My gasp apparently wasn’t heard by my parents when I woke up, so I tried to steady my breathing. While trying to figure out what the heck had happened, my alarm clock went off. I got out of bed to turn it off and almost fell over. My legs were so weak, I couldn’t steady them and had to lean on my dresser for support. Finally, I got the stupid clock to turn off when my mom came into my room dressed for work.
“Oh, honey, are you okay? You don’t look too good.” She put her hand on my forehead like any mom would. “You feel pretty clammy. Do you want to stay home for today?”
I immediately took her up on that offer and said, almost too quickly, “Yeah, could I? Um, please?”
“Sure, just call me or your dad if there’s an emergency, okay?”
“Alright.”
She kissed my forehead and headed for the front door to her car while, on the way, telling my dad what was up. He called up to my room saying, “Feel better, okay kiddo?”
“Yeah, thanks, dad.”
As soon as I was alone in the house, I called Gira’s cell phone in a flurry. I could tell she was already walking to school because of the sound of her feet in the background.
“Suino? Hey, what’s up? Can’t we just talk at school?”
“I can’t. I’m sick... or at least that’s what my parents think.”
“Wait, are you skipping?!”
I couldn’t help but smile next to my own cell phone and slyly say, “It’s something like that,” and laugh.
“You’re doing it again.”
I stopped, and with a start, realized she was right. I’ve never skipped before and I don’t joke about it, even if I’m not actually skipping. But was I really? “Whatever, just listen, I had the creepiest dream last night.”
So, I told her about the whole nightmare. Even the voice (that, mind you, sounded like I recognized it, but didn’t) that talked to me before it. She was silent for a bit before she said, “So, he died just like that? Suino, that’s horrible! That poor boy... Oh my gosh, do you think this has anything to do with your weird personality?”
I was silent for a bit too and said, hesitantly, “Yeah, I think so. That’s why I called.”
“So, just to sum it up, you’re acting like a guy and you just had a nightmare about a guy.”
“That’s what it seems like.”
“Well, I have nothing as an answer to this problem. Look, why don’t you just get some rest and I’ll come over after school, okay?”
“Sure thing. Have fun at pris– I mean, school!” I snickered into my phone while I could tell that Gira was giving hers a disapproving glare.
She grumbled, “As soon as the old Suino comes back, the better,” and she hung up on me.
I rolled my eyes (Like I wouldn’t normally do) and decided to get some breakfast even though I wasn’t particularly hungry. I left my room and went downstairs to the kitchen to get something when my head felt really weird. I closed my eyes for a second to see if that would help when that same boy from my dream burst into my vision. I gasped as my eyes shot open. Everything around me was blurry and I was getting increasingly dizzy. A black haze was clouding my vision and I dropped to the ground in an instant. Sparks of light were behind my eyelids from whacking my head onto the ground so hard. But that pain paled against what I was feeling now. I finally understood the strength of that boy’s pain. The white-hot intensity of that so-called “seizure” was more like a bomb going off inside of me. The shattered remains of the metaphorical explosion scratched everything inside of me and I could hear myself crying out in sheer horror. My dream had only been a small taste of the real pain that had taken havoc on that poor boy’s body.
When the anguish and my screams had finally stopped, I found myself crying in a fetal position on the kitchen floor. My mind was a total mess of thoughts going from, Why is this happening to me? to a more pitiful view of thinking, like, Just kill me now... But, some of the thoughts weren’t mine and were spoken in the same anonymous voice I had heard in my dream.
“I’m so sorry... I wish I could help... Please forgive me...”
It continued saying things like that, so I said back to it, Whatever this pain is, you seem to know the most about it. I need you. I need your help. Please, I’m begging you! The voice was silent once more and it stayed that way. I felt like I was going to throw up, only I didn’t force myself not to like I had during my dream. So, let’s just say my trip to the bathroom wasn’t a short one, okay?
My body was still aching when I got out of the bathroom and my muscles were giving in, so I collapsed onto the living room couch and fell asleep. Surprisingly, the nightmare of last night didn’t haunt me this time. All I heard was the anonymous voice trying to comfort me by saying everything was going to be alright. Unconsciously, I asked it how it knew this. All it said was, “Because, I know everything that’s happening to you.”
The voice wrapped around my thoughts like a thick and overly scented perfume making me think harder about its owner. I don’t know how I figured it out, but I suddenly realized with a jolt that the voice belonged to the boy. But, of course, I woke up right after that.
Crud, I have to stop waking up at the most inconvenient spots in my dreams...
I sat up feeling at least a little bit better from the nap when I noticed I had a blanket on me. I looked across the living room into the kitchen to see my mom cleaning and smiled. Wait. She’s home?! I snapped my head to look at the digital clock sitting on the TV. I read 5:00 as my eyes widened. Holy– I was asleep for... I counted in my head. For about nine hours?! That little episode I had took way more out of me than I had expected! I mean, I slept for eight hours last night and was only up for about two hours before the pain started, which means I slept for seventeen hours and was only awake for two! I paused for a second and sighed. Wow. I ramble pretty easily.
