It was as if every step he took wasn't taken by him, every word came from his vocal chords, but didn't come from his mind; every blink, every breath, every malevolent smile that reflected on the mirror. It wasn't him, it was it. The thing in his head, the one that had taken complete control over him from that strange night when he'd been attacked after practice by a strange cloud of black smoke.

It'd led him to school the next day, lacrosse practice; it'd talked to all of his friends as if it were him, but it hadn't been. Inside, he was yelling at them, LOOK AT ME! THE REAL ME! LOOK. AT. ME. But no one noticed; they were all fooled by its act. In more occasions that one, it had led him, his body in its control, to private corners where they could see their reflection; they, because he was in a prison inside his own mind, and it controlled the rest. His eyes stared back at him in the mirror, only it looked as if he were looking from behind a window pane; as if he wasn't looking at himself at all. It had been at that moment when he'd noticed the dark voids of black that invaded his once familiar chocolate hues. "You see, Danny?" His voice echoed many times during those short private moments with the intruder. "You see how every single one of them goes on without you?" It taunted. "How they don't even notice you're not… you?" Danny's eyes; no, it's eyes narrowed upon the reflection, and any speck of light from the bulbs above his head that had illuminated their dark hue was completely gone. It truly looked as if whatever shade had overpowered them had burnt through Danny's optics like coal on a fire, leaving nothing behind. "Pay close attention." It whispered with his voice. "You have to play close attention."

Danny wanted to move, he wanted to tell his intruder to shut up, to get the hell out of him and go annoy someone else. His life was fine; he didn't care if he was ignored, he didn't care if no one in Beacon Hills remembered his name when he was gone. He didn't really expect to stay in contact with any of them anyway, ever. Ethan, maybe, but even he felt like a temporary stop in his journey due to the werewolf thing.

Danny wouldn't say he loved Ethan; but that also didn't mean that it didn't hurt when his intruder had lead him toward the tall, short haired, Adonis that was his boyfriend. It's what one of the things that had hurt the most of that day: his intruder controlled his body so that he slammed Ethan against the lockers in the changing rooms. "Whoa." He had said, and then Danny's intruder willed his body to kiss him; so hard and passionately that it almost felt like Danny was the one intruding. But he screamed; Danny screamed again and again for the black eyed intruder to stop. To stop kissing Ethan, to stop acting as if it were him.

And even worse than any of that had been the manner in which the intruder had led Danny through a full day of clueless looks, friendly chatter and pointless flirting, and no one ever noticed the fact that Danny was acting out of character. Not once did any of his friends wondered why he suddenly walked as if he owned the whole school, no one ever noticed that he was not paying attention in class and instead was writing seemingly incoherent sentences on his notebook as he had an internal battle of ask and answer with the black eyed being, not lifting his hand once to answer any question that his teachers asked. No one lifted a brow when he barely spoke during lunch, and Ethan never realized that he wouldn't ever attack him with kisses the way he had in front of the whole lacrosse team due to the fact that he wasn't one for very public displays of affection. Sure, he could be wild, he was wild… but in private. Yet… apparently, his boyfriend hadn't known him enough to find something like that strange.

Sure, Danny never expected to be thought of as important in that, his town of the strange and unusual; but to truly realise how incredibly unimportant he was... well, it hurt. "Did you see?" His voice whispered in the lowest of tones as the intruder led him forth toward his home, steps slow, yet steady, as if they had all the time in the world. "Did you see the way each one of the people you think know you, couldn't care... less?" No, that's not true. Danny replied in his mind; he wanted to scream, and he was, but he wanted to hear it erupt from his mouth. He wanted his vocal chords to break with intensity as he yelled for help, any help; but instead what came out was laughter, deep, dark, monstrous laughter that would have sent chills though his spine if he were the one in control; but he felt nothing. Leave! He screamed inside his head, which only caused his intruder to laugh; the sounds leaving his lips controlled fully by it and its demonic tones. "You are a fool, boy." It said, holding tightly onto the strap of Danny's backpack. "But we're not done for the day." For the day? Danny wondered, Would that mean it was going to let him go?

But of course the intruder laughed again. To hear his voice making such strange sounds was horrible; to hear it, to feel the air leaving his lungs in small lapses as it laughed. "What's so damn funny?" A female voice called, and when the intruder turned his head, Danny saw his mum. No, he thought. Not her.

"Nothing." His voice said. "Something I read on the way home." But they weren't his words; his intruder wasn't done, he was putting on the horribly fake act of being him once again. The fake tone of concern that adorned his voice was foreign to Danny, mostly because he never spoke like that. "Are you going somewhere, mother?" It asked, mocking him with every word. He would never call her that; it was always 'mom'; mom, mom, MOM! Danny yelled, but nothing left his lips.

"Book club." His mum replied. "I left some dinner on the table okay?" She said, slipping her keys inside her straw purse. "Don't wait up!"

What!? Danny thought. No way. "Of course." His voice spoke again. "Have fun!" Nooo! Danny had to do something; how could he be so trapped? How could he be so useless? LET ME GOOOO "OOOO!" Wait.. "Mom!" It was Danny, he had said that. How had he even—

"Yes?" His mum said, turning around to face him. "What?" She asked, standing a few feet away from him by the corner of the garden.

But he couldn't move, couldn't even blink. All day long Danny had been trying to fight against that intruder of his, and now that he had.. "Mom," he repeated, "I think you need to call—me when you get safely there, okay?" Danny had felt it; some sort of push inside his brain, inside his being that just stopped him from whatever it was he had achieved for a few seconds; he was a prisoner again.

The intruder moved his body forward to walk toward his confused mum, and it wrapped his arms around her. "I love you, mother." It said, and Danny wanted to scream again. Could he do it? Could he somehow manage to push the bastard back enough to tell her to help him.

"I love you too, Danny." She replied in a somewhat confused tone. "Are you okay?" Well, at least she'd noticed something was wrong with her son.

He needed to speak again, he needed to do whatever it was he'd done before, he needed to— "Yeah, I'm just tired." His voice spoke, making him want to scream once again. "Going to sleep for a bit. Have fun!" And then the intruder led them away from her and into the house. No. Danny thought. No, no! I need to speak to her! He wanted to tell her that he needed someone to help him. "I don't know how you managed that bit of strength, little man," it stated with dark spite, "but I assure you, it will be your last attempt." His voice whispered upon his command as the door of his home shut with a loud bang.

Not even thirty minutes later, Danny was staring at his black eyed reflection again; sweat beads glistening under the glimmers of light. He'd been fighting; attempting to, at least, and just like the short amount of time he had been able to break free before, he had been able to do again. But his intruder was angry now, even as it forced his hand to write the words of something that looked too much like the last words of a desperate soul; not the kind of thing Danny would ever write at all. Spots of ink here and there, splattered the page from the short moments he had been able to fight back, but to no avail; and Danny was starting to get tired, truly and fully, and because of it his intruder had become stronger. I can't go on, the splattered letter read, I am tired, and I am sorry, but I see no way out; I have chosen to escape my own boring and pointless reality where all I feel is pain inside. All I feel is dread and sadness as I push forward one day after another in a pointless routine. This life will lead me nowhere.

Danny was crying; at least there, in the little prison inside his head, he was crying. The dire realisation of what had been happening in town... Has this been it? He wondered, had those other people that were thought of as victims of suicide in town go through what he was going through at that very moment? The fight, the horrible realisations all throughout the day? Was Danny truly watching the very last moments of his life through the eyes of a stranger? Stop. He thought, again and again until it felt like an endless loop that no one but he could hear. His intruder was done, he was smiling by the moment the pen hit the desk again.

It was a short moment; truly only a passing thought, but suddenly Danny wondered if there was at all any point on trying to fight against it anymore. Regardless of how long the thought remained and shortly after left, the horrid black eyed intruder caught up on it. "That's right, little boy." He taunted. "Give up. You are nothing anymore; you will be nothing because I have the power to end you, I have the will to end you." He spoke no more.

Instead, the intruder led his body up from the chair in front of the desk and toward the washroom in the hall; Danny wanted to keep screaming, and he did, he wanted to keep fighting, to believe that he had some sort of chance against such an unknown creature, but he simply couldn't. He was too tired, he was as exhausted as he would be if he had run the furthest distance. Please. Danny thought weakly, more tired that he dared acknowledge, but once the black eyed reflection looked back at him again, now from the mirror in the washroom, it only shook his head. The smirk that adored his lips in the reflection was unfamiliar; eerie accompanied by the glistening black hue of the intruder's eyes, and then, just like that, the intruder willed his hand to lift, balling into a fist as it did, and then connected with the mirror in a strong motion forward, shattering his reflection into small, sharp, different sized pieces.

Danny could feel the warmth of blood ooze from the places the contact of his fist on the mirror had wounded the flesh, and this time, he screamed in his head in pain; no sound left his lips while controlled by it. It willed to move his body slowly, now, as if saving each second of the moment in the mind that had invaded everything but the little corner where Danny found himself prisoner. He could hear the soft clicking of glass upon glass, soft little noises that broke the otherwise completely still silence; and only when it willed Danny's eyes to see what it was doing, did the trapped boy realise that it was now holding one of the longer pieces of broken mirror that had fallen on the sink, and his hand tightened around it upon his command, sending sharp pangs of pain all throughout Danny's arm.

This time, the scream did leave his lips; but whatever couple of seconds he had unconsciously managed to gain in his favour were just as quickly lost once the scream turned into laughter. Echoing waves of it that made an already horrible situation worse; it was enjoying the moment. It was enjoying every second.

When the laughter finally died down it wasted no time; the arm that held the sharp glass lifted a couple of inches in the air before striking down until the sharpest end of the broken mirror had stabbed the inside of his wrist. At first Danny felt nothing; shock ran too deep within him to even feel a thing, but then his hand moved commanded by him, forcing the glass to rip the skin of his arm apart as if it were a door in a prison slowly opening to let a tortured inmate escape; only Danny remained.

Blood; red, bright blood dripped in unstoppable motions down his arm and onto the once white tiled floor. It laughed again, with his voice; but this time Danny was screaming too loud inside his head for the sound to echo any louder than a whisper. But then there was silence, and more pain. It had willed Danny's body to move once again so that the already tainted glass could paint the same bloody picture on his right arm, only this time Danny couldn't scream. This time he was simply too weak.

Warm sensations tingled his skin as every drop of blood fell from his exposed wounds, and his voice, sounding far stronger than Danny felt in the little corner of his slowly darkening mind, spoke once again. "I win." It said, and then he felt the same horrible sensation of fire tearing apart his throat the way in which two days prior he had when the black cloud of smoke had attacked him, only now it was leaving him.

Danny watched with tired eyes as that same cloud of smoke escaped swiftly through his lips, and once the last speck of it disappeared, he could hold himself upright no longer. First it was his knees, then his back, then his head, all falling slowly onto the ever growing pool of blood at his feet in what felt like slow motion. He had been asking to feel, to be able to move on his own, to be able to speak for the past day and a half, and now he was too weak to even move; the warm trickling continued upon his arms, warm, surrounding him by then, beside his head, under him, around his frame; his blood.

In the distance, the echoing of a phone ringing tooted in the walls of the house as Danny's eyes fell closed. One ring, two rings, thee... beep. "Hi, this is the Mahealani household, please leave a message after the tone." Said a bored version of the voice that belonged to the boy that now laid on the floor unmoving. Even then, in the slowly increasing darkness, Danny could remember recording such a message for his mum.

"Hiiii, honey!" Came the sound of his mother from the voicemail she was leaving. "You told me to call you once I got to Janine's house." Her voice echoed even further away for the fading boy. "I'm here now, so don't worry your tired head about me. Though judging by your lack of answer I'm assuming you're asleep." A short giggle. "Anyway, love you honey! See you later!" beep.

Her last few words sounded like the very distant echo inside the longest tunnel, and the last thought in the boy's mind was that the last his mother had seen of him had been nothing but a shadow; someone that hadn't truly been him.

Danny whispered one last weak call for her before everything went black.

~Two days later~

A school day like any other, where he woke up, took a shower, ate his cereal and went to school with next to no worry in the world; that was what that day should have been for Stiles Stilinski. Everything was meant to be over, the nightmares, the stupid following black smoke, the fear of evil lurking in the shadows of his room. But no; it hadn't stopped.

Not even the presence of Lydia Martin in his room two days prior had stopped the nightmares. She'd come to him for comfort after having had one of her Banshee episodes; one that had made her end up in Danny Mahleani's front door, and clearly too late, for when she got there, their friend was being wheeled away with a sheet over his whole body. A suicide, they said, but... well, Scoot and his pack highly doubted it.

Regardless, Lydia had gone to Stiles for comfort, and it had all ended with her falling asleep in his arms. Stiles had been supposed to be the one to comfort her, yet, instead, when in his dreams he had seen her die by his hand at least five times that night, she had comforted him after waking up screaming so loudly that he had truly been surprised he hadn't actually killed her of a heart attack.

And last night it had been the Sheriff's turn. Waking up from killing Lydia, to killing his dad, only to wake up from that again to kill someone else he loved as if he were stuck in a loop of dreams that he was only able to wake up from with the loudest scream his lungs could master. It made the boy start wondering what was truly real and what wasn't. For one side he knew Lydia was alive, he'd made sure of it by texting her before leaving to school; she'd replied, of course. And his dad? Well, let's just say he had been incredibly confused for all of ten seconds when the amber eyed boy wrapped his arms around him while the Sheriff was making himself some coffee. "Nightmares again?" He had asked, as if he hadn't burst into his room once again, no gun this time, to calm the boy down.

The whole occurrence became so frequent as of late, that the sheriff no longer left the need to bring a gun to save him from harm; he knew that what haunted his son couldn't possibly be terminated by a gun, unless he decided to shoot the troubled boy in the head in order to end with the nightmares, but... well, that was not going to happen.

Regardless of such actions, Stiles had wished for that day to be different; he'd wished for himself to be able to have a peaceful day where he could just... be at peace. Yet, there he was; heart beating as fast as the engine of the blue Jeep he was currently driving, his eyes red and bloodshot from lack of sleep, and his knuckles almost impossibly pale due to the force with which his hand was gripping the steering wheel.

Tired eyes flicked from the open road behind him to his rearview mirror and back toward the road, because there it was again: the pitch black smoke; following and hovering over him like a cloud from a cartoon awaiting to zap its victim with an electric charge. Had the situation been any different, Stiles might actually have laughed. But, no, he was aware of the cloud above him, breaths came in panted rhythms as a couple of silent tears dropped from his eyes, probably because the boy refused to blink; it made him feel as if he were in a Doctor Who episode, with those horrid statues that kill one by touch and move if one blinks.

"Go away, go away." Stiles whispered in a chant. Public, he thought, he had to go into a public place for the cloud to leave; it was his logic, due to the fact that the last time it had come for him he had been lucky enough to burst into his History class. But now? Well... he was in an open road; a couple of miles from the hospital, a few couple more from the school, which was his original destination.

His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror once again, and he noticed the cloud was closer. "Go away!" He yelled at it; but it only moved even nearer. That was when he lost it; he lost complete control of the car. On his attempt to avoid the cloud from touching him, Stiles had turned the wheel so quick that only ten seconds later his Jeep was laying on its side.

Thankfully enough, Stiles had had his seatbelt on; which only provoked a short whiplash. But adrenaline pumped in quick motions through his veins, quicker than he could even imagine his heart could manage, and though he could feel a scorching pain on his arm, the moment Stiles opened his eyes again and unbuckled the belt, his forearm stopped him from falling headfirst onto the ground, he managed to crawl out of the car; a wet, sticky feeling reigning over the back of his forearm.

When he stood, turning around to see the sideways mess that his beloved Roscoe was, Stiles' eyes flicked up to the hovering cloud above it. It was as if it'd been waiting; waiting to see if he'd survived the crash, maybe? He didn't know. All he was even aware of was that he turned around, ignoring the burning, wet feeling on the back of his arm, and ran. Ran as quickly as his legs could carry him.

This time his destination didn't matter; he only had one goal: to be in a public space and away from the haunting smoke. And he hoped he could make it, because Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital was no longer miles away; all he had to do was run. Run.

Run, and Don't. Look. Back.

Run.

To Be Continued.