The Idiosyncratic
Chapter 1 - With Shaky Hands
Max clutched her naked shoulders, shivering - trembling. Her eyes were lined with a pastel red, warm tears rolling down her blotchy cheeks and dripping off her chin as glassy shards. Her teeth were chattering, each breath she let out was a wisp of white smoke which fell to the ground as icy crystals.
She was surrounded by darkness which was disguised as freshly fallen snow. The freezing wind had jagged, scrawny fingers which grasped her bones and locked them into place, forbidding her movement.
She opened her cracked busted lips, the cold wind instantly entering her mouth and forcing its way down her throat and into her lungs. The icy wind hurt and made her insides numb, she felt like she could be split in half.
Max gagged and coughed, desperately trying to exhale the air in a bolting attempt to eject the biting wind. More tears spilt down Max's cheeks, it felt as if someone was forcing their hands down her throat, trying to rip out her stomach and spill her contents onto the snow.
Max's back arched and she outstretched her hands, digging her nails into the snow as she felt a warm, familiar, bubbly liquid rise up her throat and flood into her mouth. She grimaced at the taste, it was nothing she could've imagined.
It felt as if someone had used sandpaper to scrape away the insides of her throat, letting the acid from her stomach burn into her cuts. Then poured burning mercury down her throat which was melting through her skin and dripping onto the ground between her knees.
Max opened her teary eyes and finally took a breath in, looking at her stomach's contents which were now turning the white snow crimson. Her eyes widened in shock, blood. There was blood wrapped around her fingers and staining her pale skin. It appeared as if someone had been murdered right before her, she pulled her hands away the snowy plasma and found four small pastel pinky - blue crystals scattered in her 'vomit'. A small tag was tied to one of them, the largest. She flipped over the tiny note, trying not to blur the letters with her red liquid. It read, 'swallow me.'
Max woke up in a blur, everything was so sudden, the light, the music, the sweat encased around her body. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and as soon as they did she quickly peeled her back off the bed sheet and sat up, running her sweaty palms and shaky fingers through her hair.
Max rapidly noticed it was only a nightmare, in fact, the third one that week. She exhaled deeply and gathered her thoughts before swinging her legs around the side of her bed.
Max dug her feet into the carpet and slowly slithered her hands from her head down around the back of her neck remembering her dream. She swallowed some saliva and noticed her throat felt a little scratchy but that was probably because she was murmuring in her sleep.
A few more seconds of letting Breeze Blocks play she stood up and walked over to her closet. She was definitely going to need a shower she thought as she passed by her mirror. Some of her hair was stuck to the sides of her face, her cheeks were red like she had just been running a marathon and her shirt was damp with sweat from back to front.
After grabbing her shower basket and a new change of clothes she spun and looked out the window, she could instantly tell she was up earlier than usual, the sun was only just starting to rise and there was a thick layer of fog along Blackwell's grass. There were light drops of dew along the window and a few streaks of water which had run down the glass. Max pressed her palm against the window for the cool temperature and when she removed it her hand print was left on the glass. Not a bad shot, if she could be bothered to search for her camera.
Max inhaled again, her lungs were only allowing small capacities of air as her adrenaline was still pacing back to normal.
Max headed towards her door and wrapped a hand around the metal doorknob and she pushed it open, cold air instantly swept into her room and she felt a shiver pass down her spine. Slowly she stepped into the hallway, no one seemed to be up yet - she didn't blame them either, it was too early. Max felt like a zombie roaming abandoned hallways for energy. But she was like that most mornings anyway.
Max quickly descended down the hall towards the showers trying to stop thinking about her nightmare and the odd significance of the crystals. It was the same in her other dreams except this was the first time she was in the snow, once she was in mid air, underground suffocating and in a dark hospital room. She always jolted awake when she was holding the same crystals.
Max furrowed her eyebrows deep in thought. The dreams had to mean something, why was she always alone in the dreams, always scared or about to die? When she held the crystals why did she wake up? What would happen if she swallowed the crystals? And...What would happen if she didn't?
Sorry if it was shitty...