Visions of a Half-Sleep

The Call

It should have felt like burning, at least that is what Stiles thought it would be like. Skin searing as you touch something so hot your brain lies to itself saying it's cold. Turns out being struck by lightning is nothing like that. No, being struck by lightning is so much worse than that.

When burnt you can pull away, retract in pain to cradle your wounds, but when electrocuted you completely lose control. Muscles contract, backs bend nearly in half, pressing all the air out of your lungs. Creeping dread crawls across your skin as every hair stands on edge. The smell of burning hair and skin coming from within.

Stiles wants to thrash. To throw his body and curl in pain. He can't. He had no control over what his body does. Writhing, he is forced to watch as flashing lights speed overhead, burning blue streaks behind his eyelids as he blinked. Spidering burning lines cut across the darkness, electricity makes itself known. Mother nature's vengeful child is ready to snap at any moment.

The light flickered all around him, it was like he was stuck in a bubble. Everyone was moving in slow motion but backgrounds flickering in fast forward, like characters from one movie were superimposed in another. He was a trapped observer as he and his flickering bubble travel out of his house, through the town, into the halls of the high school, straight into a closet at the back of the chemistry room.

Suddenly, with another flash, he finds himself strapped to the floor, massive leather binding holding him still. Arms pinned to his side, he stuck to the floor, his mouth held open by pinching metal. He can't move, can't scream, can't do a thing.

Fear coursed through him with a sudden shock it felt like his own heart was thrown to bounce off his back ribs.

The lights go out, leaving him blind. Mouth open, he feels liquid rush down his throat. What doesn't make its way into his body bubbles up to puddle along his face. Pooling in his eyes, clogging his nose and soaking him. Sputtering the lights come back on and he sees hundreds of jars and bottles dropping from a void in the ceiling. They rained down onto him, glass shattering around his head as he is sprayed in a technicolor flood of strange liquids. They get into his eyes and burn. They fill his nose and reek of the decaying stench. The coat his skin in tacky humid goo.

Above him, he can hear the sounds of talking. Nothing makes sense though. Like a foreign langue coming over a distant airwave. Syllables were held for too long, becoming mush in his ears unable to make out the beginning and end of words.

The liquid stops flowing. Cracking open his eyes he sees a simple tile ceiling, the kind he spent hours staring at in school, flick pencils into the air trying to make them stick in the foam panels. With a haggard sigh, he realizes he can move his mouth. With his mouth movements, he can move his head and his arms. The bindings are gone like they never existed, to begin with. Giving a realized sob, Stiles stays laying on the floor exhausted. Closing his eyes once more, he turns his head to relieve the pressure on the back of his head from being strapped down.

The lightning flickers begin again, his body ceases in memory, and in terror, his eyes fly open. Only to stare into the cold dead stare of another.

The face before him is mutilated, carved into, eyelid missing, and frozen in her final terrifying scream. Lydia Martin's hair was redder than Stiles ever remembered, blood from her scalp staining her strawberry blonde hair. The voices above him became louder, almost laughing at his despair. He pulls away only to stumble over another body.

It's Derek, stuck between wolf and human. His fur completely soaked through as he lays in a massive puddle of water. Scrambling to his feet Stiles looks around him. All around him was a sea of body and waters, stretching out endlessly into a vacuous void. Scott, Allison, Dad, his deputies, the entire town's bodies are splayed and half-submerged.