Downpour

THE FOURTEENTH BOY

There's a strange sensation that washes over him as soon as he opens his eyes.

The overwhelming feeling that something is different, even if he can't quite place it. His surroundings seem to fade in and out, his head pounding.

The air seems too cold against his skin, the thin blanket tangled between his legs and sticking to his skin, the mattress pushing against his back too hard. Every sense is amplified slightly, only just noticeable.

For a few seconds, he can only stare at the ceiling, body completely paralysed.

The grey pain seems to swirl like storm clouds, the uneven streaks of colour mirroring the thunderous sky outside. He can hear the rain hammering down on the roof above him, the distant crack of lighting and rumble of thunder the only break in the silence.

His hand very slowly reaches up and massages his forehead, trying to to make sense of the flood of memories rushing through his mind. The throbbing in his head only increases as he attempts to understand, losing the sense of fiction and reality.

There's something about dreams nagging the back of his head.

Was he asleep? He's on a bed, so possibly. He's not tired, he realises, and that doesn't seem right. The feeling of being awake is foreign, he almost expects to have to struggle to move.

There's a particularly loud clap of thunder that makes him jump, sitting straight up in bed. He presses his palms against his heart, trying to calm to frantic beating.

His eyes take in the room he's in very slowly. He knew he wasn't in his apartment or his room at home from the colour of the ceiling, but... he wasn't expecting this.

The room is completely bare, excluding the hospital-like bed he's sat on and a tiny chest of drawers, the contents spilling onto the floor, wood splintering into broken pieces. There's a small room leading off from the main one with a toilet in, and a black security camera in the corner.

It's motionless, tilting downwards towards the floor. It seems a strange place to record, but then he notices the brightly coloured wires poking out of the neck, all of them cut.

Someone's broken it.

The more he looks, the more wrong it seems. Almost like he's seen it before when it was working, but he has no memory of it. Just the overwhelming feeling that the camera could definitely film before he fell asleep.

He shifts his body, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, fully intending to inspect the security camera. As he does, his foot hits something on the floor, sending it rolling across the tiles.

Surprised, he looks down.

It's an empty clear container, the lid lying a few inches away. The contents, or what he assumes are the contents, are spilled all over the floor. Tiny white pills that look like painkillers. And they seem so, so familiar.

They're about the size of a tic-tac, with a thin breakable line down the middle.

He reaches out to take one.

As soon as he picks it up, it slips out of his fingers. It lands back on the floor, rolling a few centimetres before coming to a stop.

He doesn't move to pick it up again.

He can only stay completely still as his headache overwhelms him entirely, filling every inch of his body with memories.

The dreams.

Pledis.

Samuel.

He gets to his feet.