The Elemental Trials

Thirteen

Luke

It was dark. Pitch black. I couldn't see a thing. 

My hands felt around the nothingness, unable to find anything tangible, until a light suddenly shone from nowhere. 

I was back inside the crashed car, my father's lifeless body beside me. "DAD!" I screamed, but my voice sounded like it was underwater - or miles away "DAD!" 

No response. 

Wait- 

A twitch.

The faintest of movements, before his body began to slowly lift up. I could see the unnatural way his neck bent, snapped so cleanly that it left his head hanging at an almost perfect ninety-degree angle. His face slowly turned towards me, his eyeless sockets staring into my soul. And then words began to pour from his mouth alongside a stream of blood. "You." His voice was filled with hate, twisted to a horrible, gravelly tone that was completely foreign to me "You killed me. Always asking to go up that damn hill. It's your fault I'm like this! You're fault I'm dead! I'd still be alive if it wasn't for YOU!"

I opened my mouth to speak but suddenly found no words would come up. There was a pressure on my throat, trapping the words in my chest along with any breath I had hoped to let out. I looked down in horror to find my father's decaying hands wrapped tightly around my neck, squeezing harder and harder as the suffocating pressure spread across my whole body. I felt like the weight of a bus was crashing down on top of me - it wasn't just my throat being constricted, my whole body was slowly getting crushed. 

I tried frantically to apologise, willing my lungs to squeeze the word 'sorry' out of any gap in my windpipe. It was impossible. The worst part wasn't that I was about to die, at the hands of my own father no less, but the fact that I would die before he knew how sorry I was for what had happened to him. 

That was, without a doubt, the worst thing I could imagine. 

Just as I felt like my soul would be squeezed clean out of my body, my eyes shot open and I lunged up in bed - sweat dripping down my face as my heavy, panicked breathing filled the air. It took a few seconds to get my bearings, like it always did, but this time with added difficulty due to the fact I was in a different room.

I covered my face with my hands, breathing deeply as I counted to a hundred in my head. It was one of the strategies my therapist had suggested I tried, and it tended to work more often than not for the dreams that weren't too severe. Depending on the dream certain methods worked better than others, and this time I could feel my anxiety lingering - even when I was well past one hundred and on my way to two. 

I had to get up. 

I pulled my hands away and leapt from the bed, my eyes quickly scanning the clock to see that it was 4:37am, but as I moved I heard a quiet groan that brought me to a halt. I turned hesitantly, finding Skye sprawled out in the bed I had been in. In my groggy state I was initially confused as to why she was there, until the events of the previous night made their way to the forefront of my mind. 

For a second I felt bad about leaving her - I knew how messed up her head was at the minute, and that she might not appreciate me simply disappearing in the middle of the night. But a fresh surge of panic from my chest into my throat soon made me realise I was not in the position to help her if she did wake up anytime soon. I took a second to pull the covers back over her, watching as she snuggled into them in her sleep, then I quietly left the room and tiptoed into my own. Wasting no time I grabbed the set of clothes nearest the door, as well as my heavy winter jacket, then exited before I accidentally woke either Aurora or Marcus.