Here is Chapter two. I know it's short, but hey. Hope you like it!
Chapter Two
I nearly sprinted out of the school when the day was over. I had to get away from everyone; even Clark.
The illusions had started when I was nine. They were so terrifying, so extremely weird, I didn't even know why I had them. I had wanted to go to the doctors for it, to test for seizures, but my grandma wouldn't let me.
I lived with my grandmother. My parents had died in a plane wreck when I was three. Ever since then, I had lived with my grandmother.
I ducked around the parking lot bend and hopped over a wooden fence, my feet making a large thud on the soft damp earth beneath me. I looked around before jogging through the forest.
I had always come home this way. I loved it. I felt so at home here, so peaceful. The green ferns would sigh in my wake, swaying in the light wind that caressed their limbs. The dry, bristle trunks of the tress softened against my touch. The small animals in the forest would snicker happily as I sped by. I would catch a glimpse of a rabbit family from time to time as they cleaned their young ones. Their soft, fluffy fur would lay on them like clouds.
The chipmunks chirped quietly and skittered up and down trees, bickering lightly with the squirrels. The crickets would sing happily and play their own tunes, meshing into an orchestra. The deer would stand still in my wake, nuzzling their noses to my shirt when I rubbed their muzzles. The fawns would prance through the debris and leaves happily, bouncing and leaping through the air.
If I could choose a home, it would be here.
Slowing down to a walk, my mind drifted back to English class.
The illusions had stopped for a few weeks. Why had they come back?
They were an out-of-body out-of-world experience, sending me into a whole other dimension. Sometimes I heard what others were thinking in this state. Sometimes I hear a language that wasn't real, yet somehow, I understood. Sometimes, I would see people going on with their daily lives.
The scariest one of the visions was when I saw the future. I remember the first time it happened. Clark's grandfather was sick.
I had dozed off into an illusion. By then, I knew I had these, but I had never seen the future.
My eyes had rolled into the back of my head as I was sitting on Clark's bed.
His grandfather had been hooked up to an oxygen tank and laid on a hospital bed. His frail, translucent skin was clinging onto him barely. I could see the blue veins underneath his doughy skin. His eyes were fluttering, fighting to stay open as they stared around him. The filmy eyes were a deep blue like Clark's, except they were fading over into a light, cloudy grey. Tears creased in his eyes as his breathing struggled. The heart monitor beside him beeped quickly to the tempo of his heart thrumming.
"No, grandpa. Don't leave." I saw Clark, his light blonde hair shagging over his ten year-old face. Tears dripped down his round cheeks.
"I.." he coughed. "Tell your family.." he couldn't get a sentence out without flying into a fit of coughs. "Love them….love you." With a last round of coughs, his grandfather closed his eyes, shakily taking a few last breaths.
"No grandpa! No! You can't leave me!" Young Clark shouted as some nurses grabbed his arms and towed him backwards. Clark thrashed. "Grandpa!"
The vision had ended there, and my eyes had rolled back to my ten year-old face. I sat up, shaking and covered in hot drops of sweat.
"Anna, what's wrong?" Clark asked.
I trembled violently and tucked myself under the sheets again, lying my head down to stare at my best friend.
"Your grandfather. He….he's died."
Clark laughed. "Anna, it was just a dream. My grandfather is fine."
Five days later, his grandfather was a dead doornail.
I shiver at the memory.
There were other types of illusions, too, that happened to me.
When I was outraged, my fingertips would tingle, a flaming burning creeping up my fingers. I swear a few times that I had seen sparks on the tips. At the times I was undoubtedly depressed or sad, the sky would darken and rain would patter down. Sometimes, my fingers would turn to mush, just like a blob of muck. Other times, when I needed someone to tell the truth and they were lieing, I would squeeze my eyes shut and immediately they would blurt out the truth.
Oddly, though, this had never worked on my grandma. She had always been able to defend against that.
On some days, I didn't feel human at all. I would skip school and sprint through the woods all day, never stopping. The hair on the back of my neck would bristle when I heard a twig snap or a twitter in the bushes. I almost got down on all fours and started running on those days. I wouldn't get home until two in the morning on those days, and I wouldn't eat a thing.
But the illusions only got worse from there.
I could trick people into thinking what I wanted them to think. I could make them choose radical, idiotic decisions at any time I wanted. I could call an animal to my service, see clearly in the dark, on a bad day hear people's thoughts, and the night, even though I was sixteen, scared the living dead out of me when I wasn't in one of those 'not human' days.
I shoved the illusions away from my mind. I didn't want to think about them. I wanted to believe I was in a nightmare, that I would wake up soon.
Sadly, this wasn't a nightmare, I wasn't dreaming, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Thunder claps its hands overhead as rain falls on the canopy above me.
I run the rest of the way home, drenching myself in the salty tears of the sky.
