Night of the Alphas

Chapter 34

I laid down in my bed, staring at the ceiling. My eyes were so heavy, and I just wanted to sleep. Badly. But the dull pain in my head just wouldn't go away. It didn't most nights, but I had learned to ignore it. Tonight I couldn't. Between the pressure I was under with Night of the Alphas coming closer with each passing hour and the conversation I heard in the hall the other day, my mind just couldn't rest. I closed my eyes, hoping it would trick my body into falling asleep. Come on, you have another meeting in the morning. Just get at least a few hours of rest.

As much as I wanted sleep to overtake me, it didn't. It just became more difficult every second that passed. Out in the hall, I could hear people making friendly small talk in the hall, and more people a bit farther away from me shutting their heavy metal doors to attend to their evening affairs. On the other side of my wall, two women were arguing. I'd learned to live with all these sounds, but this was the first time they had actually bothered me. Every word, every footstep, every small noise was like nails on a chalkboard. The atmosphere and the people I'd become so accustomed to living around now seemed foreign and unpleasant.

All I wanted was for everything to stop.

Wait a minute. Where was the noise? Where were the people in the hall? They were all there a second ago, weren't they? Or I thought they were, at least. Even the faint scent of mildew floating through the AFM wall had disappeared. There was just nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I opened my eyes to see a cloudy hillside. It was funny, I actually didn't have any recollection of this place. It was just a featureless dreamworld. My body was weightless, as if I was nothing more than a wisp of fog. But all of this was trivial compared to the girl at the center of my dream.

She was wearing a white dress that stopped at her knees and blew in the wind. Her hair was long and flowy, and it was about the same color as mine. In fact, she looked a lot like me, now that I thought about it.

"Hello?" I reached out to touch the girl, but I couldn't. Every time I took a step closer to her, she just seemed to get farther away. After several steps forward, the same distance lay between us. "Hello? Ma'am? Can I help you?"

She sighed. It was the saddest noise I had ever heard coming from a person. I could tell she wasn't disappointed in me, but at the situation I was in.

"Ma'am? Do you need anything?"

Her head turned towards the ground. Under her breath, I heard her whisper something I couldn't hear.

"Did you say something?"

She clasped her hands behind her back. "What... Happened..." She wiped her face and took a deep breath. "To the boy I raised?"

I felt my heart break for her as her words sank in. I walked forward to comfort her, but she just kept drifting away. "Is there any way I can help?" I asked.

She nodded.

"How?"

She turned to face me. When she did, a pang of regret struck me. She looked gorgeous, yet so familiar. This was the woman that raised me. She had taken care of me when I was sick, loved me even when I was hard to love-- But she wasn't my mother, I knew that for a fact.

I also knew that I was the one who hurt her. And I had never felt such deep remorse for whatever I'd done. I needed to fix it as soon as I could.

"What did I do?" I asked in a shaky voice. "Whatever it was, I'm so, so sorry. I'll never do it again. Just tell me what it was and I'll try my best to fix it. I promise. And I'll also-"