May lied awake in bed that night. Despite being drained from a full day of training, she couldn't sleep, and couldn't understand why. She felt some sort of heaviness, but figured it was probably from feeling so fiercely intense about the contest.
"So close to five ribbons," she whispered to herself. "I can't lose. Not this time."
She finally drifted off around 3 a.m.
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"Hello? Is anybody here?"
May was standing in what appeared to be a ghost town. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she was in a crowd of people. But these people didn't look right.
"Excuse me, can you tell me what's going on?"
The stranger looked at her with empty eyes. "You're dead."
"What? No, no I'm not. That's crazy. I'm-"
"We're all dead. But we pretend that we still live."
All of a sudden, May felt a vacuum within her soul. She felt empty, helpless, and like she was being eaten alive inside. The others were feeling the same.
Who are these people? What's happening? She took a closer look. They were all her fellow coordinators and trainers. Her friends. They were all weeping and crying out, not being able to stand the emptiness and despair. All of their money, contest ribbons, and everything else that they saw as the highest heights of life were burning on the ground.
Suddenly, a man appeared in the sky. He was the most beautiful man any of them had ever seen, and was more alive than any of them had ever been. May saw this and desperately wanted to live.
The whole crowd began screaming with all the strength they had left: "I don't know who I am anymore! Not once in life have I been real, but I've never felt this close before! I've been walking dead, watching You, long enough to know I can't go on!"
She looked over to the side and saw somebody else she knew, collapsing to the ground in pain.
Drew.
"DREW! NO!"
May woke up and nearly shot out of bed, breathing heavy and feeling devastated. She had felt the emptiness of her own potential fate, and the potential fate of her friends whom she loved.
It was more than a dream.
She wept. She loved them all so much.
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Drew entered the lobby around noon after a morning of intense training. That's when May came down to find him.
"Hey, lazy. Too busy sleeping to come out and practice this morning? You realize that you have the rest of your life to sleep, but only two more days until-"
"Drew I need to talk to you." She had that look on her face that immediately let Drew know this was no joke. They sat down and there were a few moments of silence.
"I… I had a nightmare last night. But it felt so real… I can't even explain how real it felt." She was quiet for a minute, not taking her eyes off the ground.
"Well, what happened in this nightmare?"
"We were dead. All of us. Me, the other coordinators… you. But we pretended that we still lived. We felt so empty and broken, and all the happiness we felt while we were still alive was so… so temporary and vain, but then it was gone. Our souls were dying. But then this man appeared, and He was so… so alive in a way I've never seen before."
"…May, I don't really see where you're going with this. So you had a bad dream. People have bad dreams all the time."
"But this was real. I FELT it. I've had plenty of nightmares before, but none of them felt the way this one did. Drew… that man who told the prophecy yesterday… maybe he wasn't so crazy after all."
Drew stood up and immediately became angry. "You've gotta be kidding me, May. You ACTUALLY believe that some lunatic on the side of the road was telling a real prophecy? You actually believe in that stuff?! I knew you weren't the brightest person before, but now…"
"Drew, listen to me!" May now had tears coming down. "I really think this might be real. I don't want to die like that. I don't want any of us to die like that!"
"You're crazy. You can deal with your insane ideas yourself, but I've got training to do."
And with an angry hair flip, he took off.
A/N: The description of the nightmare comes from the actual meaning behind the song "This Close." There's a story behind it, and I got the idea for this story from that. It comes from the booklet that comes with Flyleaf's album Memento Mori (or flyleafonline) and it's called "Letters from the Commander."