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....JACKIE AWOKE WITH a start in a moonlit dorm with her sheets tangled around her so fiercely that she felt tied up. A splitting pain drove through her skull, so excruciating that it felt like her brain was being pried open. She clutched at her temples and tried to kick her legs free of the sheets desperately. Her body shook horribly with the pain and shivers arose on her skin like spiders running across her flesh.
She managed to crawl out of bed and stumbled her way into the bathroom. She scrabbled blindly for the light switch and flicked it on when she found it. She gripped onto the rim of the sink so tightly that her knuckles stood out, sharp and cruel against the pale glow of her skin.
Her head tilted upwards towards the mirror, slow and stunted. When her gaze met her reflection, she found a stranger was standing in the glass in front of her. The vision that stared back at her was so terrifying that she gasped in horror. Her hair was crackling with the force of sheer magic and only the whites of her eyes were visible. She had deep rims of purple under her eyes and she looked truly deranged. Suddenly she felt a tug on her heart, and she was aware that she felt completely detached from her own body. Images flashed through her mind's eye. All of them too fast and unfamiliar to recognize.
And then as quick as the images had come, they were gone again, and she was thrown back into her own body. Her breathing came in little gasps, too short and too quick. She heard the click of a lamp turning on and then the sound of Cordelia's voice. "Jackie is that you in there?" she called out to her from the darkness.
Jackie turned away from the mirror and ran her hands through her now familiar hair as she tried to steady her breathing. "Yes. Its me." She forced out, through gritted teeth to hide the trembling pitch of her voice. "Go back to sleep Delia."
Jackie made her way back to bed and collapsed against her pillow in exhaustion. She turned on her side and tried to get to sleep. But now there was a newfound sensation of tingling in the back of her brain. Even in sleep it did not disappear. And when she found slumber, she dreamed of white pupils and floating souls.
