Trapped

chapter 24

Chapter 24

                    Strong hands are shaking me and there is a horrible noise stabbing at my eardrums. What is that noise? I wonder. It’s only when I take a breath and the noise stops that I realize that the noise is my own screaming.

                      Now that I’ve stopped screaming I can hear the voice that belongs to the hands shaking me. “Tessa. Tessa wake up. Wake up!” Asleep. Dreaming. Nightmare. Wake up. Wake up. At the sudden realization that I was asleep I forced my eyes open only to come face to face with the monster of my nightmare himself.

                         I scramble backwards as quickly as humanly possible to get away from Finn. His screams still echo in my ears and Sam’s empty eyes are forever burned into my memory. I can feel my eyes bulging out of my head when Finn says, “It’s ok. It was just a nightmare.” He starts toward me with his hands outstretched and I scream.

                          Finn flinches at my scream, “What’s wrong!?” he asks.

                          I know I’m being ridiculous but I can’t get the images and sounds out of my head. I keep seeing Finn crouching over Sam’s body and screaming toward the sky, nothing nothing nothing. My heart is hammering against my ribcage and I can’t seem to calm down. He didn’t really kill Sam so what is my problem?

                           I can’t stop the word, “No!” from bursting from within me when Finn tries to come toward me again. Out of the corner of my eye I see movement and whip my head in its direction. It’s Sam. He’s running toward us from the direction of the exit doors. “Tessa!” he calls out. At the sound of his voice I scramble to my feet and finish closing the distance between us. When we collide I can’t help but cling to him as he strokes my hair and whispers soothingly in my ear. I didn’t even notice the tears on my cheeks until I pulled away from Sam’s warm embrace and noticed the damp spot my tears had left on his shirt.

                  “What happened? Are you ok? Did he hurt you?” Sam fired questions at me one after the other as he searched my face for any sign of an injury. His eyebrows were drawn together in concern and his cheeks were slightly flushed from the run. I didn’t yet trust my voice to not shake just as bad as my hands were so all I did was shake my head and lean back into Sam’s chest.

                   He didn’t question me any further. He just wrapped his arm around my shoulder and led me away from Finn, all the while throwing icy glares back over his shoulder at him.

                    It’s not until we’re away from Finn and the others Sam stops and turns me so that I’m facing him. “Now.” He says calmly and rationally. “Tell me what happened.”

                    Seeing as I was still visibly shaken up, I wasn’t very keen on speaking. After a few failed starts I begin to recount the events of my dream and the events that followed after I woke up. Sam kept his face unreadable throughout my ramblings and when I was done he didn’t say anything for several moments.

                      I was starting to think that he wasn’t going to reply at all until he blurted out “Are you psychic?” so suddenly it made me jump.

                     With my hand pressed to my heart (which was currently trying to escape my chest) I hesitantly say, “No… Why?”

                     He throws his arms in the air (which makes me jump again) “Then there’s nothing to worry about!”

                      “Um… Err… What?” I am now thoroughly confused.