Insanity

Chapter Seven

Cassie stared at Lee, blood draining from her face.
"Dream? What dream?" She said, her voice quavering slightly.
"You were talking in your sleep last night, and it wasn't your random weird dream mutterings. It sounded like a damn horror story Cas, or the thoughts and words of someone who's.... I don't know... Insane."
Cassie sat, stony faced, clearly thinking about what she was going to say. "It's hard to... Explain. I don't remember much, just flashes of it. I remembered the dream was very..." She searched for the word, "Scary? Terrifying? Eerie? There's so many words, but none of them are the ones I'm looking for." She sighed, and rubbed her eyes in frustration. Lee, still sitting on her bed, leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. "Forget it Cas. I know it's hard to talk about-"

"No, Lee. I need to get it out, otherwise it's going to eat me up inside. This dream is something so psychologically confusing and scary, and I'd rather not go insane thinking about it." Cassie shifted around, clearly still on edge. Lee didn't really blame her, she knew that if this had happened to her, she wouldn't be too calm about it. "Well, just pull me to the side when you're ready to tell me about it."

"You know I will Lee. I mean, who else would I tell? Headmistress Nistreme? That'd be a fun conversation." Cassie laughed, and some of the tension was released from her shoulders, and her face relaxed from its unreadable expression. However, the relaxed atmosphere was disturbed shortly after this small little break, by none other than the Vulture herself. She had come to search their room. It was time to test whether they had hid everything that would get them in BIG trouble.

She walked in through the door and stared around the room, taking in her surroundings. She strode to the small closet, which only held there rather depressing collection of clothes. She looked under the beds and saw only dust and a few old pieces of paper. She went into their bathroom (yes they have their own bathroom don't come at me -_-) and looked in their. She also looked in their nightstand, which made Lee a little tense since her notebook was in there. Nistreme looked at it suspiciously, and flicked through a few pages, which only showed Lee's detailed drawings of constellations and whatever phase the moon was at that night. Nistreme threw it back down and shut the drawer, and scowled at both of them. "Well, you two have... passed. Keep your room clean, and we won't have any trouble..." She stalked out of the room, closing the door harshly behind her.

"Holy crap that was close. I had notes about the plan in my journal, and I completely forgot to put it in my backpack." Lee sighed with relief. "Well, at least that old bat won't be coming back around to invade our privacy."

Cassie nodded, and went over to the door to make sure no one was listening in. "Right so, Lee, we need to start seriously planning our "evacuation". She made finger quotes in the air, and Lee snorted, but became serious all the same. "Yeah I was thinking about that too. We really have three options Cas, and I don't really fancy any of them." Cassie, raised an eyebrow at Lee. "Well that's a lot. What are those options, and why aren't you a big fan of them?"

"Well, my dear red-headed compadre, the first and worst option is to sneak out during breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We usually skip lunch, so that could be our best option, or breakfast, since everyone's too tired to realize that, oh no, two teenagers are missing. Heck, they'll probably think that we just overslept!" Cassie nodded, but she again asked, "Why don't you like this option?" Lee laughed. "It's pretty hard to sneak out of the orphanage by day Cas. Firstly, you have the mistresses running around, making sure we aren't sticking our noses where they aren't supposed to be. Secondly, there are so many variables in this situation, probably more than the other two situations. We don't know if other kids are going to be walking around, see us with all our stuff, and snitch on us faster than we can say 'Roger Taylor is now a cute Santa Claus look-a-like'. Thirdly, pretty much everyone in town also knows we live here, and are likely to tell Nistreme that we're wondering around town with our stuff." Lee breathed deeply through her nose. "Well, what are the other two options?" "We either sneak out of the front door during the night, or we sneak out the window, again, at night."

Cassie stared at Lee. Lee wasn't looking at Cassie, but looking at the floor, pondering the two options she had previously named. "Well, I can see the advantages of sneaking downstairs. No one would be up to see or hear us walking around, and it's definitely easier than climbing out a window. However," Cassie paused, looking at the door. "there's a chance the mistresses will be patrolling the floors, and the second floor has the most rooms, so there will probably be more people patrolling here." Cassie paused, and waited for Lee to say something. After a bit, she started to speak. "So, our best solution is my third one. We leave through our window." Cassie stared at Lee, and Lee continued. "There's a ladder on the side of the building, it leads to the roof. I think it's there for roof repairs. Late a night, we can sneak out, and run like Hell is right behind us-" "And, our stuff is up there! We can just grab and go without making a lot of noise!" Cassie interrupted. Lee beamed. "Since there's no room under ours, no one will see us leaving!" Cassie beamed back at Lee, joyous about this brilliant plan. However, Lee asked the question that turned the atmosphere from joyful, to somber and serious. "The thing is... When do we leave?" Cassie furrowed her brows, deep in thought, and Lee shifted nervously. "As soon as possible, obviously, on a night with no cloud coverage no chance of a storm." Lee nodded, and added, "And pretty late at night, so the less chance we have of getting spotted. I think 1 AM should be a good time." Cassie agreed, and sighed. "We'll have to wait until that night comes, since we can't exactly look at the weather channel."

Lee sighed, and agreed, and let silence wash over them. It was getting late, and the decided to go down to dinner, maybe scrounge up some more rations. While Cassie was busy still thinking about the plan, Lee was casting suspicious looks at her friend, still wondering what happened in her dream.