Bleeding edge

The Walk

THEY SAID ONLY THE DEAD FISH GO WITH THE FLOW.

I wasn't a fish and neither was I dead. Then why did the society urge me to suppress my originality?

School was just a miniature version of this society. Say something out of the ordinary and you are shunned. Unfortunately, everything about my nightmares was also termed 'abnormal' or 'extraordinary'.

"-----And then everything went black." I finished with a wave of a hand.

"Woah!"

"So bloody cool!"

"Is that even a dream or did you just make that up?"

My face whipped to glare at the person who had made the last comment.  "No you're right, it wasn't a dream, it was a nightmare." I replied.They wouldn't understand. No one could. No one would know how it felt like to wake up in the morning with a murder fresh in your head.

The worst part of the 'dreams'? I was always in the place of the victim.

"It seemed so real... I could hear the woman and even smell the hounds breath." I had tried explaining to my astrology teacher. The only answer I got was how Mars was not in the same line as Venus which was a very bad omen and thus would be the cause of some hallucinations.

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"Less! Come downstairs and have your breakfast!" The previous day had been normal enough. Despite this I knew the presiding night was going to show me another one of my 'hallucinations'.

Even as I sat for breakfast I wondered why no one would believe me. My friends thought the dreams to be a joke while adults kept recommending names of different psychologists to me.

What was so 'cool' about having extremely vivid nightmares? Not just nightmares but repetitive ones; the scenario was always the same - A person entered a building. Soon they would realize that he or she wasn't alone and before the blink of an eye, would be killed by someone in the shadows.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I noticed my parents looking at me in worry. They had always been rather protective of me. This was, I suppose, a side effect of being the only child.

Not wanting to worry them any further, I sent them a smile and promptly started eating.

"Elsie dear, could you run down to the market and get a tube of paste?" I had just stuffed the last morsel of food into my mouth, when my mother spoke up. I simply nodded my head in agreement.

After closing the door behind myself, I began to walk down the road leading to the market beside my school. For the eleven years of my schooling I had always taken a certain path down. Every crack, every stone of this road was familiar to me. Despite the usual feeling of familiarity, I also felt something else, a sense of dread and dizziness. Before I could actually comprehend my feelings, a sudden panic crept upon me and my hands became clammy. Moments later I  became a victim to the shadows and was engulfed by darkness.

A shiver went down my spine. Black. That was all I could see. It loomed before me with the endless unown.

I tried to maintain my balance and stay upright, but failed terribly. My vision kept getting darker by the second but my other senses seemed sharper than ever before. I felt the cool pavement against my cheek and the rocks making their imprints on my skin. I could hear the pitter-patter of every  raindrop as it fell into the puddles of water and even smell the faint odor of wet mud.

Earlier, in my nightmares I had been invisible.

Yes, I was in the place of the victim but I, as Elsie was nowhere. I never felt what the people in my dreams did. I was just a physical body with no thought or feeling. Contrary to the normal, this time I could feel my presence strongly. It  felt as though I had been transported within the fraction of a second to a place of eternal darkness.

The real world had just gone out of focus when I finally heard it, a soft padding sound; the sound of footsteps.

By this time, all my other senses had also shut down and the real world was completely out of focus, while the place I was in seemed to be getting more and more real as the seconds ticked by.

After what seemed like eternity a person stepped out of the darkness.

A person with vivid green eyes.

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