THE DREAM CATCHER

35.

Niccòlo left the room, his own room, allowing me to take a shower and change in some of his clothes he gave me. At least he didn't dress me up like he did undress me. I'm still mad at him because of that. The fact that I trust him, for some reason, doesn't mean I'm comfortable around him. Especially half naked. But if it wasn't for him, for him finding me in the middle of nowhere, I would be dead now. He saved my life. Twice. I don't know what I would have to do to pay the debt. My head is bubbling with thoughts about him. And my brother. They knew each other. He was besides him during his last days. I think this is what led me back to him. What makes me feel safe around a boy I don't know. This is what still leads me back to him, craving for Noah's company. Even in his form. His remnants are hidden in Niccòlo's mind, he witnessed his last breaths, his last words. I believe this is what brought me back to him, not his eyes or the fact that I feel so safe around him...
Gentle knocking to the door wrenches me out of my troubling thoughts and grief that started swallowing me again and I'm grateful for that. As I respond quietly the door opens and Niccòlo stands in them, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed on his chest.
,,You look good in my clothes." He says gifting me with a kinky smile of his. He seems to only wear it around me.
,,Don't get used to it." I huff in reply. ,,I don't have much more choices." He rolls his eyes as I approach a huge mirror leaning against the wall.
The room is actually equipped in nothing more that the bed, two pairs of door and this mirror. No windows. The chandelier doesn't work so only a little lamp standing on the floor, powered by battery gives us some light. And a little drawer that looks like it's been struck by a lightning. The walls and the floor are covered in dark, wooden panels, old, brick ceiling in contrast with them. It looks almost ancient. I check myself in the mirror. Niccòlo let me have a shower in his bathroom which was as poorly decorated as this room. As I was showering I saw a dressing sticked to my thigh. I regretted ripping it off as soon as I saw the huge hole in the flesh. As I look at myself now I feel more present. My hair is clean, my face too. It took me half an hour to untangle those disobedient strings of hair but as I managed to do that I immediately felt better. I'm dressed in way too big, black, buttoned shirt. I doubt he owns anything else than those elegant pieces. He gave me one of his black, suit pants. Only the white, splattered with blood trainers I stole from the hospital apprentice don't match. As I admire my renewed appearance in the mirror he approaches me from the back. I feel my limbs stiffen from unknown cause, my eyes travelling across his body. He looks the same as he does almost every time I see him. Gorgeous. No. Stop it. He is dressed in the same, blindingly white, buttoned shirt, pants and knee length, black boots. He scans my face like he's searching for some more injuries, although, the ones in my heart are not visible outside. I'm shattered. Those two weeks provided me with more life experience that I've gained ever before.
And my head is exploding from the excess of feelings. I feel emotionally disabled and it's killing me. Like my legs were crushed and someone forced me to stand straight. He must have noticed my struggle because he gently lays his hands on my shoulders, gripping a piece of burgundy cloth in one of them.
,,I want you to know." He starts of quietly, scared to scare me. ,,That what you're going to see may not be... pleasant." He says lowering his face to say it directly into my ear, still holding the eye contact through the mirror. I can't bear it. So I turn around to look into his eyes, not their reflection. It was a bad idea because I can feel them already swallowing me whole. He has this weird habit of staring at me like he wants to devour my soul with those eyes.
,,I can take a lot." I say as quietly as I can, almost drowned out by the heavy beating of my heart. It's a lie. It's a horrible, obviously displayed on my wild from fear face lie. I can't even take looking at him. Not to mention everything that I've went through this two weeks. Events that shattered me. I've just learned how to feel and I've already been broken so much I want to stop feeling already. I'm not strong as I want to be. I can't take a lot. I can't take living.
,,Fine." He says peeling off my face that he was leaning towards to be closer to me. His distance leaves a cold feeling on my burning cheeks. ,,You'll have to wear that around your face." He says, handing me a piece of cloth he's been holding.
,,Why?" I ask, taking it from him anyways.
,,Well, you're a mental asylum fugitive. No doubt they'll be looking for you." He says and I feel stupid. He's right. I'm a fugitive. But they're not the only thing I'm running away from. I'm running form myself. From my life. And drowned by those heavy thoughts I turn around to meet my reflection in the mirror and wrap the cloth around my face, covering half of it. This is what I'm forced to be now. A shadow. I came of the shadows to become one.
Niccòlo leads me out of the room and only then I realise that the bed and the bathroom were the only rooms in his apartment. The door we used led us directly into the corridor, so neglected, dirty and stinking mold it looks like abandoned. Maybe it is. He's walking in front of me, he's hidden his hands in his pockets. He doesn't dare to look at me. He must be embarrassed. We walk down the creaking, falling apart stairs and find ourselves on the bottom floor. I barely managed not to sprain an ankle waking down those stairs. The corridor at this floor looks exactly the same, every wall, floor and ceiling covered in wooden panels. There's no lightning, nor it was at the upper floor or stairs. Only then I realise I have no idea what time is it. If we're going to walk straight into the night or welcome a bright morning.
,,Ready?" He asks pulling a black piece of cloth over his face I didn't realise he was carrying. Maybe he's running away from something as well. I nod in response, obviously lying, too frightened of what I'm going to see to use my voice. ,,Stick to me. All the time." He says, his words muffed by the fabric. And then he grabs the door handle and opens the heavy, cracking plate.
It must be early in the morning, the sun is lazily crawling up the sky. We are at the edge of suburbs, the most pitifully poor place I've ever seen. We're so close to the outskirts and the ray's border stretching behind them it gives me shivers. I don't remember drowning so deeply in the city. Before my little incident.
The rocky streets are empty. Only a few people wander around them, heading to their jobs or coming back home from them. I turn around to look at the building we just escaped. It's neglected. Abandoned. Completely destroyed. Most of the windows are cracked, walls covered in soot and graffiti are threatening to collapse. Niccòlo doesn't live there. He hides there. In an abandoned building. My heart aches.
,,Come on." He says forcing me to turn around and catching my wrist. We are almost running through the swallowed by morning light, devastated streets trying to avoid anyone's gaze. The shot wound burns like flames licking my skin. We sneak pressed to the walls of abandoned buildings, take unexpected turns as soon as anyone appears in front of us. My life changed dramatically since I started feeling. Before I was locked in a glass jar, like a fly, unaware that reality in front of me is covered by a wall separating me from it. But now, someone opened the lid and let me out.
,,Here." Niccòlo says quietly, stopping unexpectedly causing me to stagger right into his chest. I glue myself off him as soon as I realise that. He doesn't seem to notice. He's too focused on his task. Not being caught. He points with his finger at a building in front of us that looks like it's been treated with a bomb. One of the walls is cracked down,  reviling everything inside. It looks like a doll house without one side allowing to play inside it. We head towards the steel door at the back that turns out to be open and welcoming. Niccòlo holds them and lets me walk through them first. As soon as we enter the building, the darkness swallows us all.
I can feel Niccòlo's grip on my wrist again so I stumble while following him in the black space of nothingness. Based on the change of surface we are climbing up the stairs. Suddenly the bright light of an open space blinds me as we reach the upper floor. It must have been an old office building. Overturned and broken desks, chairs, piles of old paper scatter the floor covered in rubble, glass pieces and dirt. It must be staying here since before the War. He doesn't let me devour the sight of the past because he is leading me to the edge of the building, to the place where the wall once was. Now, it's just an open space, reviling a suburbs stretching out in front of us. Niccòlo sits at the edge hanging his legs off the cliff that is the floor. I follow.
We sit in silence watching the peaceful, completely empty streets beyond for so long I consider asking some annoying questions. But the answer hits me like a brick. There's a lady stumbling through the middle of the street. She looks like she's sleepwalking, circling and struggling to stand to her feet. She is dressed in ripped, dirty clothes, her hair pulled out in some places leaving bald, bruised skin parts. Her face looks abnormally calm despite her looks. And her eyes. Her eyes make my heart sink. They're completely white. No irises, no pupils. Nothing but whites. Exactly like the ones of the lady that attacked me. That I packed a dagger in her neck. I must swallow a lump in my throat at that memory. Suddenly, a woman trips over an non existing obstacle and meets the rough, jagged concrete with her face. She lays there, arms spread like she was taken down from a cross. Not moving. I hear my own gasp of shock and terror. She is dead. Suddenly I hear some noise from the far. A car. Speeding directly in her direction. I can't even manage to blink before the car appears. The man sitting behind the wheel of a cabriolet looks like he has lost his mind. His appearance flashes only for a second in front of of me but I manage to see his eyes. Or not see. They're so blindingly white I could notice them from kilometres. And he doesn't stop his car when he is closing a space between his vehicle and an unmoving lady on the street. No. He accelerates the speed even more. The tires meet her unconscious body in the middle ripping her in half like she was a piece of fabric, like someone cut her in half with a saw. He drives away not even bothering to look around, abandoning a dismembered body, flesh out on the sight, blood everywhere on the street, leaving a footprint behind his tires. I look in shock. Or not, I think I'm blind. I'm blind because of the human violence I've just witnessed. It blinded me. There's no way in hell this is real. There's no way in hell one person can do something so horrible to another. I feel my insides turn, I feel my guts screaming, I think I'm about to gift the concrete under our feet with the contents of my...

Niccoòlo still holds my hair as I bend in half, face between my legs, emptying everything that was left in my stomach down the block. As I wipe my mouth with the outside of my palm I look at him, tears covering my view.
,,What the hell was that?" I ask quietly with a raspy voice through my burned down throat.
,,That was the effect of the dream catcher. Severe addiction." He says not daring to take his eyes of me, his hand still clutched on my hair. ,,This is what it does. It turns off your consciousness. I doubt they even knew they were not asleep." I hear something in his dead voice. Something so close to a indifference my blood freezes. This is normal. This is casual. This is what happens daily.
,,No..." I hear my whisper getting out from behind my trembling lips. ,,No, no, no!" I repeat like a mantra, like a prayer that I hope will erase this horrible fact from the world. But it won't. This is real. This is life. My life. I didn't even realised I'm pulling my hair like I was trying to rip them out of my scalp until I feel a pain in my dizzy head.
,,This can't be true. Tell me it's not true. That I'm hallucinating..." I say still looking into his eyes, still trying to find something in them that will prove me that what I saw was not real. But I can't find anything.
,,I wish it wasn't, believe me." He says quietly, putting his hand on my thigh. Warm, gentle touch that does little to calm me down. ,,It happens every day. Every single day for a year. It's not that bad in the city centre but it's only a matter of time. Once you take it, if you're not resistant enough, its over. It's your downfall. You're never truly awake. Until you die a miserable death such as hers." He says tilting his head in the direction I don't dare to look in. I feel my brains mixing as I shake my head in disagreement, in trans.
,,We should go." Niccòlo says standing up slowly, offering me his hand to help me on my feet. But something else caught my attention. With a corner of my eye I see the door in the building in front of us open and I spot a small figure of a boy peeking out from behind it. He can't be older than fourteen years old, looking so severely starving and emaciated I can almost see his ribs sticking to his shirt. Once he made sure there's no one on the street, he goes out from behind the door and heads down the road. He seems like he doesn't notice a dead body on the street just inches from him. He then turns to glue his back to the side of the building he escaped. And then the horror starts. A tall figure of an old, haggard man emerges from the back of the alley he's occupying. My heartbeat stops. A man approaches a boy and peeks out from behind the wall to make sure no one is watching. They didn't see us. And then, a boy pulls out a crumpled banknote with shaky hands from his pocket and hands it to the man. He, in exchange, gives him a little plastic bag.

And suddenly my sight goes blurry. Like someone switched a film tape and I'm suddenly in the other reality, in the other body, in the other universe. Maybe it's my insanity, maybe I'm just tired, hungry, dehydrated. Maybe I'm hallucinating. Maybe I'm dead. But I can't help seeing the scene that plays in front of my eyes like a dream. I see the same boy I did just seconds ago. He lays on the floor of a foreign room. His eyes are whole white and he's choking with his own vomits. He's completely alone. I can't move because I'm not there. I'm just watching it from behind the screen. It's a movie that plays in my head without my permission. Even as I try to close my eyes I still see it. It's engraved in my brain. The boy is dead. He overdosed. And no one helped him. And it was this man's fault. He sold him the drug, he sentenced him for death.
Suddenly, something flashes in my brain, as if someone had put a flashlight right in my eyes. And I'm back in the suburbs, back at the edge of the demolished building, back in reality. But I'm not sitting anymore. I'm standing straight like a string, paralysed and fuming with anger. Anger so strong it could burn the whole world down accompanied with its violence. And I'm holding a gun pointed directly at the drug dealer's head. I try to come to my senses, I try to calm down, let go. But as I see the boy closing his tiny, innocent fingers on the plastic bag full of the cause of his death I don't hesitate. I'm not helpless anymore.
,,Fuck it." I mumble under my nose only for myself to hear. I don't know if what I saw was my imagination, my fear or a inevitable future. But I know that I'll not let that boy find it out for himself. So I swallow my fear, my panic, my disgust, letting my anger to flood the surface of my consciousness as I pull the trigger.