ABOMINATIONS

CHAPTER FIVE

K Y L E

Kyle knew he was dreaming. It was just like when Andi would talk to him when he was alone, he knew it was all in his head, but it felt so real. The ponytail that fell down his back was matted, thick, and obviously brown. Kyle's hair hadn't been brown since he was in high school. He finally looked from his hands and hair to the surface in front of him, which focused into view as a desk. There was a piece of paper on his desk, the words TRIG TEST 4 jeering up at him from the top of the paper. An unsharpened pencil sat next to the paper. Everyone else around him was crouched over their desks, scribbling on their papers and typing numbers into their calculators. Kyle felt sweat beading on his forehead. He couldn't be back here. He didn't study for this test.

    He raised his hand and the teacher lowered her glasses to the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Mr. Morris?" She asked, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was annoyed by the intrusion.

    "Can I go to the bathroom?" Kyle asked, feeling small.

    The old hag of a teacher rose from her chair and walked over to his desk, looming over him and placing one gnarled hand on his desk to grab his paper and pick it up. "You haven't even written down a single thing," she cawed, drawing the attention of several students in the class. "What have you been doing these past fifteen minutes, Mr. Morris? Daydreaming?"

    She seemed to be getting taller, craning her neck and staring down her nose at Kyle with piercing black eyes. Kyle was really sweating now, and he could feel the burning sensation of a whole class set of eyes on him. "Can I go to the bathroom?" He repeated in an unsure voice.

    The teacher shrunk back, taking his test with her. "Go ahead. I'll just keep this for you while you're gone," she hissed, making her way back to her desk. As soon as his beeline to the door was clear, Kyle jumped up out of his desk and ran out into the hallway. Sweat was pouring down his face and he took several deep breaths as he looked to the left and right down hallways that seemed to warp and go on forever.

    "Okay, Kyle, get it together," he told himself, trying to remember the layout of his old school and setting off in the direction he hoped the bathroom was. "This is definitely a dream. Do you remember falling asleep? No, that's stupid, nobody can remember falling asleep." He pinched himself hard on the arm and hissed through his teeth at the pain but nothing changed. The lockers around him seemed to briefly shiver. This wasn't even his high school. The teacher whose lair he had just escaped wasn't even a real teacher. This wasn't his high school, it was a thinly veiled hell. "What the fuck," he said to himself. "What the FUCK!"

    "Kyle?"

    Not now. Not fucking now.

    Kyle didn't even turn to look in the direction the all-too-familiar voice was calling to him from, he just started running. But this body was not his, it was not toned and muscular because Kyle wasn't athletic in high school, and his lungs screamed for air and his jelly legs couldn't run fast enough. The hallways twisted, shrunk, grew, and pulsed around him, and Kyle felt like he was going to throw up. He was barely moving when a hand grabbed his arm and yanked him around.

    Trapped, tired, and unable to move, Kyle met eyes with Andi. But it wasn't really Andi. It was Andi from high school, the Andi who only had one set of eyes and who had unnecessarily long, wavy brown hair and supple skin that wasn't blue and holy fuck, Kyle thought he was going to die, he spent so much time not looking at her when she appeared to him, and it had been years since he had seen her like this, and her beauty was astounding, and overwhelming. "Fuck," he whispered.

    Andi's face seemed to move delayed compared to her voice. "You can't be here," she said, her voice flat, missing its usual airiness.

    "I know," Kyle said. "I'm stuck."