February 29

Chapter 24

The past three days had been torturously surreal. The recent events had left me like a shadow of my former self, completely oblivious to reality. Everything went by in a nonexistent, unconscious blur. Talking was pointless because I couldn't hear anything, nothing outside of its consistent, insistent whispering. Watching anything, be it TV, YouTube videos, Vines, was like viewing a staticky screen. It meant nothing. All that mattered was what it was saying to me. Even the droned, repetitive practice of eating felt stupid. Eating was just placing tasteless matter in my mouth and hoping it did something to nourish me. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't want to feel anything. But I did managed to develop love for one thing.

Peaches.

When I chose to eat, all I would eat were peaches.

The others started to see my behavior instantly. They saw I wasn't eating (normally), that I was secluding myself into my own tumultuous mind, and they did everything to make me come back. They talked to me. Mark told me that this wasn't going to help get it out of my head. They tried to make me laugh, even to smile, but any expression I showed was more of a mask than genuine. They even gave me this drink to make me stop dreaming. It didn't work.

It was Stacy who'd noticed my eye color changing just yesterday, in the few moments that I actually spoke. "You're not looking too good, dude," she had said, chewing on a chunk of Italian bread.

I was sitting at the wooden dining room table, my eyes fixated on the marks throughout the material, writing the same invisible words over and over again with my finger as the thing battered on in my head. I glanced at up her sardonically. "That's nice," I said with heavy sarcasm. "Very, uh, reassuring thing to say."

"I'm not kidding, Ethan," she'd replied with more pressure. "I mean it."

"So I'm not looking for a girlfriend. Doesn't really seem to matter in the..." I gripped my throbbing head. "In the grand scheme of things."

"Ethan, you look sick. And starved. Your face is hollow and pale and there are rings underneath your eyes. You aren't eating. I can assume that you're not sleeping." She sighed. "Doesn't that seem important?"

"Yeah, but every time I want to eat something, all I want are peaches. And when I try to sleep all I can hear is it talking to me. It's kind of lose-lose, if you know what I mean. There's no solution."

"So what are you going to do? Live off a peach and lack of sleep diet? You'll die before that works."

"I'll have to take it."

"What about getting it out of your head? Is that working?"

I sighed. "I don't even know where to start. It's stronger than me. Even trying...it just laughs."

"You need to try harder then. And stop letting it get the better of you. Don't you want to kill it? Doesn't that matter to you?"

I shook my head. "It does, but the Aura doesn't even let me think about it. It thinks for me now. Maybe when all of this ends but...it doesn't seem to care what I feel. All it wants is my submission. Something I can't give."

She snorted and took a bite. "Looks like you're giving it to me," Stacy had muttered underneath her breath.

The effect was instantaneous. Her words struck me like a slap in the face. My head whipped immediately, my face clouded by an unnatural glare. It surged happily inside me, flowing in and filling the cracks and crevices. "What?" I snapped, furious. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"

She glanced up at me, opening her mouth to respond. Then she froze. Slowly, Stacey's eyes had gone wide with fear. Distantly, I wondered what the problem was. "Ethan, your--"