was in a state. I could see the look on their face, and my brain pounced on the emotional deflection. They hadn’t experienced real depression. They’d suffered it as a transient emotion. It was sad to hear, but they had no idea of the depths, and that silently enraged me.

Taking a deep breath and fixing my eyes straight ahead, I forced myself to tune them out. My anger had quickly climbed to an uncomfortable fever. I tried to find solace within myself by justifying their ignorance. ‘It’s okay; they’re stupid and you’re not. You get it.’ To spite me, a jolt shot through my shoulder, and I forced myself to stifle a groan. I just wanted this day to be over. At the very least, the pain in my back to subside at least a little. Or this anger to melt away. Or my brain to be normal. I really wished I had a normal brain.

Adding fuel to this illogical fire, jealousy flowed.

Many of them would never understand even a fraction of the pain people like us suffered at our own hands. That was the scariest part to me. Sometimes it could be empowering, but most days I feared myself. If I could bring myself to do such heinous things to my own skin, what was stopping me from doing it to other people? Taking my pain and anger out on the world and turning into just another school shooter or mass murderer? At least that’s what everyone thought about people like me.

I glanced down at my arm. I knew what I would see if I pulled back my sleeve. At times like these, I didn’t need to pull it back. Sometimes I could just feel them there, reminding me of what I did to myself and just how terrible of a person I actually was. Making a face at myself, I tried to ignore another fuel to this terrible fire: guilt. Of the spectrum of negativity that came with dealing with depression, guilt was by far the most unpleasant. That was the most illogical of all the ridiculous fires within me. This time, however, I could save myself from it. I chose to feel personally slighted by the healthy mind of the others in the class. It wasn’t where I wanted to be mentally, but it was better than descending into the depths of my thoughts.

At least in this place, I could get on my emotional high horse. I lived in a brain that forced me to see the different perspectives others were generally closed off to, so I told myself. Because I understood such depths of pain, I understood how much it could truly hurt. People couldn’t help that they didn’t understand a pain that could only be described for some of them. Many people would never know what it was like to fight for their own lives against themselves. Though it frustrated me that some of them tried to preach such understanding knowing they truly didn’t understand, I was at least glad to know that most people wouldn’t understand such betrayal. I didn’t wish such a terrible pain on anyone. No one deserved to be an enemy to themselves.

Work was as eventful as working at a slow burger place could be. The day carried into the night with three customers per hour. Needless to say, I was bored out of my mind. Staring off into space, watching the sun crawl across the sky, I got lost in my head. I was wondering why my back hadn’t stopped hurting. It had subsided slightly, but the pain was consistent. It was just enough to annoy me now. My mood had lifted since school; the waters in my head were now manageable, but they were still just high enough for me to be on edge. If I wasn’t careful, I would sink and drown.

Something light and papery struck my head. I flinched and looked over at Evelyn. Evelyn was my coworker that shift. She was the only fun coworker. She was hiding behind the door, peering at me through the small window with a smirk in her eyes. I snickered and balled up a piece of foil as she slithered out from behind it. I tossed it her way, and it bounced off of the matching red cap she wore.

“Ama, why do you have a triangle on your face?” she asked with a light laugh. I sighed light-heartedly and answered, “I don’t know, man. It’s just there. The Illuminati’s coming for me or something.”

“The Illuminati? So, does that mean you have, like, ties to the music industry?” she asked.

“Yeah, actually. Me and Jay-Z are pretty tight. Our whole plan right now is to brainwash the youth with false ideas of good music right now. That’s why you have all these mumble rappers and Lil’ This and Lil’ That.”

“No wonder why all the kids are so stupid!”

“Yeah, dude. What person in their right mind would mix Mali and Percocet?”

“Probably the same person who would mix codeine and sprite.”

I laughed, and we goofed around for a little while. Evelyn was my favorite at the small burger place. She was younger than me, but she was by far the most entertaining and relatable. All the others who worked there—three other people my age (one of which I went to school with), two college kids, and two forty-somethings—were significantly blander than Evelyn. I would consider her to be a friend, but we didn’t hang out much outside of work and the occasional after work adventure. Those normally consisted of all the girls going out to a different burger place that was open 24 hours and served milkshakes. Those nights were fun, but we didn’t do much outside that.

“Are you doing anything after work tomorrow?” she asked. My eyes traveled skyward as I thought about all the nothing I had to do. I was mildly surprised by her query, but she was good company. I wouldn’t mind giving her my time.

“You know. Sacrificial goat offering. Gotta make sure Cardi stays on top,” I laughed. “Cool, cool. Whenever you’re done with that, you should definitely come over. Me and Care Bear were gonna binge watch Adventure Time,” she smirked.

“Sure, I’m down,” I chuckled.

And without warning whatsoever, we both heard the sudden telltale sign of a loud screech closely followed by a violent crash. My head whipped around to the direction of the sound, but that side of the restaurant was covered by tall, thick bushes. I glanced at Evelyn and walked around to the front and through the door. I was instantly hit with the scent of burned rubber, exhaust fumes, and some other gases that escaped the crash. My mouth fell open as I looked upon the accident.

It was a two-car collision. Or rather two truck. One massive hummer was wrapped around a light pole that was now slightly bent. Pinning it to the pole was a large pickup truck carrying some type of carriage. The windshield was partially shattered and the whole front smashed straight into the side of the hummer. The front of the hummer was facing away, but the back windshield was gone and the interior looked crushed together. Oils and other fluids were leaking out of the exhaust and from underneath, and it was steaming while dark clouds escaped into the sky, dirtying the warm blue.

The back of the pickup had been slightly crushed by the carriage, which I now saw leaking blood. As I watched the blood dripping on the ground, the sounds finally set in. Both trucks were set in a permanent battle of horns, the hissing of the steam escaping from the trucks, and then the sound of animals. The horrific agonized cries of horses were coming from the carriage.

My heart sank and I was stuck in place, unable to fully understand what had just happened. My body was instantly frozen, the accident becoming the only thing I could see. My eyes were fixated on it, engraving every terrible detail to memory, and some delirious part of me wondered if it could be a dream. There was a hope that this could be some horrible, horrible dream, maybe a movie? This accident, that somehow seemed altogether too violent couldn’t exist here; a movie, yes, but not here in this sort of reality. Despite my blatant denial of what was clearly in front of me, I knew it was real. This violent, horrendous accident happened, and people had no doubt died, and there were animals who were in the process of dying now. The accident was staring at me and the rest of the world in its lavish terror.

Evelyn was beside me and that’s how I knew it was real, because she was real and she was yelling, “Holy shit did that just happen?”

My body was in motion before I knew what was actually happening. Suddenly, I was bolting up the street, right up to the crash. My heart was racing uncontrollably, and my muscles felt stiff and rigid in my skin. I was fighting against the ice in my veins, against my own body to get to the crash, to get to the people. Someone had to do something. Someone could be alive in there, and they could stay alive if someone pulled them out, and I knew the paramedics wouldn’t get there in time. It was literally now or never. Slamming my hands on the side of the pickup truck, I tried to peer in. The sounds of the crash had subsided somehow, and the scent of the accident wasn’t overwhelming me. The smoke did make my eyes water, and the door was hot beneath my hands, but I was still able to look in.

The airbags had deployed and lay across a man like a blanket. The passenger side looked empty, thankfully, but the airbag had been deployed on that side as well and there was a suspicious splatter of blood against the windshield. The driver’s side was slightly ajar, the hinge looking ready to break off. Placing my hands on the parts of the door that wasn’t shattered or caved in, I pulled at the door with all my strength. The door had been closer to giving than I’d expected as I stumbled back, the weight of the door in my arms and knocking my back. Jumping up, I darted back to the truck to inspect the man. His head was steady, his chin resting on his chest, but he was still. Blood splattered on across the airbag, sprouting from a wound I couldn’t see. I tried to push him back in the seat, but I didn’t realize how heavy an unconscious man actually was.

He was bleeding profusely from a wide gash on the other side of his face, and his neck had almost ripped open from the force of slamming into his seatbelt. His shirt had been torn, and I could already see heavy and intense bruising forming on his skin. As I took in a quick snapshot of all of the injuries I could see and considered the ones I couldn’t, the pervading and loudest question, Is he alive? I went to place two fingers on the side of his neck, but then a low growl sounded from the floor of the car. Crouching down, there was a dog laying in a crumpled heap beside his feet. It had some blood on it as well, and from my angle, I could see sprawled beneath the airbag on the seat beside the man was a small girl. The ice shot through my body like a bullet once again.

There was a giant gash dividing her head and exposing part of her skull. I popped up instantly, looking at the windshield and back at the little girl. The way her head was propped on her body, it was evident her neck had broken. The little girl had a shock of dark hair on her head. My eyes went back to the man, and my heart broke. It seemed he might have been the one to survive this. My hand went to his neck again and I waited a moment, but it was there. A very faint thump played against my fingertips, and I wasted no time in trying to drag him from the car, but the seatbelt had been jammed in place. Reaching to my back pocket, I pulled out a switch blade and began to saw at the belt. Once he was loose, as carefully as I could, I manipulated his body so I could pull him from the seat.

He had several broken bones just from what I could feel. There was no way I could know the extent of his injuries, but I pulled him as far from the truck as quickly as I dared. The horses’ cries had not lessened any, and it made me shutter as I glanced at the bloody carriage. The dog in the truck was a young border collie, and though it tried to nip at me, I still pulled it out. Its left front paw had been broken, and the right back leg snapped almost in half. It whimpered as I maneuvered its body in my arms, and I laid it beside the man. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, but I needed to grab the little girl. On the off chance she had survived the crash, I needed to at least get her out.

I was almost afraid to touch her tiny body. In the moment, she had looked so large, all sprawled out and awkward on the seat, but when I actually held her in my arms, she felt so small and tiny and fragile and . . . and lifeless. I almost dropped her, more out of shock than anything else. In that moment as I cradled this poor little girl’s body, I thought of all the things she would never experience. I didn’t know all of what she’d lived, but I knew she wouldn’t get to see high school. She wouldn’t have a first love. She wouldn’t have a first kiss. She wouldn’t experience getting her license, or graduating, or going to college, or not going to college, or living her life. Everything for her, all of her experiences, all of her happiness and sadness and laughter and tears and anger and joy– that all suddenly stopped her. What made it worse was everything she left behind. Her mother, her friends, her father, who lay on the grass and now had the misfortune of possibly living with this event for the rest of his life . . .

I shook my head and shimmied from the car, this tiny, broken little girl in my arms, and with tears in my eyes, I laid her down as gently as I could beside the man. Someone had finally come along and was now performing CPR on him. The dog, in seeing me lay the girl beside her father, tried to crawl over to her with its mangled limbs, and once it was close enough, began to whine and cry as it nudged her little hand with its nose.

I couldn’t do this.

I turned away, turning my back on the scene and trying to ground myself, trying to remind myself that I was alive, that this wasn’t my life or my tragedy to deal with. This was just a really bad thing, and I tried to make the best of it. A violent, bitter laugh barked out of my mouth suddenly. Who was I kidding? How do you try to make the best of something like this? How do you go about trying to save someone from this situation knowing that if they survived, their life would just be totally ruined after this? How do you do that? Maybe he might have been better off in the wreck.

My body began to freeze up and I could feel my blood almost solidify as my eyes transfixed themselves on the Target sign. That seemed to be the only thing that made sense, for some reason. The red dot in the center was somehow something perfect and unmistakable. It was something that couldn’t be skewed by angles and perspective. No matter how you looked at it, it was a giant red dot. This wasn’t a red dot that had a life, or a red dot that was trying to get its life together, or a red dot who might be confused for using people or being terrible or being saintly. It was just a red dot doing red dot stuff. This was the only thing that made sense, suddenly, but trying to pull me back to reality, Evelyn was beside me. She was shaking me gently, calling my name over and over, but either I didn’t want to hear her or I couldn’t hear her, but I was so focused on that red dot.

This red dot was a solid anchor in a sea of uncertainty, a flood of questions. Had this really happened? Had I really seen that? Had that girl really died? Did I actually take her from the truck? Did I really feel her lifelessness? Her fragility? Her brokenness? Was this all actually real? It couldn’t possibly, though. This didn’t happen in real life, not mine. Tragedies like these existed on a plane far from my world, in a place where the impossible happened. But then, I’m certain this man existed in a world where he had his family, where he had his living, where he had his ups and his downs and had his life. I was almost as certain as that red dot that he had no intention of getting into an accident, or getting into a crash of that magnitude. He probably woke up like any other day, ate his breakfast like normal, all ideas of horror far from his mind and his reality, just like how this one was far from mine. I was certain he had no intention of dying, or of losing this little girl that day.

Or this man could have lived a terrible life, being a terrible person. He could have been some druggy or some abusive asshole. He could have been this or that or this or that and a thousand other possibilities with no possible chance of answer. This man was an enigma that made no sense because there was no way I could know any of this. The red dot made sense, though. In all of this terrible, horrific mess, that red dot made sense. That red dot was a nice circle, attached to a building. It was a sturdy red dot that had seen many days, seen many people and things and many weathers and rains and winds, and still stood there shining brightly.

This red dot was a certainty, and it made sense. It had to make sense.

And just to screw with me and my certainty in the world, this red dot became a red sphere, and this red sphere was now flickering as the sphere became a fire, and this fire was staring at me, suspended in the air. Burning in its own fuel, creating its own flame, this burning sphere became a person, curled up on themselves, and they stayed this way for a while, just sitting there in the air. A lonely island of raging fire, an anomaly of a source-less inferno that defied logic. This couldn’t be real. No; this wasn’t real. But somehow, there it was, staring at me anyway, and then it spoke to me.

“Where are you?” they asked. “Where are you?”

And I didn’t know if I should have answered or just left, turn around, get my keys from the store, get in my car and drive home– but I stood there, staring at this person who was curled up in a ball of fire and questioning me. Was I hallucinating? I had to be. Behind me, Evelyn had abandoned snapping me from this mental paralysis, but the horses were still crying. The car was still on fire. The girl was still dead. The world still raged on behind me in its horrendously defiant reality, while my own reality shifted before my eyes as this red dot became a burning person.

“Where are you?” they asked.

Against my will, I answered back, “I’m here,” the words pulled from my mouth as the question beckoned to me, demanded acknowledgement and answer. “I’m here.”

Without warning, this person unfurled themselves to their full glory. I didn’t see their face or get a good look at their body, but I saw, as this ball of fire all of a sudden exploded outward, that this person had one wing. A cry of surprise and pain escaped from my mouth as I crumpled to the ground, a tearing, shattering pain shearing its way through the my left shoulder, exactly where it’d been hurting all day. My hand shot back reflexively to see if maybe I’d been struck by something, but then this burning person, this creature on fire was standing before me. Their skin was glass containing a raging inferno, and I could feel it quickly burning my skin the longer they stood before me.

I looked up, an indescribable mix of emotions brewing within me, and this creature, this person stared down at me with eyes as bright as the sun above. I crumpled beneath their gaze and the heat radiating from their body, quite suddenly overwhelmed by this confusing mixture of emotions and feelings and perceptions.

Quickly, I began chanting to myself, just loud enough for me to hear, “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.”

“I am coming,” they said in a hollow, ghostly voice, “You cannot hide from me anymore.”

And then my world immediately went black.