Chapter four~ DREAMS

After all this thinking, these memories and the flash backs I was tired and sleepy. I wanted to sleep but I was afraid to. These dreams were getting worse; they hurt me physically and emotionally. They are just so real to me. I tried to resist for a while but I fell asleep eventually.

The 6:00 am alarm woke me up. In other words it saved me. All night I've been dreaming, all night! Weird dreams, terrifying dreams, even tragic dreams. It's like I've been to the movies all night long and not by my choice. But there was one dream, a dream that I can remember clearly. I had trouble realizing that it is really a dream at first but then I figured out the truth. It really was a dream, so vivid in my imagination but still just a dream.

Aiko was there. I've been having that same dream for months now, but last night I remembered all of it, I even confused it with reality. Even though the dream was very close to some kind of sci-fi movie, it still felt real. I saw Aiko almost bursting into fires, but she wasn't burning. It's like she's causing it or manipulating it. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She was reddish. All of her skin had that color. Her hair was red glowing under the sun. And her hands had fire in them like fire balls. She wasn't burning her hands, she wasn't in pain and I didn't seem to be surprised at all. Then her hair turned in to fire and her eyes turned into the same color of her hair. She was beautiful, that red color really seemed to suit her very well. She was looking at me, and then she looked away at something else. I didn't seem to care so she threw a fire ball away to make me look. She was trying to show me something falling from the sky. I'm not sure of what it is called. An asteroid, a comet, a meteor, I didn't know. But that thing was falling really fast all burning and then there was an explosion sound and a white glare, and then nothing. When everything cleared out there wasn't any signs of anything. No marks on the ground, nothing is on fire, nothing. It was like nothing happened. She came close to me and held my hand leaving a burning mark on my hand and not hers and said:

"Go back there, figure this out, and get me out of here!"

That was the only thing she said during the entire dream. I didn't know what she meant. I woke up and went to catch my lectures, but all I could think of was that dream. I didn't listen to one word of what was being said. Instead I was thinking of that dream and having a thousand radio channels in my head. After a while I started paying attention to these voices. I found out that I could focus on one and phase out the rest. I was very impressed that I could do that. It was good to get rid of that headache that got stronger lately every time I'm around people. I focused on one voice. After a while I realized it was one of my colleges' voices. Her voice sounded like she's answering questions that weren't there kind of like she's being sarcastic about something. For some reason I had that crazy idea that I could actually read her thoughts. She was actually being sarcastic to what the professor was saying:

"So, anybody knows what 'hide and seek' means?" the professor asked.

"It's a game you idiot" She said that, I heard it in my head but I didn't actually see her say it out loud.

"It's a game guys! I used to play it a lot when I was younger" the professor answered when it became clear that nobody wanted to participate.

"Yeah yeah, we don't really need to hear the story of your life"

"How about you guys give me examples of games you used to play when you were younger?"

"How about you wrap this up and get out of here already?"

She was like that almost all the 2 hours of the class. She seemed to never shut up, at least in her head. I used to think that she's a very quiet person. She still is, but not in her head that's for sure.

I got out and I tried to focus on someone else. While I was searching, I found one of my colleges coming towards me. He was okay, I never really cared that much about him but I had no idea why I felt this happy when he starting approaching me. I wasn't all happy or excited because I saw him, I never really liked him that much, but I didn't know why. When he finally came to me, he was extremely excited because he finally managed to join the camp group that he was blabbing about all last week. They're going to camp in Hurghada which was a city on the red sea, very beautiful and he seemed to love it. After telling me he went on, apparently, to tell the rest of the people on campus, whether he knew them or not. He seemed that excited.

After he left, all this excitement I felt was gone too. I wasn't sad because he left, the feeling just faded as he did. Then another guy who never really liked me as far as I could tell came to ask me for my notes, and that was the first time he ever spoke to me. I was right, he didn't like me at all, being in his head wasn't exactly a picnic, but he trusted my notes apparently and that's why he asked me and not one of his best friends I guess. I gave him my note book and walked away. I went down to the playground which was very crowded and the thousand radio channels just started again. As I walked among them I started having different feelings that lasted only seconds or even less. I felt happy, sad, excited, depressed, worried, and scared, in love, upbeat, pessimistic, optimistic, and a lot of other feeling. By the time I crossed the playground I was exhausted, the headaches and the unstable mood just took all the energy left in me. I decided to call it a day and go home.

That idea really appealed to me. Home. It was the only place where I could really just be me. No radio channels, no headaches and certainly no strange feelings coming out all in one second. I wasn't sure what to think anymore. "Am I really a mind reader? I certainly don't think so. This is just too hard to believe. I can't be. There's no way". I kept saying that out loud, just trying to convince myself that none of what happened today really happened.

I couldn't get rid of that idea though. It was so stuck in my brains like glue. I think I liked it. I didn't know why really, but may be because it looked like one of my favorite movies come true. I've always been a supernatural movie freak. That didn't mean "crazy" up till now when I started listening to what I was saying. I was actually considering the possibility that I can read minds or hear thoughts or whatever. That second, I started getting a little worried about my mental health. I tried to change the subject in my head but I never managed to do that, not one time in my life was I able to block a thought out. I just have to obsess about almost everything.

I thought about what Aiko asked me to do in the dream. "Go back there" really! Really, Aiko? If that was her, she had to know I was never the person that gets a hint. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Is she haunting us now? Is that what it is? Now I'm crazy again thinking movies and sci-fi all over again.

Eventually I decided to "go back there" back to the place where it all happened. I reached the place hardly. There was no sign of anything. The two wrecked cars were just setting there but that was not what I expected to see. I expected a big hole, a mysterious view of something, anything. There wasn't. It was a meteor that landed here, wasn't it? We never really saw it for real, I just saw it my dream. How can I know now what really happened. Something must have destroyed those cars, may be it was something light that didn't affect the earth itself as much as what was on it.

I had no idea what I was doing there really. It didn't seem as easy as it is on the CSI shows. What was I expecting? Well, apparently it was something other than coming home empty handed. But that's what happened eventually. I did go home.

After I got there, I didn't really want to be by myself. I was afraid of thinking too much about this, about what I should or shouldn't have done. I was re-thinking the whole reading minds scenario and I didn't like it and I felt crazy. And then I started considering another possibilities and they were even crazier. I got to the point when I actually started thinking that Aiko is haunting us and trying to contact us somehow, give us some message. And then I started justifying this and thinking that this would be the reason for all the freak accidents that have been happening to us all along.

I went across to Mike and Chester's apartment. None of them was there but seconds after I was there Mike showed up and I started feeling this sudden rush of sadness mixed with depression and other feelings that I couldn't even begin to describe. He entered and didn't seem too surprised to see me there. I started telling him about what happened with me and that I went back to "ground zero" where it all happened. I did start but somewhere in the middle I couldn't finish. He was listening to me, at least he seemed to be, and answering me, but his mind, his thoughts, weren't really there. They were somewhere else, somewhere private, somewhere that I wasn't supposed to know about, hear about, or even see. Hearing his thoughts, I couldn't concentrate on my own speech. It was too much noise in my head, his thoughts and mine are just colliding.

He wasn't with me at all, he was with Aiko. A memory I had no idea it even existed. I felt bad for invading their privacy like this, but I had no choice, the thoughts were more like invading me than me invading them really. His thoughts seemed incoherent at first but then it all made sense.

I felt his love for her. I saw how he saw her. She was his angel, his guardian angel. That's how he saw her, that's how he thought of her. I saw a fight between them. I'm not fairly sure that "saw" is the correct verb, but I don't know how that even happens, I just know. Apparently he couldn't remember what that fight was about, but in the middle of his and her words he said:

"Marry me!"

The word made all the sense in the world to him, he felt that this is the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Even with all the arguments it just lit up in his head like a cartoon idea bubble. He just knew. And she just stopped talking, stopped everything, and froze by his words. He didn't even try to explain himself, he just said:

"I love you"

And kissed her. I never really found out why they didn't tell us that he was going to marry her. I didn't know when that fight happened and how it ended because right after thinking this, he transferred to a much much darker thought.

His thoughts, his sadness was too much and before I knew it my eyes were watering. He didn't even notice that I stopped talking; he didn't notice that my tears are showing now. He was in his own world, dark world. I couldn't believe that he was actually considering ending his life to end the pain and be with Aiko again. It made sense to me, I was ok with the idea for a second may be because I was tapping into his thoughts and feelings and his view of things. But then it hit me. I couldn't stand the idea that he could do that. I couldn't stand that I'm going to lose another friend, again, and so soon. I was sobbing now and he finally noticed. I couldn't tell him that I know what he's thinking but I couldn't handle it either. I just blurted one sentence and left begging him with all the heart left in me, with my eyes, not to do it.

"I took you for a lot of things Mike, never for a quitter."

I said it and left. I couldn't look at him but he didn't say anything. I think he was surprised. I felt like if I stayed with him a second longer, I'd die. I'd die of sorrow and nothing else. I knew he was too crushed but his feelings with mine were too much for me. On one side I was mad at him for not even trying and the other part was me feeling extremely awful for being so helpless, so useless and not being able to help him at all.

I went back to my apartment and the first thought in my head was:

"It's settled then, I hear thoughts!"

It sounded so weird even for me the sci-fi movie freak. But how else could I explain what just happened now? I started rejecting the thought once again. "It might have been a fantasy or a dream" I thought. I finally decided to start doing something~ a research. I went to my computer and started searching~ searching everything and anything. Meteors, superpowers, why people get them, what happens when meteors fall, I just googled everything that came up in my head. The first gazillion sites were useless. But then I found this site where only theories and not facts were put there. After all the sites about facts failed me, I decided to see what the theories might say. After a few minutes of reading, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.