Fire surrounded me as thick black smoke filled the air clogging my lungs. The screams of the dying shot through the smoke like blades, ringing in my ears and tearing through my mind. I collapsed to the floor covering my ears, trying to block them out but to no prevail, the screams only becoming louder. I began to scream with them, screaming at them, begging...pleading with them to stop but they didn't the only got louder and louder. The flames grew taller around, a seemingly endless wall of red flame the color of blood. My flesh felt like it was melting off, stinging as salty tears of pain ran down my face. I squeezed my eyes shut enclosing my mind in the darkness, the screams turned to voices...calling my name, screaming my name...screaming at me to join them.

Then all at once it ended. The screams, the heat of the fire, the tears, all of it suddenly disappeared. I opened my eyes and uncovered my ears and opening my eyes to find myself kneeling in front of the siloette of a woman. She was standing in front of the only source of light in the darkness. As the light grew I noticed the thick tangles of midnight hair floating around her and the tattoos that traced her arms. Wrapped around her was the faded siloette of a black viper. The woman was facing away from me, towards the light. I felt myself reach out towards her, then my vision in began to blur. Just as my vision faded the woman turned slowly to face me and all I saw was her faint smiled as I was suddenly submerged in water.

The deep blue surrounded me, the cold water wrapping around me like a blanket. I felt the coldness begin to fill my lungs and the edges of my vision started to become black then the voice came. A calm voice, riddled with sadness and pain, a voice that felt familiar yet I had never heard it before. Her voice came over me, seeming to warm the surrounding water, "If I become a monster, the thing that I don't want to become...will you please kill me and lay me down to rest forever so that I can never come back from the dead?" A promise....a promise that I didn't remember making or ever hearing and yet I felt myself reassure the strange woman's voice that I would. The water suddenly bubbled around me and there was a flash of bright light followed by darkness...a bitter, cold darkness. I still seemed to be floating, as if I was still drowning in the deep blue. I felt myself begin to float upward as a light appeared above. I approached it quickly and soon it became blinding forcing me to close my eyes for the last time.

My eyes shot open, my breath heavy, and my chest tight. I sat up gasping for air, chest heaving, trying to force myself to calm down. As the emotions of panic and fear began to die down, I moved into a sitting position placing my bare feet on the cold floor. I took a few more breaths before I tried to stand up. my vision instantly became blurry and I began to sway. I sat back down immediatly allowing my vision to go back to normal. I place my face in my hands taking even more breaths. Nothing made sense to me, out of all the dreams I had I had never experienced on like that before and to be honest it scared the shit out of me. I peered between my fingers to look at the pills on the table sitting next to the water. The thought of not taking them shot through my mind in an instant and I recoiled from it. Not taking the pill meant experiencing the vivid pain and fear of my dreams and the world in which they came from, it also meant having to be put in confinement. I shivered at the thought of confinement. I had been there once for my initial refusal to take the pill and had been there for several days before finally complying. Confinement was an extremely small room without any source of light and little oxygen, no sound could escape or come into the room so you left only in silence. Personally, the experience wouldn't have been that bad if it hadn't been for all the dreams and hallucinations that I experienced. I don't know why it happened but ever since I had never wanted to go back to that room.

I stood up and walked over to the table. I put one of the pills in my hand and stared at it for awhile before putting it in my mouth and taking a swallow of water. I waited for the burning sensation on my tongue and in my body...nothing happened. I waited for a good minute before my vision began to blur and then refocused. The fear and panic from the dream was gone and once again I felt empty and devoid of emotion however, the confusion that I felt still remained. I had been taking the pills for five years and the burning sensation had always been present so why now had it subsided. I felt something well up in my stomach a sensation I knew all too well when I hadn't been on the pill, a feeling I always experienced after the dreams. Fear. I wasn't supposed to feel fear, yet there it was...welled up in my stomach. This was pure fear, untampered with by the pill. I took another sip of the water before setting it down on the table next to the bottle of pills. I took a deep breath before exiting the room. I thought back to what my boss had said on the phone the other day, about how my emotions were only surpressed. As I walked down the long hall I felt something else creep up from my stomach but it wasn't fear, it was something that wasn't has powerful but just as dangerous. Something I had never felt before...