Onision Self Insert (Reaper's Creek)

Chapter 9: Eyes Never Open

Spring break had come. I was sitting in my room looking at my old TV. The beautiful imagery of Final Fantasy 7 glowed in front of me. The characters all looked like hip young adults, something that I desired to be. Being a child felt so endless, like waiting for a Christmas that was never going to come. I had already invested about 24 hours of combined game play into this game. I planned on spending my entire spring break in my room pinned between the dresser and the washing machine, playing Final Fantasy 7.

After a couple days my mission of complete isolation appeared to be successful until my mother called me out to help her make dinner. She said "I'm having a friend come over today" and I replied "Have I met this friend mom?" My om answered "No this is a friend that I met recently at my job. She's very fragile so be nice to her. Okay Daniel?" Scoffing I replied "Mom I think you're mistaking me for Joanna. She's the rude one, I'm the quiet one who never gets in anyone's business." My mom laughed as she continued to clang dishes together in the sink seemingly incoherently.

After I cleared off the table and my mom finished making our meal we heard a knock at our large thick rustic looking wooden door. My mom introduced her to everyone in the house saying her name was Cynthia. Right away I could see that she was pregnant. But out of my childhood, why would I point out this specific story? The pregnant woman who is a friend of my mom. I was just talking about discovering dead animals and suddenly I'm talking about a pregnant woman. Well it's not hard to figure out.

Cynthia was in fact fragile. Throughout all of dinner I could see that she was emotionally distraught. She would say everything as if she was about to break down crying any moment. And I had already figured out completely why. This woman was trying to hold off going to the doctor. She seemed like such a nice lady but that wasn't a very nice thing to do. She was trying to hold on to the baby inside of her. She was trying to ignore reality. You see when a woman has a baby that's alive and well inside of her, there would be no reason for me to see any optical illusion or otherwise hallucinate with whatever gift I was given by the alien radiating from any section of her body... yet this woman's belly glowed. I imagine it would have glowed less yesterday and maybe last week there was no glow at all. As I listened to this woman talk I began to realize that her avoiding the doctor wasn't a result of anything except for financial hardship. It didn't take long conversing with my mom for her to break down in front of all of us talking about how she didn't have health insurance and that the baby had stopped kicking days ago.

After some convincing my mom finally got her to agree to go to the E.R. with her. Seemingly without hesitation a selfish thought crossed my mind. You see ever since I gained this ability I had planned to avoid it. Curiosity caught the best of me one day but it was a necessary curiosity to help avoid future incidences of me investigating or being reminded me of my ability.

I searched the creek to rid myself of the constant red glow I would see outside my window just by passing by on a normal day. But this walked right into my front room and now unforgivable thoughts centered on myself crossed my mind. "Great my spring break is ruined. Now I have to think about a dead baby" I said to myself, and I curse myself for having such a thought as if I was the victim. As if me losing my happiness in a simple break from an otherwise relatively happy elementary school experience was really the true problem here. But what goes on in your mind often defines much of your future and then that night I defined my own future.

The rest of that week I did in fact spend weighed down by a cloud of doom over my head. Multiple times throughout my break I asked my mom what happened to that woman and whenever I asked my mom simply said that she didn't want to talk about it. That just made the cloud over my head grow darker.

On the first day of school back I saw David again. Selfishly I shared with David what had happened to that poor woman, how it happened right in front of me and he of course was not happy whatsoever to hear this information. That was basically the only conversation I had with David that day. He was just the kind of kid to avoid problems and sometimes that means avoiding people who bring problems to you. I understood it, but I didn't respect it. For some reason watching the short brown hairs on the back of David's head blow in the wind as he walked away triggered a sudden realization in me that boy who reminded me of the alien... I hadn't seen him in a very very long time. The kid who was in special ed class, who I would see across from me during lunch once in a while, he disappeared right around the same time I fought back at the alien. But how would I ask about who he is to anyone? Walk up to a teacher and say "Hey you know that special ed kid who twitches funny? Have you seen him around? No?" I don't think I could do that. The moment you mention a special ed kid they immediately consider writing you up for a hate crime it seems.

Aubrey however was still around. We just kind of fell apart after the whole Phillip incident. I mean how do you recover with someone after you beat someone up in front of them and then that person just happens to die from an accident not long after? What's the opening statement and a reintroduction there? "Hey remember that time a beat up that kid who's dead now anyway what were we talking about?" No. For me school was becoming more and more lonely every day and even that kid I saved from bullying. He was only talking to me at the time because I was the person that would save him from his troubles and now that he needed no more saving. It was like a ghost to him too.

Regardless it's time to go home again. The same school bus, the same driveway, the same time of day, the same door, the same house, the same bedroom, the same foam pillow... flip out the lights Daniel and now you're dreaming again. And what dream am I going to have now? Oh that's right...

...the same dream.