Meridian ◈ Seungjin

8 ◈ Penumbra

They kept coming back.

Thoughts, and memories. They grew with the sludge growing in his throat, in his body. At any time he felt he could be talking, or coughing, and that vile black ooze would spill from his mouth. He saw it in his dreams. He saw it often.

They grew worse.

A monster skittering, burning alive, someone knocking at your door when you're alone, red, footsteps, limp, lines, bright lines illuminating, drawing themselves around him as he fell into fields of painted begonias dripping, dripping, dripping, dripping, like the pond of creatures trying to drag him under, ripping, he felt his palm ripping against the rocks he gripped on, hoping to survive, footsteps, louder this time, louder, it was echoing in his head, knocking, red, stepping, he was alone, something biting his ankle, snapping, tearing, ripping through his flesh, burying him alive.

Among the chaos, red eyes met his gaze. Eyes of a beast, of a monster.

Through the mirror, they were staring back at him.

Hyunjin startled awake. Violent coughs rattling his body as his head nearly slammed into the empty bunk bed above him, his sweaty palms thumping against his chest to regain his breathing. He covered his ears, the heels of his palms digging relentlessly into the cartilage. Despite being awake, wide awake and shaking feverishly enough to know he wouldn't be able to sleep again tonight, he could still hear the blood curdling screams that tore him from the waining happiness usually coddled in the land of dreams.

For how warm the duvet was as it fell from his heaving chest, he only felt a chill wrapping it's grimy fingers around his body and sending jolts of an unwelcoming cold through to the tips of his nerves. His hands slowly dropped from his ears as he calmed, allowing the unusual frost to nip at his skin, finding a comfort in the way it cooled his frenzied mind.

His eyes quickly found themselves adjusting to the meager dark. Most of the lights within the dorm were shut off, and the blinds were closed to isolate them from the blinking city lights laying above the ocean over yonder, a place they overlooked but didn't reach. They couldn't see it if they wished to. Not at this hour, not when viewing the scenery was at the bottom of the list on pressing importance. The shadows drew longer in the room, what little existed from a strange soft blue glow tinting the world next to him. They seemed to bend, warping, wrapping, and staring as Hyunjin let his heartbeat calm down and flopped back on the tough mattress. Immediately, he pulled the duvet back over his neck, trembling fingers curling into the itchy but soft fabric as a slight stinging sensation brushed along his skin.

A light on the dorm room desk flickered on. From the corner of his eye, another plastic bottle from suspicious water dealer Chan's stash was handed over to him as the voice of his roommate asked quietly, "Nightmare?"

Hyunjin nodded. He took the bottle from him, cracking open the seal of the lid but otherwise doing nothing with the supposed refreshment. Somehow, chugging the water like he did earlier didn't seem nearly as inviting now that he was deeply rooted in that disturbing image. Again, he had to remind himself, it wasn't real. As he found the smallest will within his fighting spirit to take barely, hardly, scarcely, almost a sip of the water, but not enough to sit up off the bed or knock the warm blanket off him, he had remind himself despite the way his stomach curled in on itself and gurgled in protest to the sudden intrusion during it's fit.

"Why are you up?" He murmured the question to the roommate as he sealed the bottle again, setting it down on the floor as he rotated to lay balanced on his side. His hands hugged the duvet as close to his body as humanly possible. He felt small. Insignificant. Like he could be erased at any time, and he wouldn't be able to protest. People might remember him, his friends would certainly worry as they usually did over things that ultimately wouldn't matter, but he wouldn't be able to control it. He couldn't predict it. That idea was scarier than anything his dreams could have conjured up.