Let Me Sleep

When Will We Learn?

Kendra

There's a great weight on my chest, and though I've opened my eyes, there isn't any difference from when they were closed.

"Iggy." I say. My voice doesn't echo, and it isn't absorbed either. It just kind of hangs there. I try to push whatever is on my chest off, but there's nothing there.

Panic. Panic knots my stomach and crushes my lungs. Panic ruins me.

Panic is all I have.

Despite the obvious, there's something entirely off. Something ... missing.

"Iggy." I rasp again, and this voice joins the other. Soon, I'm surrounded by my own voice, mockingly repeating my words. But then they change.

"You know you're a failure." One says.

"Strung herself up, hasn't she?" Another says.

"Playing the damsel in distress, hoping they'll come rescue you?" Asks one. It goes on and on until I'm screaming, my shrill shrieks lingering with the taunting and the self-loathing.

"All you wanted was a good old-fashioned adventure." I jerk around toward the sound. This voice is different. It's not mine. "Now look what I've gotten you into. I can make it right, Kendra. I can make it right if I disappear."

"... Ig?" I say tentatively, and everything stops. Time, movement, sound, everything.

"Stop!" I shout into the void. I don't know how I know what to say, but the words are laid out on the table for me to use. "Don't cast it!"

"No! I have to! He's my brother and I have to set him free, whatever the cost!" I'm certain it's Iggy now.

"Am I worth you dying?" I scream back. "Am I really worth so much for you to try so hard to help me?" I'm choking on my words, shivering and crying with snot running out of my nose.

I can feel him fading. He's going quickly, putting everything he is into the spell.

"Yes!" He finally shouts, his voice loud and strong in comparison to my own. And then the very last of him is blasted away, and I've lost him.

Everything is wrong.

I open my eyes to a familiar sight. Well, as familiar as it gets. I'm quite certain it's a dream, though, because my parents are dead.

I'm back home. In Leeds. Mum and Dad are cooking, and I'm sitting at the table. I reach toward them, longing tearing a hole through me. I have missed them so much.

And then I wake up.

Blue hair. Grey eyes. Anna. I nearly hit her in the face before I stop myself.

"Where's Iggy?" I ask in a panic. She glances over at Gabriel for a moment.

"We left him behind." Gabriel says. "Don't worry about him, darlin'. He'll be fine." I prop myself up on my elbows.

"No." I say. "He's not okay."

"What are you - " Gabriel starts, but I interrupt him.

"He's not!" I shout. "I just know it."

"How do you know?" Anna asks. I bare my wrists. On the right one is the same thing that was on Iggy's left wrist. It's dull and bitterly cold.

"That's how." I tell her. I actually had no idea that it was there before now, but I guess my bullshitting paid off. I shudder and pull my sleeves down again.

Gabriel hesitates; I can see it in his expression that he's deciding whether or not to go after him.

"Stay here." He finally says to us.