What We See

Chapter 1

As I said few people escaped the brainwashing and I was one of them, well I was actually brainwashed first but then I escaped it. I remember the day I began to see everything clearly like it was yesterday.

1 year ago

"It looks like it's going to storm!" I cried.

"Don't worry, it will only rain." Jake told me.

"But should we head back?" I wondered getting worried because it's not safe to be out when there's a storm.

"No." Megan shrugged not really caring like the others.

"But-" I started.

"You aren't sugar, you won't melt!" Sam laughed.

"Okay." I laughed along nervously.

"Alright guys we're here! Look at this view!" Jake held his arms out wide as he stood on the edge of the cliff.

I came up beside him, "Wow."

It was amazing, you could see what seemed like forever, you could see many towns and the forests between them. And in the distance you could see the ocean.

"This is so beautiful." Megan breathed.

"Look you can see it raining over there." Sam pointed.

Like on queue it began to rain. Megan and I screamed as the boys laughed at us. I walked closer to the edge and farther away from my friends.

"You can see the sun shinning on that city." I called looking at it seeing that there was rain clouds everywhere but not on that city.

Suddenly there was a flash of white and I became boiling. My legs gave out and fell to the ground. My brain began pounding in my head and my heart was either beating all to fast or not at all. I couldn't breath it felt like there was a pile of bricks on my chest and my ears were ringing. I wasn't sure if my eyes were opened or closed because all I could see was white, not black. Pain was going throughout my body and no matter what I did I could not move. But the thing I felt the most was the heat that was going through me, I felt like I had been lit on fire or maybe even bathing in lava. It felt like hours that I had been lying there but when I heard my friends scream my name I knew it had only been seconds.

I heard them running and then they began to shake me. After a while it felt like the pile of bricks were lifted off my chest and I took in a giant breath and sat up quickly. My friends let out a scream.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You just got hit...by lightning." Sam said.

"How did you just survive that? That lightning hit you directly on your head." Megan wondered.

"I-I don't know." I stuttered.

My eyes drifted from my friends and saw the sun was back out again and it felt much warmer. How long had I been out for?

Everything was now different. The trees were no longer there and the sky had changed colour to red. The air felt quite thick, I looked at my friends to see that they still looked the same with black eyes and pin-straight hair.

"Thea, your hair is curly." Jake pointed out.

I checked to see my hair was in fact curly. That was strange. I had straight hair, just like everyone else.

"Well I guess that happens when you get struck by lightning." Sam joked.

"Your eyes look green." Megan stated tilting her head to he side as if she was trying to make sense of why my eyes looked different now.

"That can't be right, my eyes are black, like yours, like everyone else's." I said.

I closed my eyes and tried to think of what was happening to me and when I opened my eyes again everything around me was now back to normal. What?

"We should go, we might not all be lucky as you." Sam walked back to the car and we piled in.

The car ride was quiet other than the radio which was playing some old songs that we knew. We had our windows opened and I was staring out of mine. I blinked and everything changed to what I had seen before. I moved closer to the window and absorbed the unpleasant scenery. The trees looked like they had been chopped down and some were burnt. The road seemed cracked and falling apart, there were abandoned cars and houses along the road. Everything looked destroyed. And once again when I blinked and things went back to normal.

This kept happening throughout the ride until I closed my eyes for a nap and when I opened them, they revelled the destroyed scenery again. But this time it never went back to how it used to be.

My hair never went back to the pin-straightness it used to be, it stayed curled. My eyes changed to emerald green and were no long black. I stood out from everyone with their pin-straight hair and black eyes, I was an outcast.

As soon as I got home that day, I didn't get the chance to go inside. I ran into this woman with red wavy hair and green eyes, she took one look at me and asked to talk to me.

She explained to me what she was, a Vision. She told me that she can see what others can't and that humans have been tricked to not see these things. She told me the Vision's plan and how they altered it. She told me I was a Vision and for me to come with her. I didn't trust her at all and didn't go anywhere with her. But she picked me up and put a hand over my mouth. She took me to her house across the street. It was a nice house, but the doors and windows had way too many locks. I didn't understand at first but she quickly explained it. She said that Visions are being hunted and we need extra safety. She explained to me that since I'm a Vision I now have to try and blend in with these things called "Darklings." I questioned what Darklings were and was told that they were other humans that could not see what we see.

After I asked some stupid questions she began to explain how to blend in.

"You must straighten your hair so it's like theirs. You must were contacts so that your eyes look black. And you must go along with everything the Darklings say they see." The woman informed me.

I went along with these instruction. I quickly straightened my hair and put the irritating contacts in before I went home. Luckily none of my family noticed anything different with me. But that day everything about my life changed. I have to live in fear of being killed at any moment while having to go to meetings with other Visions to try and think of ways to save everyone. Not to mention that I then started to see things in a different way, literally. That is the day my life changed completely because of a lightning strike, but I wouldn't change that moment one but because I am a Vision and that is, and always with be my fate.