The Mirror Realm

32.

  His lungs heave, running out of oxygen like a burning inferno in a confined space. He places a trembling hand on his chest, his heart beating a million miles a minute. It thumps, over and over, threatening to jump out of its cage as if it were trapped. He falls to his knees, one hand holding himself off the polished tile of the cafeteria floor.

  He's had panic attacks before, but none like this...it feels as if he's suffocating. Dying. It feels as if he's only inches away from the terrible fate.

  The draw strings of his hoodie dangle in front of his face, black spots crowding his peripheral gaze. Every one around him stares with fright, some even with amusement.

  "Someone help!"

  "That's what you get for killin' your girlfriend, Dixon!"

  "He's turnin' purple!"

  The jeers and concerned shrieks come from every direction, Oliver's head swirling and pounding like a whirlpool, churning and whiling around one main idea: breathing. All the other noise in the rowdy room doesn't quite make it to his head, to which, he's very internally grateful for.

  Within seconds, a staff member rushes in, an inhaler in hand as they break their way through the dense crowd of selfish teenagers who stand as if they're deer in the headlights.

  "Get out of the way!" He shouts, to this they all move, creating a gauntlet like formation. Oliver's breathes become more staggered, his chest hitching more than once with every two inhales. His eyes glass over and bulge out of his skull. The staff member shakes the inhaler and shoves it into his mouth, pressing down on the trigger. Nothing happens, so he does it again, though this time, he does if even more vigorously.

  It is in that very moment, that Oliver stops moving, stops breathing. His eyes close lazily, his cheeks becoming drained of all colors. His once erratic body now lays in a cumbersome heap. The staff member and students surrounding freeze to the sudden tenseness in the air.

  "No," the man drops the inhaler and takes Oliver's limp head and back, placing them gently of his lap. He feels for a pulse, but feels nothing, the blood that once flowed through the boy's veins now stuck in a deep sleep.

  "No, no Oliver, wake up god dammit wake up!" He says frantically, "someone call the param-"

  Before he can even finish his shuddering sentence, Oliver's eyes shoot open like water coming out of a power hose. He stands up on his weak feet, and begins to run for the doors, his spasmodic stature flailing about everywhere. Students and staff alike watch in horror and bewilderment as Oliver leaves without a second glance back. They watch as the boy who once lay limp on the ground runs to his car right outside the window and drives away like nothing ever happened.

  But there's something they didn't catch, and it was the knowing look glinting in his brown irises, his retinas lit with a fire of question.

  The staff member gets to his own feet, a sigh of relief escaping his mouth. He searches the sea of spooked teens, and says: "everyone go to class, and do not bring this incident up to anyone!"

  With that, they all slowly disperse; filing one by one out the doors of the cafeteria, they leave their lunch trays and uneaten food exactly where it was before the twenty second death of Oliver Dixon.

***

  He places his foot on the gas petal, flooring it past a red light, the look still burning in his eyes. He swerves his steering wheel left and right, avoiding the other cars going the proper speed limit. The streets come alive with honking horns and outraged pedestrians who were inches away from hitting the fellow car in front of them. But Oliver doesn't care, he pays no attention to this and speeds on.

  He pulls up the driveway and places the car in park, not caring that he's half way in his father's grass yard, inches away from hitting his bike. He exits briskly and in a running frenzy, he's up the porch steps, and half way up the stairs to the second floor.

  "Hi honey, why are you home so early?" His mother calls after him, currently in the kitchen cutting vegetables. She gets no answer besides the harsh slamming of a door.

  "Love you too," she mutters under her breath, returning to cutting.

  Oliver - who now is positioned in his desk chair - vigorously opens the lid of his laptop, slamming his fingers on the keys rapidly as he types something into the search engine.

  "Come on, come on, come on," he nonchalantly whispers under his breath. Within a matter of milliseconds, the screen illuminates his pale face with websites and articles all revolving around the same topic: Lucifer. He clicks on one website, not even caring to read the name. His eyes jut up to read the headline.

Breaking: Juvenile Swedish Boy Reportedly Vanishes Without A Trace.

Oliver reads on, the headline repeating over and over in his head, the bold, sophisticated letters printed on the walls of his hippocampus.

Swedish boy Dane King has been reportedly missing without any clues or indication of where he went as of last night. The King's found nothing but a broken mirror and blood on the vanity and walls...

Oliver eyes scan down the article, until his eyes catch something that sounds vaguely familiar.

King has been in incidences of abuse and hardship at home, and this has encouraged his fits and outbreaks of misbehavior amongst his community, earning him the harsh nickname of, The Devil. But before his sudden disappearance, he has made three comments to his father about seeing a strange female figure. Once every day for three days straight.

"This illness is seldom in our family chain," Mr. Lucious King stated in an interview by the Press when asked if Sleep Paralysis was common his his family...The boy to this day still remains missing, and no one knows where he went.

Oliver jars his retinas away from the screen, but looks back at a picture at the end of the article. There, in a black and white photograph is a teenage boy. His cheek bones high on his face and lips pressed in a thin line. His dark locks are swept up out of his face. But its the eyes that stick out the most, they stare you down, and move with you as if they were in an old painting. They seem almost...evil.

Oliver scrolls back up, unable to stare the picture in the eyes anymore, but his eyes stop on a subtitle he didn't catch before.

This Article References the Incident Report of the Disappearance of Dane King, Originally Created and Released in 1986

1986, exactly two decades ago.

"What is going on?" Oliver conveys aloud, confusion heavily weighted in his husky voice, "What is going on?"