FREAK

I

Having a secret is hard. Being a freak is hard. Having to keep everyone from finding out just how much of a freak you are, is harder. But convincing yourself of your own sanity when you have one of the biggest secret than everyone else in the planet and you can't tell anybody, is the hardest challenge of all. Especially knowing that no one in their right mind would actually believe you.

That's what Clyde has been dealing with for four years now. And it's making him paranoid. He keeps imagining himself being locked up in a closed walls of an Asylum, which only adds up to his lack of sleep because of his visions.

For the hundredth time, he woke up in a sweaty panic, gasping for air. He couldn't believe how vivid his dream had been. And once again, he wasn't sure if it was just a stupid nightmare or a premonition which would be horrifying.

He wanted to forget about the dream, wishing it would fade from his mind's eyes like normal dreams. Instead, images of it keep flashing in his mind and keeps taunting him.

In his dream, he sees a vision of a dim, baren, rectangular room littered with people tied up. Clyde didn't recognize any of them but their faces were clear and recognizable. Some of them were unconscious, some gagged. Some were struggling with their binds, screaming at the top of their lungs. He could see alot of minor injuries and some serious ones from the incarcerated people around.

Then he looks down and sees that he too, were bound by both hands and feet, his ankle twisted in an unnatural way, his shoulder, bleeding. Before he could react, the dream shifts. He was running down a dark endless tunnel with a lot of twists and turns. Suddenly, he was cornered by men wearing dark suits and gas masks, carrying taser guns and taser rods. One of them pointed a taser gun at his chest but then the dream shifts again. He finds himself in a small room with the walls ablaze with fire. There was no way out. Smoke starts bellowing all around, surrounding him in a cloud, slowly dominating what's left of the air inside the room and inside of him, suffocating him.

He wakes up gasping and coughing as if he had really been there. He couldn't believe how real it had always been. He'd been having that same recurring dream for months now and yet it doesn't lessen the fear he felt every time, nor the dread afterwards. It definitely doesn't make it easier for him to sleep. Because of those dream visions, he started developing claustrophobia, which only adds up to his many growing paranoia that only developed the last couple of years.

He glanced beside him at his digital clock atop his bedside table and saw that it was four in the morning. As much as he wanted to fall back to sleep, the images of those barren rooms taunted his mind.

He could hear his grandfather, sleeping soundly from the other room, dreaming about some horse racing tournament. Literally, Clyde could literally hear his grandfather dreaming.

It started four years ago. When he was thirteen.

At first it was only the dreams. Visions. He didn't know what it was. He thought they were mere nightmares that has nothing to do with real life. It was weeks before he realized what they really were, only when they started coming true, one by one, did he suspect that they were premonitions. Senseless visions of the future. At first he refused to believe it. He always hated superstitions. He didn't believe them. He certainly refused to believe that a thirteen year old boy could do fortune-telling.

At least he didn't truly believe it until the death of his grandmother. He foresaw it three nights before it happened. His grandfather never understood why he kept blaming himself for what had happened, but he knew he could've done something if only he believed his talents a little earlier. Instead, he shrugged it off. As if that wasn't bad enough, a year after that, he started hearing. At first he thought he was going crazy. He was sure that hearing voices in your head is a clear sign that you're losing your grip into sanity. Then he realized that it wasn't just voices. It was other people's thoughts. He could hear them as if they share a single mind, or a one way connection. Because of that, he lost his friends and he started distancing himself from other people. He didn't realize how much of a burden those talents would be.