16| The Nightmare Intermission

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Something changes that night.

Sleep takes its time to arrive, even with Brooha's potion. You figure the nerves darting around, has to be about tomorrow's meeting with the board. No, you do not figure. You know it is. Once you do drift off, you find yourself standing in a familiar place.

The field cruelly greets you like an old friend, as if it has not tortured you from childhood. Deceiving you behind its field of flowers and grass, something feels different here tonight when entering your dream.

Firstly, when you look around, everything is in the colour it should be in, the red filter has lifted. You look up, above is enhanced with dark cooling colours, the blues accentuated, the purples glowing and gleaming stars that flick the canvas of the night sky are graphically bright. 

Too bright. It has never been this vivid before, something about it feels off.

All the colours deepen, enhance and become as vibrant as ever.

No. It is very wrong.

Then the ground lets out a grumble, a vibration travelling from your feet to your head, spreading like a weed through your body. It is coming, the meteor.

What it actually is, is unknown to you.

You turn around and locate the inflamed meteor, a glowing speck roaring in your direction. Everything looks different tonight and you become mesmerised, unable to unfix your eyes from the mighty orange and yellow flames as they illuminate the sky. 

It is too much already. The way the breeze hits you, sending shivers and creating goose bumps along your skin. Is this what it is like to feel the cold? The smell of the crisp air is too much for your nose, sharp as it enters for oxygen.

When you glance back at the meteor, you see that it has doubled in size and ever growing.

Now would be a good time to run.

So you do.

And it is different when you run, light and airy. You are able to bound off like you would in real life, weightless ankles with a spring in your step.

But alas, you will never be a match for the meteor. The rumbling becomes louder and the atmosphere becomes dense, sensing its presence.

You stop to turn, knowing what is next and how there is no way out. Your eyes become immersed in the strength of its surrounding flames taking over your zero control.

Air becoming heavy and pressurised, that is when it hits you.

At once you are crying out in agonising pain. Pain of being crushed to the ground, being pulled into a fierce whirl of energy and flames, of wind and pressure. Each nerve in your body feels as if it has been split open forcefully, every inch of skin and ounce of blood carved and boiled to obliteration.

You hang in the air, in the centre of this meteor, with every bit of you left to keep fighting. But the truth is that this has gotten worse, taken a dark twist somehow and resulted in this excruciating, dark and disturbing and incredibly vivid nightmare.  

Stuck with no escape from the continuous loop, your vision flashing white and black occasionally, you pass the point of being able to make a sound. Nothing comes out of you mouth, though monstrous claws inside of you thrash away at your insides, desperate to escape, pleading to escape. They scrape their sharp claws against the inside of your stomach, chest, then make their way to your throat.

The hands of pure panic over take you, with no other option but to let it happen.

And then you wake up.

But the feeling does not pass at once, like it does every other time. You are drenched in sweat and tears, body ghostly pale in the glow that comes through your window. Residue of the pain, remains coursing through your nerves and veins.

And dread overhauls you, as if you did not know you could take more panic. Leaping up from your lying position, you cling onto the nearest bed post, fingernails digging into the hardwood.

You almost black out, until no more than a minute later, the searing white pain lessens and lessens, soon disappearing completely, leaving the sound of your heart pounding against your ribcage, slowing to a peaceful rate moments later.



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A short chapter today sorry, but will get the next out sometime next week. Get keennnn - it's a big one

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