It's All In Your Mind

10

He found himself in a train station.

Out of all of he had expected, this wasn't it. At all.

And he really hadn't expected to find that many people in here.

In the chairs surrounding him sat minimally one hundred of them.

Stiles looked around himself, quickly finding Nogitsune sitting beside him. He breathed out a sigh of relief. He hadn't lost his only remaining friend, then. Good.

But... where was he?

He stood up, looking around himself. People of all ages sat around him, reading newspaper or doing something on their computers. They all looked as if they were waiting for a train. But to where?

And why?

Stiles' eyes trailed to his right and caught the sight of a big rusty signboard. Just like in a train station, really. He looked through the towns, until he found Beacon Hills. His train was supposed to arrive in ten minutes.

"Do you think it will take us somewhere?" He asked, uncertainty tainting his voice.

Nogitsune scoffed. "Sorry to debunk your hopes, but that would make zero sense. The Wild Hunt has trapped you and all the others in here. Why would they let you go? Why would they erase you just to put you back?"

Great. "Thanks, Mr. Logical."

The demon rolled his eyes, but said nothing else. Stiles looked back onto the sign.

9 minutes.

Okay. He'll wait and see. If the train comes, he'll get in and see where it takes him. Waiting a bit couldn't hurt.

Or so he thought.

The time flew by about as fast as a snail with crawling problems. He kept checking the digital numbers on the screen, but it was as if someone purposely slowed them down.

Nogitsune kept sending him funny looks, but Stiles ignored him. After all this time, it really wasn't hard. He had practice.

The digital 2 finally changed into 1. Stiles bit his lips. One of his legs was nervously tapping on the ground.

The digital 1 disappeared. And changed into... Delayed.

His eyes widened. Really? Like, really? Delayed?

"Not surprising." Nogitsune said.

"Not surprising? I... But..."

The fox rolled his eyes again. "You have been erased. Basically kidnapped. Trapped. Why would they let you go?"

That was logical, but Stiles still couldn't shake off his disbelief. They really delayed that thing. And as he realized now, there was no train coming. There will never be one.

The people around him hadn't even looked up. They all stared into their devices, barely moving. A sudden thought crossed his mind and he walked over to one of them.

It was a middle-aged lady, fully absorbed in her book about knitting. Dirty blond hair fell onto her face, but that didn't seem to bother her. She sat still as a statue. Stiles realized, with a wave of horror, that aside from blinking, her eyes remained unmoving. She wasn't even reading.

None of them were.

Was he the only one awake? The only one who actually realized what was going on? The thought scared him.

Stiles Stilinski had seen true horrors in his short life. But there was something terrifyingly unsettling about this situation.

To think that the Ghost Riders trapped their victims and then put them in hypnosis-like state, so that none of them could even fight back... it was the best working strategy they could have come up with. And the most terrifying.