Dreamer

I can’t stop.

My breath was hitching, bile rising in my throat. My feet hit the uneven ground with loud slapping noises that made me cringe and glance behind me every few seconds.  Something crunched beneath my tattered black Chuck Taylors, but I didn’t stop to see whether it was glass or human remains.

 

An explosion shook the ground beneath me and sent my hands ramming into the concrete, bits of broken glass and debris cutting through my skin; the pain creating some clarity in my muddled mind. I pushed myself back up, wincing as pain tore through my side, and forced one foot in front of the other as I practically crawled my way through the alley and towards the street. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see the black-clad members of the New Army, carrying shotguns and other things that did god knows what to teenage girls like me. I heard rhythmic marching in front of me and skittered to a halt, heart beating like some wild animal, and looked hopelessly at the high building walls that surrounded my sides. The troops in front of me raised their weapons and aimed, and the unified click of bullets sliding into their chambers made my breath become a shuddering gasp, a plea for mercy.

 

The sharp crack that the guns created when they were fired rebounded off the walls and came rushing towards me as a deafening shriek. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the pain that I knew would come in a matter of seconds. But nothing happened.

 

Puzzled, I cautiously opened one eye, then the other. The bullets hung frozen in the air, a mere two inches away from my chest, the nearest hovering in front of my forehead, smack in-between my eyes. I couldn’t help myself: I laughed. Not a “that’s so funny” laugh- more of an “I think I’m loosing it” laugh.

 

“Silence!” One of the black-clad warriors barked at me and fired his gun again, only to hear a hollow clink as the bullet lazily slid out of the gun and fell onto the ground. He took a long glance at it, and then spat at the ground, “You filthy little witch.” He hissed, taking a step forwards. I couldn’t help but do a double-take.

 

“Filthy what-now?” I finally managed, stepping backwards only to remember that half of The Army was behind me.

 

“Witch.” He repeated, eyes flickering uneasily between the fallen bullet and where I was standing. Is he seriously afraid of me?

I took a sudden step forwards, and he scrambled a good meter or so back, the rest of his ninja friends raising their guns by instinct; though they clearly couldn’t do anything with them at the moment. I took a deep breath and took a slow step forwards, and they stepped back again.

 

“You guys are crazy,” I finally said, “I have no clue why the heck the power went out throughout the entire nation, why everything’s mutating, and not even why my parents deserted me halfway through it all; and now I have you, telling me I’m a witch?! Let me tell you: I am so, utterly sick of not knowing what’s normal anymore that sometimes I just want to…um…kill someone….”Hey, at least it started out seriously.

I took another step forward only to have the hovering bullets suddenly fall to the ground. It suddenly clicked in my head that hovering bullets weren’t exactly a normal recurrence in the world I knew- the world earth used to be.

I heard the sharp crack of a gun being fired just seconds after someone appeared in front of me out of no where. Blood sprayed my face and the person- a boy in his teens, I now realized- jerked back sharply, hands clutching at his stomach, where a dark red patch of blood was spreading through his white t-shirt. He fell towards me, and our legs tangled, causing me to fall over with his weight pressing down on my back, making it difficult to move. I could hear quite the commotion going on- gunshot and strange whooshing noises along with the occasional sharp smell of metal and lightning. My face was pressed into his shirt and I breathed in a pastry-like scent; a mixture of vanilla and icing sugar. His blood felt warm against my skin as it soaked through my worn-out pullover. I felt the need to vomit; though I probably would have reacted in another way if he weren’t bleeding like a stuck pig. After a moment of silence, he rolled off me with a groan. I couldn’t help myself: I freaked out.

 

“What the hell-What the actual hell were you thinking?” I screamed at him, crawling over and gripping the bottom of his shirt, ready to pull it up and survey the damage the bullet had caused. He gave a weak cough, and I found myself staring into a pair of unnerved, calming grey-blue eyes.

 

“Is that… how you thank… your prince charming…?” He managed to gasp out, cringing as the shirt stuck to his wound.

“Shut up.” I hissed, heart beating rapidly. I tensed up as I heard footsteps behind us and my head snapped back over my shoulder, only to see the silhouettes of five armed people advancing towards us.

 

Shit.