Silhouettes

Teaser

  It's raining so hard the windshield wipers are working overtime, to no avail. The dark storm clouds block out the stars and moon, making our headlights the only guide through the suffocating blackness. Scott Helman's Bungalow is cheerfully playing on the car radio. Static slowly replaces the melody...

I close my eyes for a moment and see the inky water rushing towards us once more. It's all my fault. I take a shuddering breath, but it's not oxygen that enters my lungs; it feels like water. The water that enters my lungs suffocates me and I try to compensate by taking deep breaths. It's as if the air around me has vanished and I'm desperately gasping for more. My gut twists into a fisherman's knot. It's happening again. I can feel tremors running through my body; they grow more powerful and my body begins to shake harder as I stumble off my bed. My room spins as I stagger and lower myself onto my equally boring carpet. The doctor said that plain surroundings would help with the anxiety. I hug my knees to my chest and take a sharp, shuddering breath in. I can feel a scream surfacing—there's no one home to hear me. I tilt my head back and look at my ceiling as my room begins to grow fuzzy. My palm finds its way to my forehead and I will my gaze to refocus. My hand fixes my vision on my reflection. A ringing fills my ears, filling my head with the sound of a million echoing chimes. Pressure begins to build in the front of my head; I plug my nose and blow to release it, to no avail. The pressure quickly transforms into an unstoppable force pushing against the inside of my skull. I stare at my reflection hoping it would quell the storm being raised inside me, as well as the pressure pushing against the inside of my skull. As I stare at my mirror, it seems like my reflection is slowly being leached of its colour; I seem to turn into a ghost, more and more translucent until I vanish entirely, revealing my room behind me—but not exactly. The more I stare, the more my room fades and another takes its place. I catch glimpses of what seems like another world, another world that has covered my own with its blanket of reality. A more colourful bed sits where my own was seconds before, and a desk with feminine products littering its surface, then my eye catches on what seems like an opaque screen covering the room, hovering mere inches from the wall and covering its entire surface like my own embarrassing grandmotherly wallpaper. Pain reverberates through my head, brutal and swift. It wrenches my gaze from the mirror and forcing up yet another scream. I look at my mirror once more to catch another glimpse of the otherworldly sight behind my reflection, but I don't see myself staring back at me. My heart skips a beat.

I see a girl.

Then the room goes black.