The Soul Painter [completed]

-Chapter Eight-

Location: Central

I hold off sleep as long as it will stay away, knowing that tonight is one of those nights. My body shakes with dread and fear overwhelms my senses, because I know.

All of the voices in my head scream at me like they always do when I'm resisting. 

Wuss. Afraid of the dark. Sissy. Afraid of being vulnerable. Girl. Afraid of not being man enough.

I close my eyes, gritting my teeth, and will it all to stop. But it doesn't. The voices only rise, the obscenities growing louder and the insults becoming more painful. 

Femi is asleep. Her gentle snoring is the kindest noise in my ears. It means I'm not alone.

She's here. She's with me. 

But the shadows keep coming, and the sleep syrup of night eventually overwhelms me. 

This dream is worse than the usual, I soon realize, as the play of thoughts begins. 

I'm in a solid-white room, and there's blood everywhere. Splattering the walls with crimson, like paint.

It's not until I turn around at a whimpering noise behind me that I see whose blood it is. 

Femi's gray eyes beg me for help. She doesn't speak, as always, but this silence is different, more forced, as though something is keeping her from speaking.

I gather her into my arms, not able to find anything wrong, but the blood rises every time she moves. 

She's shaking violently, and her eyes are beginning to glass over.

I feel nothing. No panic, no pain, no fear, until she stops shaking.

I scream my fury into the silence as everything that showed her to be hanging on to the edge of life stops, and I'm left holding the body of my best friend. 

The blood continues to rise, until it's around my knees, soaking my jeans and running into my boots.

It smells like gasoline. 

The smell of gasoline has always been a lonely one for me. It reminds me of the countless nights that I have stayed awake fixing cars so that I wouldn't have to greet the darkness, because I knew that once I fell asleep, I'd only have my own strength to get me back up.

"Femi!" I scream her name, realizing that I've been screaming it this whole time. My vision blurs like someone spraying water against a sheet of glass, and then I scream her name again. "Femi!"

I do.

This doesn't help. I sink down into the lake of blood, feeling it grow much deeper, and her body disappears. 

When I open my eyes, the scarlet that I was in has disappeared, and I sit up on the smooth pebbles of a stream bed.

I don't know this place. It looks like a picture, with trees and grass so unlike here in the city, and I look up, hoping to see the sun. 

The sky is black, I realize, and I don't know where I am anymore. Everything begins to turn black.

"Femi," I whisper, my voice breaking. My whole body hurts.

My name is Femi. It means love me. Love me.

"I don't understand," I breathe, trying to make out anything in the inky blackness that surrounds me, but to no avail. 

A hot hand brushes the side of my face, and I jerk around.

"Who's there?" I squint into the darkness.