Number 667

Chapter Five

"Carrie!" Pause. "Caaaarie!" Pause, this time a bit longer.
"CARRIE!"
"Ah-uh-what?" Carrie awoke to the smiling face of her roommate and best friend. Her black bob haircut was neatly combed, and she was already wearing her uniform. Her blue-green eyes, as usual, twinkled and sparkled like the sea that sat right outside. "Hurry up, Carrie!" She said, dragging Carrie up by her long, beanpole arms. Her red hair exploded in a frizzy halo around her, and her ratty pajamas were unkempt and unclean. "Kaatieee." Carrie slurred with early-morning sleepiness. She tumbled out of the plaid-blanketed bed and onto the soft blue carpet. Her best friend's bed was across from hers, covered in the usual crinkled-up boy band magazines.
"Carrie!" A voice yelled from another room. It sounded frantic, helpless, full of terror. "Carrie! Help me!" Carrie was suddenly in a forest, surrounded by black trees that reached out to her with gnarled claws. The moon, with its striking white rays penetrating light towards her like a knife, gave her clearance through the treacherous woods. All was silent except for the woman's cries, which unnerved Carrie. She had to duck to avoid the overhanging branches. One whack in the face with a razor-sharp twig could mean more surgery.
Carrie shuddered as she emerged into a clearing and beheld the scene. An old woman, covered in mud, was held in the arms of a trembling 30-year-old. By sensing him, Carrie could see that he was an alchoholic and had been on drugs for a little while. She couldn't tell what kind - her sense hadn't been very strong since the night she moved - but she could see that behind the scent of unholy things was a very nice man, burdened with guilt and depression.
"Carrie!" The cry came again. It was fainter, but now she could see that it was coming from the old woman. Then, suddenly, she felt a razor-sharp pain across her face. She couldn't scream, not in a vision. Her eyes went blurry, and she could no longer see the forest. Instead she saw...
"Carrie!" Katie yelled, slapping her face again. Tears were rolling down her face in ongoing streams, and her usually peppy aditude was replaced with terror. "You had another vision, I could tell! Your eyes went all unfocused, and-and..." Carrie hugged her tightly, looking at the lone sketch of a dark forest on her cork board above her bed.
"I'm fine." Carrie said. "Really."
Later that day, Carrie had trouble focusing in class. She scetched another intricate picture of the clearing, this time with the woman and man. She felt the smudged ink against her hand, and she knew that she was in her own private Wonderland, where all that mattered was her sketches. She gnawed on the end of the pencil, the little wood splinters poking her fleshy lips. Her hair ensnared most of her face, deeming her almost unrecognizeable. She sat in the back of the classroom, hiding in the cobwebs and shadows. She tapped her fingers against the desk, greatful that there was only a subsitute today and not a teacher, who would immediately tell her to sit at the very front of the classroom to ensure that she was paying attention.
Carrie mentally stepped out of her wonderland. "May I use the bathroom?" She asked, breaking the fragile silence of the classroom. The Math classroom for Twill's Boarding School for Girls was a dark classroom, the walls painted a light shade of grey and the floors white tile. There were no posters on the walls, and the only furniture in the room was the desks, which were emty and unexiting, the office desk, which was bare except for a lone computer, and a large whiteboard that the teacher used to give lectures.
The substitute excused Carrie to the bathroom, and she hunched her shoulders, padding silently down the hall. Her uniform was already smudged with ink; she supposed she would live through the janitor complaining about all of the bleach he would have to use to get them out. She sauntered into the tile bathroom, her large, high-heeled boots clanking against the floor. She walked up to the sink, placing her hands on the cold granite. She looked deep into the mirror, parting her hair aside from her face as best she could. After she moved the springy strands of red-orange frizz, the little freckles that splattered across her pale cheeks. Her bright green eyes stared back at her as she sighed, licking her chapped lips.
Carrie turned away from the mirror, refusing to look at herself again. She quickly trotted down the hall and back to class. As she came in - the doir creaking and groaning, as usual - she noticed that something seemed... Off. Everything was brighter and blurrier than usual. "Oh no," Carrie whispered. She hurriedly loped back towards her desk, sitting down just in time to catch the vision...
She wasn't in the forest this time, she was in a building. A school building. The room the students sat in was a large rectangular room, with bookshelves and a whiteboard and brightly coloured posters. The girl she was next to had neatly combed glistening black hair that shone like the evening sun. She sat up straight and was very pretty and clean-looking. Carrie could see from her worksheet that her handwriting was exceptional. Her uniform had no smudges, tears, or even crinkles. She looked very organized.
Suddenly, the girl's head turned, makinv her black braid swivel around to her front side. Her eyes were bright blue, and her skin was milk pale, but not ugly pale like Carrie's. Then the girl screamed.
Carrie was back in class with a start, the teacher standing in front of her with an odd look on her face. "Ah - Clarisse?" Carrie looked up. "Carrie." The substitute looked worried. "Do you... Feel sick? Dp you need to go to the nurse's office?" Carrie shook her head. "I feel fine. I have this, um, medical condition that makes me slace out. Just ignore it." The woman, touching her auburn bun nervously and pushing up her black-framed glasses, said, "A-alright." and went back to teaching class.
Carrie sighed and finished her sketch with a single stroke on the old woman's tearful face and sighed. Then she flipped over her notebook and began a new sketch, this one of the unknown girl she had seen in ger last vision.