Secret World

1

Hiding in a bathroom was the last thing that I had planned on doing today. Each heavy thud in my chest reminded me that I was in fact alive as I stared wildly at the dingy tiled floor. Dirt and grime had worked its way into the grout from decades of use, the white tiles turned yellow either from the years of use or from the over head lights that had to be switched over to fluorescent. The black more grey from the lack of a proper cleaning and dust lightly littering the floor.
I tried to take in a slow breath, a failed attempted to regulate my breathing as I slowly looked up from the floor. The walls of the small stall once painted red chipped reveling the black metal beneath. Writing scattered about as with all public restrooms, Chad was here at some point in time, why he was in the women's bathroom of the movie theater was another story. I almost let out a half chuckle as I saw in bubbly handing that God loved us all.
Sure, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Maybe he didn't exist and that the things I saw were just imaginary and couldn't hurt me. Then again the one inch gash to my forearm that refused to stop bleeding proved that at least these distorted and often smoke like things did in fact exist. How nobody else saw them used to perplex me and why they seemed to go straight after me was entirely different story.
As a kid I remember asking my mom about the things I saw, she just patted me on the head and told me that I was seeing things or it was a shadow. Sometimes it was just people, others it was event and then sometimes it was something else all together. Last I knew shadows didn't hide in the dark, shadows didn't slink, and they certainly didn't leap out and attempt to grab you when you least expected. Shadows, my friends, are stationary, darkened areas caused by something blocking out a light source. Not a dark silhouette inside a shadow that moved like oil on water.
That was back when they moved about as if I couldn't see them. Before they knew I knew they were there. As time wore on my mother sent me from doctor to doctor, every time they said the same thing I was child looking for attention. That was till the first time one reached out and touched me, leaving behind a thin crimson welt. That's when I started seeing the inside of mental institutions, just between you, me and the leaking toilet, straight jackets are a bitch to get out of.
    I hadn't planned on going to the movies cause... well it's kind of dark in a theater, and the things I see thrive in the darkness. Today was like any other day, wake up, go to work, go for a walk. Except I never made it work, my entire day got derailed the minute I stepped outside my house saw it standing there. And since that moment I've been on the run for life.
I'm not even sure how to explain what I saw, just that people do not look like that. Lavender skin? Seriously? He had seemed to be looking at me but not quite, the distorted things I had seen before weren't in the shadow this time. They ran around, mouths snapping wildly, teeth nashing together. I didn't wait to see what they had in store before I bolt down the street.
I felt like I had been caught in a secret war only I could see, ones with creatures that had molted black and brown skin scrambling across the ground lunging into the air at nothing. A humanoid shape with blackened skin and weird looking ears carrying an odd looking staff.. spear.. who knows. Another that could only be described as a man with a squid face. Glimpses of red cloth, dry grass briefly covering the pavement. Dust floating lightly in the wind after the echo of a snap and then the sounds of the world slowly seemed to go away.
As I sat alone in the theater restroom I tried to make since of it all. I leaned back against the back of the toilet, and ran my hands across my face. There had only been one person in the world that had believed me, my aunt, she had said that I had the sight. An ability to see the past, the present, and the future. But what I had seen fell under none of those, what I had seen could only be called other worldly.
I took a deep breath and stood on shaky legs, the cool metal of the stall lock between my fingers. I slid it open, the squeak of metal on metal echoed through the restroom. Pulling the door open I was greeted by own reflection in the mirror. The line of stalls behind me no long visible as a war raged on behind me, darkened and confusing as ships hovered in the air. The lavender man with grimacing smirk as he fought a man in could only be described as a Halloween costume wielding a disc like shield.
I looked over my shoulder, the lights flickering yellow, every stall door slightly parted open. Dust swirling along the tiles, the teal paint faded. It was just like it had been when I ran in, thinking this was the safer option. Slowly I looked forward once again.
Stepping closer to the war scene in the mirrors, tentatively I raised my shaking arm. A man in red and gold lifting his hand clad in a red glove, beautiful gemstones adorning it, glowing in the light I could not see. His lips moved as stared down the lavender man and then, in the stillness the ever silent battle of the secret world in the mirror a snap echoed through the bathroom and everything went dark.