Sleep.
Chapter 1, Part 3.
I started tossing and turning
stiffly in my sleep just as I had the night before, more so than
before though. Suddenly, my imagination began to brew up another
dream. Old, rotting, wooden walls surrounded me. My lungs were
filled with thick smoke. Sweat trickled down my back. Looking for
the source of the irritating warmth, I twisted my spine to look
behind me. Flames engorged the walls, not a patch of the wood
wasn`t being swallowed by fire. Eventually the smoke made its way
surrounding me. There was no way for me to get out, no direction
I could run without being diagnosed with third-degree burns
afterwards. Boiling heat prickled at my forehead. It was getting
harder and harder to gulp the little oxygen left in the
claustrophobically small room. It hurt, it burned. I could
already feel the scars forming on my skin. My arm popped out
behind me to find some kind balance. Then I suddenly felt my hand
not find something that could possibly steady me, but pain. I
quickly ripped my hand away from it. Trembling in fear I pulled
my hand up to my face, hoping not to find exactly what I knew was
there. My hand, shaking, in front of my face, covered in burn
marks, and cherry red, skin. I began to stutter, the fire laughed
at my injury. Out of nowhere, I spontaneously caught the flames,
and they began to engulf my body. Knowing the most common
technique of un-catching on fire, I pushed myself to the ground,
and started twisting, and rolling on the uncomfortably hard
floor. It did nothing, I continued to burn without one effect
from spiralling my way around the tiny room. Then I noticed
something, I was screaming, at the top of my lungs, but I could
not hear a thing. I looked around, nothing was here, but my
soundless shouts rebounded off of the walls. Attempting to accept
that I was dying, I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that the tears
of my aching that flowed down my cheeks like a busy river might
possibly put out the fire. My eyes opened, expecting to catch my
last glimpse of the flames, but instead, I was in my living room,
lying on the carpet. I continued to search the room, which even
though I had lived in my entire life, seemed like I had never
seen it before. Unhappily I sighed, lifting my palm up to my
forehead. As I reached for my sweating scalp, I realized
something on the back of my hand. I flipped it knuckles-up.
Breathlessly I held my throbbing stomach, as I stared at my hand,
dangling in the air, bright, cherry, red. . .
.