Damn mutants. It's the second time this week that someone's been killed in this tiny Californian town due to their antics, not to mention the staggering amount of property damage done to the business district. I switched off my television and let the nocturnal darkness shroud my bedroom instantly. They were like the plague, consuming the population at an ever-increasing rate, killing innocents every day. Their numbers were growing… and ours shrinking.

My rage grew as I thought of my mother, recently killed by one of them nearly a year ago, over something pointless no doubt.

I lay in my bed for a few hours after thinking of my mother, fantasizing of hunting down the monsters that had stolen her and killing them in slow, satisfying ways, cutting off fingers, severing ears, gauging out eyeballs filled with terror. Lovely, imaginary revenge. Real revenge of the nature would be all the better, but my daydreams were no less satisfying. I slowly nodded off to sleep, envisioning their cries of fear.

Silhouettes of redwood branches danced above me. The gentle sound of trickling water playfully entered my eardrum. A waning crescent moon overhead lightly illuminated the forest floor, littered with pine needles and twigs. I wandered to the creek and stared into the water, the ripples accentuated by the silvery light of the moon.

A little leaf ran across the water surface, and swirled between the little waves in the creek, ebbing and flowing, when it caught fire. The red flame stopped where it had turned, refusing to obey nature's laws and flow peacefully atop the currents. Slowly, the surrounding water turned a bloody red, spreading from where the flame had stopped. I looked into the sky to discover that the once silvery crescent moon had turned an eerie red along with the creek.

I was grabbed from behind; the forest set ablaze, an infernal fire burning my exposed flesh. I tried to scream, but I had no mouth.

My head jolted up from the embrace of my pillow, meeting the cold night air, and the sound of my panicked heartbeat, raging against the inside of my skull. A cold sweat dripped down my neck and legs, causing my short, blonde, wavy hair to stick to my spine, chilling my body and overheating it all at once. A nightmare, only a nightmare. I looked at the digital clock beside my bed; 4:37 pm… might as well get up.

I stumbled down the stairs, still groggy from my lack of sleep, into the living room, sitting on the old orange couch and flicking the television on, bringing it down to a barely audible volume as to not wake up my father. For half an hour, I stared at the television, an unrecognizable cartoon flashing images at me, not really caring to comprehend what I was watching, but thankful for a distraction from the nightmare I had had.

I sudden unexpected news report broke me out of my trance.

"Tragedy at Emberlight Elementary in Georgia this morning, as the result of yet another battle between mutant individuals gone terribly wrong. The fighting caused several classrooms to collapse, wounding nearly two hundred children and killing around thirty-six. Police are currently working on tracking the mutant individuals involved, but so far have no lea-."

I turned off the television, remote firmly grasped with both hands as if I were holding out a gun. I stood up, throwing the remote into the corner of the couch before holding one of the cushions in a death grip and punching it with all my strength. Poof, poof, poof. No matter how hard I punched, it felt inadequate, I wanted to punch the whole world, and watch it bleed out. I kept punching it until my knuckles were red and my face redder.

I stormed outside into the early morning air, and screamed at the top of my lungs. In doing so, a light flashed on in the corner of my eye, and stayed, irritating me further. I assumed that my father was behind me and the porch light had been turned on. I quickly swiveled around on the naked flesh of my feet, in pain from the rocky ground scraping against them. No one was there, and the light remained at the corner of my eye no matter which direction I turned.

I ran to the lawn. The light followed. I ran to the shade house. The light followed, constantly in the lower left corner of my left eye. I spun around anticlockwise several times, growing paranoid and sticky with sweat. My knees hit the concrete ground, cut open by the decorative rocks within it, and brought my hands down to the ground, eyes squeezed closed and irritated by tears. The light was gone. But only for a moment.

I fell to the left as the light ignited once more, scratching my elbow as it caught the weight of my body. My eyes shot open, more furious and disoriented than before. Then I saw.

My heart stopped. My hand… was this my hand? I glowing entity remained where my left hand had once been, in the vague shape of a human hand. I felt like it was burning off. I gritted my teeth, reaching out to touch it, and gasped as my right hand went through the left as though nothing was there. As I ran my fingers through the upper base of my left hand, the fingers of the left hand disappeared for a second. It was as if it was made of light.

My sweating became even more unbearable, my throat closed off. My own voice caught my ear "No," I tried pulling off my intangible, glowing left hand, "no. This can't be happening. I can't be a- this has to be a nightmare." Something told me it was not a nightmare; I threw up.