Burning Hope

Chapter 20: Visions Are Caused By Visits From The God of All Dragons

Those thoughts must have carried into my dreams. I saw a series of images flash before me, different scenes through different people's eyes. The images began to stop going by as fast, slowing down so I could actually see what was going on. I was experiencing these things as if they had actually happened to me.

I saw a Shadow Creature standing over two dead bodies. A sense of horror flooded my body as I watched it mercilessly tear out the female corpse's heart from her chest, then immediately swallowing it in one swift motion. It continued by plucking out her eyes from their sockets and eating them messily, fluid splattering all over the walls and carpet. The Shadow Creature flipped the corpse onto her front side, then ripped her spine out of her back. It broke the spinal column in half and hungrily slurped the spinal fluid from her back. This was torture to watch. I felt the grief and fear rise up in my throat. I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The scene changed. I was watching a porn video, and I was disgusted that I couldn't break the habit. I won't go into any more detail other than that. I jumped when I heard a knock on the door. I slammed down my iPad and walked over to the door, making sure nothing in the room looked too inconspicuous. There was a boy there—my roommate. He told me that my little sister was on campus. I was excited, until I saw how grief-stricken he looked. He followed by telling me that she had breast cancer. Time flashed by until I was in a room with a little white-haired girl on a gurney. She looked up at me. I wanted to cry. My little sister looked so weak. What had happened to her?

Next, I heard a couple of older people yelling at me. The older man was disappointed that I had failed in a boxing tournament. I felt ashamed. I had done my best, but my best was never quite good enough. The man wanted me to do better. He was never proud of me unless I came home with something gold and shiny. I needed to train harder. I needed to be perfect. It was the only thing that would make him proud. If I wasn't absolutely perfect, I wouldn't accomplish anything. This was why I had no friends. I had no time to learn what was socially acceptable. I was so busy trying to be perfect that I tried to make everybody else live up to my standard of perfection that had been forced upon me by that man. I wanted friends, but they didn't seem to want me.

Then, I watched two coffins lowered into the earth. They had been my guardians. They had died of an accident that occurred on the farm where I was raised. I was then sent to Russia, where I was adopted by a wealthy family. They were nice and treated me well, but the daughter seemed to hate me. She was always criticizing me about what I was doing and how I could be better. She had sent me to my room many a time in tears. I tried my best to be nice to her, and sometimes I felt like she cared, but most of the time I would only receive dirty glares and scowls from her. I felt sympathy for that girl. She was yelled at so often. Maybe that's why she was so rude to me; she didn't know any other way to act. I eventually earned her friendship, but I still have yet to hear her say 'thank you' to me.

Next, I was in a dirty alleyway. I injected a needle into my arm, feeling a familiar sense of euphoria flood over me. I had just taken heroin. I had gone through so much to get it, literally killing someone. I went to go visit my cousin later that week. She screamed. She called me a monster. My own cousin, to whom I had been so close, couldn't even tell who I was. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I had become unrecognizable. The drugs had changed me. If I went on like this for much longer, then what would I have been remembered for? I didn't want to leave a legacy of drugs behind me. I needed to change now.

I felt a lash across my back. I watched as beings sprung up from the shadows, sinking their teeth into my skin. They hurt me. They made me bleed. They fed off of me like I was nothing but their prey. The shadows loved human blood. This was my punishment for doing something wrong. I had helped a dragon chick to cross a stream. My mother told me that it was bad. She told me I was a disappointment. I didn't know what I wanted more; to be free or to please her. A feminine figure rose out from the shadows, Mom's real favorite, Kage. She looked at me hungrily. My mother told me that I was all hers. She entered my body and I watched helplessly as my hands committed so many murders in cold blood. I was causing it all, even if I didn't want to.