Awake

FOUR

You'd think it would be hard to come back from something like that, but I have recuperative powers that surprise even myself. I'm resilient. Except for the dreams, but you can't really control dreams can you?

I used to. Control my dreams, I mean. Be a lucid dreamer. But after the ferry the dreams...they keep coming back.

You'd think it'd be the ferry falling apart, the great rusty propeller, turning - ready to shred me into pieces, but it isn't. Not the ocean, unnatural black - reaching up, devouring. Or even the feeling of plummeting into the fog.

No. It's the man - that man, his hands tied behind his back - staring, pleading. His eyes are what I keep on having nightmares about. And that woman's scream. The feeling of a jagged shard of metal slicing across someone's face.

It's not the ferry falling apart that haunts me, it's myself. The people I left to drown, the people I attacked without a second thought.

But it's not fear that I'm feeling, that makes me wake up in the middle of the night - out of breath, my fists clenched.

It's anger. 

Strangers hunted me along the metal deck. Grabbed me - pulled out those restraints. Those glowing blue handcuffs. They made me leave that man behind. They made me fight back. They put the blood on my hands.

They threw that man to the ground, tied him up, terrified him.

They made me feel like a victim, and a murderer. Worst of both worlds, really.

What gives them the right to touch another human being like that? To frighten another human like that?

It sounded like they did stuff like that all the time. Hunted... what did they call them? Loonies? Wakers?

And sold them.

Selling people. People like me? Am I a Loonie? A Waker?

The ferry, in the fog. Was it a dream? It wasn't real. I know that. Not in the way that the physical world is. It can't be. It fell apart. I smashed a window and everything broke - like a puzzle coming undone. I dove into the water and ended up on the deck, back where I'd started.

That woman, in the room. Was she like me? When I'd touched her, our minds had somehow meshed - and everything started to fall apart. If the ferry was a dream, whose dream was it?

When I woke up this morning, I was still clenching the shard of metal from the ferry. I sleep with it under my pillow. It's comforting.

If this is happening (and I have to accept now that it is happening) then I want to be in control. I don't want to be pulled into another dreamscape without warning. I don't want to run and hide like that.

I want to learn the rules of this new world. I want to be in control. I want to make them feel like I did. I want to make them afraid.

^^^

Author's Note:

Thank you everyone for reading! Let me know how you found the chapter, please vote or comment if you enjoyed! :)

For more Anna check out the tumblr (there's fan art there now?!): http://annawakes.tumblr.com/

Or the (super awesome) soundtracks: http://8tracks.com/annawakes