Illusory | ✓

i l l u s o r y : 15

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I L L U S O R Y : 15

In the darkness of my bedroom, with the bruised air as my company I feel my chest expand painfully as I grip my blankets around me tightly. Gasping for air, with tears ushering themselves down my face I barely pay attention to the feeling of the droplets hitting my arms. My hair falls wildly around me, a curtain of despair at the thought of my dream becoming reality. A thudding of stung pain begins in my chest with the image of Bridger being swallowed by the waters, the same exact way that Jared had been.

"God, please no," I whisper quietly as I reach my hands up and claw at my hair, while the tears continue to fall down my face. My heart beats faster with each image, with each vision of my dream that has haunted me.

Go to the window, just check - a voice in my head tells me and throwing my blankets away from me I take a quivering leap out of my cage of covers and let my feet touch the cold hard wood flooring. I slowly let my feet caress against the floor like old lovers reunited while I keep my eyes attached to the windows that over look the front yard.

Reaching the window, I let my eyes gaze upon the house across the street. The blinds are closed in the bedrooms but no silhouettes are pacing and no signs of movement makes me have to think that everyone is asleep, and that Bridger is not making his way towards the lake to commit suicide. My heart aches at that thought again, at the knowing that although Bridger mourns for his sister as much as I have mourned for Jared that he's not the type of person that would commit suicide. But then again, I have come across ghosts that are completely different than I thought that they would be once up close and personal with them.

"Jane."

Spinning on my heels, I'm welcomed by Patty standing near my bed, her eyes plastered on the bed before they travel up and slowly allow themselves to fall on me. She notes my crinkled clothes, my red and watery eyes and the fear that I wear invisibly. The gulp from my throat is the last thing she hears, a loud gulp, before I begin stumbling to her like a drunk.

"What's wrong? Is Bridger okay?" I ask her with worry coated in my voice, before I fall onto my bed and stare up at her as though she had just told me that she came by to be the barrier of bad news and in a way I know she is.

Patty raises her hand up, before making a motion for me to calm down. I try to and when she finds that I'm fine enough to talk to she begins to walk back and forth in front of me, her eyes always in front of her and barely flickering to mine.

"Bridger has been acting strange since he came home from the grocery store," Patty starts as she looks at one of my framed photographs before my face for a few seconds.

"I mean, he complained of course about having to go to the grocery store but Mom just wanted him to go get a few things that we had run out of and he finally agreed to since it wouldn't take long. I stayed home though, thinking that I didn't need to go and follow him to the grocery store, since well, I never liked going to the grocery store when I was alive and I didn't care about going again in the afterlife either"-

"Just cut to the chase. I have a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach," I interrupt her as I get up from my bed and walk over towards the window again, wishing that Bridger is in his room deep asleep and unlikely to wake up. My body though shakes as something inside me tells me that it's unlikely, possibly the demon that has been clashing with me for years.

"He started talking to himself when he got home. It sounded as though he was arguing with someone else, something wasn't his conscious. A black aurora was around him when he walked through the front door and he kept on banging his hand against his head, as though he could possibly knock the voice out. If I tried to get close to him a sharp pain would radiate throughout me. I don't know what's wrong with him," Patty explains as she slowly makes her way towards me, where I'm still looking at her house.