Shadow's Within

27 : Memory lane

Lunch ensues quickly than I anticipate. We return to our designated beds and I lay down with my eyes scavenging the ceiling. What was his problem? His hungry eyes beaming me like I'm a fruit with its skin being peel. This feeling is an entirely different aura than the reaper had lodged in my brain. It's disturbing, I could feel the sinister sensation well up in him.

"You ok?" Chase inquire.

My eyes never abscond the ceiling. "Fine"

I didn't acquire the strength to tell my suspicion of James Cordon to Chase. It would only make things worse. He would just undertake an unnerving feeling and tries telling me that he would keep an eye out for me. I didn't think that would provide me any sense of security.

My eyes plunge downwards the moment that man enter the hall. This time he didn't idle his eyes into my direction. Instead, he returns to his crib, wrap a blanket around his body and plop into slumber. Odd. Who would sleep in the middle of a day with a blanket wrap around his body.

I wave this thought away from my mind, thinking I'm just over insinuating my trouble head. Before I knew, my conscious lures me into oblivion.

My mind went dark. My eyes couldn't picture the void I'm trap within. Did I go blind. Suddenly, a clear image materializes around me. A fading paint of black and white washes around me. The aerate gust swirls around. It's cold, like a silent night.

The vision appears more vivid as the time pass. An office I'm vaguely familiar crashing down into the void. Colors and contrast churns, decorating the office in a bright hue. I could sense a presence in this surrounding. People, but they are all black and fuzzy looking. None of their faces has any appearances. Only darkness marks the façade of their expression.

But at the lower fragment of their vacant face, a movement ensue. The gaping shifts up and down marking the disoriented people talking to one another.

Rumbling sounds echoed and before so, a sound tunes in from every direction.

"I'm sorry" the first person speaks. He's sitting in the large table facing forward into the other two contorted figures.

The second figure standing in front, weeping its arm in sideways motion, indicating its crying. The sound of the sobbing howls into my ears. "Isn't there any other way?"

"I'm afraid there isn't" the first figure conjures.

The third figure did not move nor speaks. Its body stay rigid and sturdy while the other two shifts uncontrollably.

"But she's just a child.."

"A more reason why she is a fitting subject"

"But.—"

"No buts! My mind is made.."

Then the image rose and spins violently like a water getting caught in a sludge machine. The second projection emerge in a field where people with a skin of the night induce in various diverse actions. Some are running, while some walking and others huddles in a cloud of dusk. A lone figure of nocturnal, stood quietly in the corner about the size of child.

The stygian child sustains its position and stay silent. Suddenly the child moves, running franticly into the cloud of the huddle dusk. Upon impact, the cloud breaks apart, scouring one dusk into every possible direction. Every single piece of the figure wobbles and a moaning sounds ricocheted in the atmosphere. Each one of the dusk is crying. Then a loud thundering noise breaks into the marvel. Each one is starker than the next.

"FREAK!"

"WILD CHILD!"

"NOBODY'S GOING TO BE FRIEND WITH YOU!"

"A MONSTER!"

The voice sounds daunting and enormous. Then each speck of the night became a shard of colors in the gloomy night. The image is clearer now. The crying sound came from a group of children apparently hurt from some sort of impact. The lone figure appears to be a girl, holding a piece of wood in her arms. She swings her lumber wildly that none of the adults has the courage to approach her. My mind turns cold. I recognize this familiar exosphere.

It's my kindergarten, Frank Millie Pre-School. I remember this incident. A boy apparent had thrown a rock straight into my eyes, they tease me with lewd words just because I was quiet and anti-social. I got mad with the surge of pain, pick up a nearby plank, ran across the field and bat every single kid that was mean to me. That action left the whole school to call me Crazy Annie for the rest of the year. None of the kids ever talk to me. The teachers were petrified. I was left alone to my own activities with no supervision. The school had warned my mother to expel me but through her charms, she managed to convince them to let me stay in the school.

Then the images rush forward into my direction, exploding into a thousand screaming voice. I woke up, surprise and dumbfounded.