Please don't eat me

Please Take A Seat

  I remembered waking up in a cold hospital bed. The ache in my head was gone. The world was bursting with colours. And at the foot of my bed were five individuals.

  Immediately the one standing in the front of them all, a man with pale skin and brown eyes, gave me a smile and said, "Hello Conrad. My name is Paul Kempsey and I'm the head of Soul Guard."

  "Soul Guard?" I asked, confused as to who these people were as my mind tried to wake up.

  He nodded and gruffly said, "We have a lot we need to speak about."

  When school ended, my blood was frozen cold. I walked alone, saying goodbye to my friends and stepped out of the school. Each step took momentous effort, as my nerves stiffened my muscles. I didn't want to go there. I didn't want to accept what was happening. Hornets viciously stabbed into my stomach. I wanted to go home.

  Instead, I crossed the street and made my way to Chakra.

  Chakra was a place I had seen a million times before. Before, I had thought it was nothing more than some yoga place for hippies and vegans. There were floral arrangements on the door, large, green windows with depictions of grass and trees and animals feeding on them. It was a small two-storey building that sat unassumingly on the street. A place I never would have entered under normal circumstances. However, my circumstances were not normal, so I opened the door and was greeted with the tinkling of a bell and the smell of incense burning somewhere.

  There were four metal benches, placed two together, so smooth I wondered how everyone didn't just slip right off them when taking a seat. A large, green desk was planted brazenly in front of me, hiding a diminutive man whose head barely cleared it. To either side of him stood two wooden doors.

I tentatively walked up to him, feeling my nerves spike as an uncomfortable feeling crawled along my back. "H – hello." I said to the man behind the desk.

He was aged, his tan skin boasting so many wrinkles I didn't notice his smile at first. "Hello. You must be Conrad, am I right?"

I nodded, rubbing my forehead. Was I sweating? Dear God, I was. It was a light sheen that appeared on my face.

"Walk into the door on your left." He said and pointed to it. "Walk straight till you get to the stairs, take them up and follow the path. After the turn, you'll see a door saying Mr Wilson."

"Aren't I going to training now?" I asked him.

"Mr Wilson first wants to have a chat with you. He promised to be quick."

"Okay." What was wrong with me? It was almost like an overbearing presence was weighing down on me, like a thousand eyes were staring at me. This oppressive feeling only brought me back to the night my life changed.

"I don't – I don't understand." I remembered saying that. I was standing on my feet but felt like collapsing to the ground. I was going to puke. My limbs were shaking. This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening.

But then, suddenly, a man with a grey light exuding from him took a step closer to me. "I understand this is a lot to take in. But I need you to relax. I swear we are here to help you." And it was like his feelings were reaching out to me, intertwining with mine and slowly relaxing me. I still felt like puking, but I swallowed that feeling and nodded.

Then a woman busted forward and said, "I'm sorry, are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?"

"What?" I asked with a frown.

The man's face turned deathly serious as he looked back at the woman and then looked back at me. Specifically, my chest. I looked down as well and for the first time noticed the golden chain necklace with a white rock that dangled there.