The Survivor (Book #2)

Chapter 12

It took me a while to fall asleep, but once I did, the dreams were endless. 

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I could tell I was in a bedroom, but the lights were off, and it was completely dark. I looked around for a window or door, but I couldn't see anything except for the vague outline of a bed nearby. I reached for it, hoping to have an anchor in the dark when suddenly I heard breathing. Heavy breathing, and it wasn't mine.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Were the breaths getting louder? I thought I could feel them maybe, on the back of my neck. I reached my arms around but there was nothing. It continued.

I looked around more, but I couldn't see it. It was just there.

Suddenly the room was gone, and I was on a street that I had never been on. It looked like a country road. There was dirt and sand that crunched beneath my feet as I shifted them, and wind was blowing fiercely overhead. I looked up and saw a dark purple sky and the black silhouette of trees being forced to bend left and right, caving to the wind's demands. All of a sudden, I realized there was a tall figure straight ahead of me, between the trees. He came running towards me and picked up speed faster and faster and faster and he stretched his hands out and all I could see were his hands coming at me and then the dream changed again.

I was in my room. Not my room at the Anders' house. I was in my old room, lying in my bed. I looked around in surprise; everything looked exactly how I left it. I had faded pea-green walls and a bed with a brown blanket and a pink plaid blanket laid on top of that. There was a dresser where I kept the clothes I was given, and a hairbrush inside the top drawer that I used to look "presentable for school". There was a clear frame on the wall that held pressed flowers. My mom had given it to me years ago, it was one of the only things I had from her.

There was a closet to my left where we stored old boxes of junk, and the closet exterior was a mirror, where I could see how I looked. I rarely looked for long, unless I was examining a bruise or other injury.

But there was something I hadn't seen in this room before. Plastic toys littered the ground and a little toy chest that said "Maya" in red cursive lettering was open at the foot of my bed. The more I noticed, the more my room began to change. The faded walls seemed brighter and things weren't quite so ratty. The pink plaid blanket which I distinctly remembered falling apart in sixth grade was perfectly intact.

There was a knock on the door.

"Hello?" I said in my voice, except it wasn't my voice. It was high-pitched but soft as a kitten.

"Maya? Your parents left. It's just me." I heard my uncle's voice say. I felt a sharp pain in my body and then felt like I was leaking. But I didn't wet the bed, even as a little kid.

"Ow," I whispered through tears.

"It's okay," my uncle said, although he hadn't come into the room yet. "It won't hurt much longer."

I believed him. Why did I believe him?

The dream door began to open and with a start, I woke up.

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I shook with unearthly tremors that wracked my body again and again until I fell still in my bed and realized I was crying. I didn't feel human for a moment, and it shocked me. What was happening to me?