His Evil Cinderella (On Hiatus)

Lingering Denial

A/N: Hey! Thank you all to the lovely smurfs who read, commented and voted for my story! I’ll ship the chirping frogs as soon as I catch the sneaky ones! The lyrics come from the song Castle of Glass by Linkin Park. Anyway, happy reading! :J

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Chapter Three

~Fly me up on a silver wing

Past the black where the sirens sing

Warm me up in a nova's glow

And drop me down to the dream below~

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Ahh.

Rae closed his eyes contently as he stood under the shower and let warm water pound at his body. His tense, fatigued muscles loosened a bit, making him sigh. He didn’t know whether he should be this tired---he’d done absolutely nothing that week except going to his evening job and attending a bunch of classes. He’d declined invitations to various parties just because he hadn’t been able to stand on his own feet without letting himself fall asleep in seconds.

Frankly, he didn’t want to sleep.

The nightmares…they were getting more frequent. He’d wake up almost at every hour during the night to find himself drenched in sweat, tangled in his bed sheets and a fallen nightstand. Every night, he’d see the cold stone floor littered with dirt, small bones and God knew what more and the terrible stench of death and decay would fill his nostrils. Again, he’d see the porcelain-white face of a girl whom he---

Rae shook himself visibly, startled by his own stance. He knew that if he started to think about her again, he'd probably stay in the shower until they announced that the real Santa Claus was actually the President and that he juggled puppies for a living.

But yesterday…the nightmare had been different. He’d involuntarily fallen asleep in class due to sheer exhaustion, if nothing else, and had dreamed about…mountains? Rae frowned. He couldn’t remember. It was gone as soon as it’d come. Whatever it was, it sent tingles down his arms.

As he got out of the shower, he grabbed a fluffy white towel to wrap around his waist. The steamy mirror reflected him as a tall, lean silhouette with a blurry mass of dark blonde hair. He rubbed away the steam on the mirror’s surface and his face came into view. His piercing emerald eyes supported dark grey crescent-shaped shadows. Rae gave his still bleary reflection a half-smile, ruffled his wet hair and started to brush his teeth.

THUNK!

That was loud. Rae wondered what the others were up to. There were five of them living together in a relatively small house and the walls weren’t soundproof. The house was located near the train station, from where they were able to catch the train that went directly into the campus. Drew Nightshade had inherited it when his grandfather had passed away, and he’d offered a nice deal to his high school friends who were deciding to attend the college in their vicinity. It’d been almost a year. There were three bedrooms, one of which Drew claimed as his since he was the landlord, two bathrooms, a mini den, an attic and a kitchen. In other words, Rae’s present accommodation was somewhat stuffed.

Rae had been orphaned when he was only thirteen. He’d been brought up by his batty aunt whom he dotted upon, but other than her, he had no family. The amount of monetary income at home had always been precariously swaying, so Rae had to work hard to get where he was now. It was lucky that Drew was one of his best mates and had a cramped but good place for living to offer.