Alyson awoke with a start.
Eyes wide open and panting, she hastily looked around the empty classroom causing her short, black braids to swing from side to side.
"Whoa, calm down, Aly," Vicky said with a raised eyebrow while standing before her in her signature beige, leather jacket.
"Aly?" She asked as she brushed the falling strands of her tied back, blue-streaked hair behind her ear.
Alyson's panicked gaze shifted towards Vicky and, once the realisation of being awake had sunk in, she gradually calmed down. She then rested her elbows on her desk and cupped her face in her hands.
"Jeez...What was that all about?" Vicky asked. "Nightmare?"
Alyson looked up at Vicky then leaned back on her chair, letting her arms dangle at her sides.
"Not really sure... I can't actually remember what it was about," she answered in a quiet voice as she tried to recall what it was she had dreamt. "It just felt... Bad." She tilted her head up to the ceiling and stared at the bright fluorescent light.
Vicky, on the other hand, watched Alyson and rolled her eyes. "Well, no use worrying about it!" She exclaimed with her hands on her hips. The unnecessary loudness of her voice startled Alyson and she abruptly brought her head back down. Vicky then grabbed Alyson by the arm and pulled her off her chair. "Just shake it off and let's go, Brendan's waiting for us," she continued while forcibly tugging Alyson towards the classroom door.
"All right, all right! I'm coming!" Alyson said, stretching away from Vicky to pick up her messenger bag, but she wasn't close enough to reach it.
Seeing an opportunity, Vicky suddenly let go of Alyson allowing her to jerk forward and almost hit the corner of a desk. Alyson shot her a glare but it was only met with a mischievous grin. So, with a sigh, Alyson grabbed her bag and followed Vicky out of the classroom.
The college hallways weren't very busy that day, but then again it was a Friday afternoon. The only event worth noting was a series of movies being played throughout the day in the atrium, but even then it was nothing but campy, old movies. While the girls were passing by, Alyson noticed two familiar students chatting next to one of the atrium pillars.
"One second, Vicky, I'll be right back," she said before running towards the students.
Vicky rolled her eyes again. "Just meet me in the cafe, okay?" She shouted.
Alyson waved that she understood, and Vicky walked away.
The two students in question shifted their attention towards where they had heard the shout and saw Alyson making her way towards them. They stopped their conversation and waited for her to approach.
"Heya, Al!" Dwayne happily exclaimed in his prominent Southernaccent. Between the pair, he was the tallest and the blondest.
"Stop calling me that..." Alyson frowned.
"Ignore him. Anyway, what's up? You look like you're in a hurry," Sky said, noticing Alyson's hurried demeanor.
"Yeah, a little." Alyson reached into her bag and pulled out a novel. "I actually just wanted to return this to Dwayne."
Dwayne snatched the book out of her hand and leaned his arm on her head. "Thanks Al, what'd ya think of it?"
"It was really good; gave me a lot of ideas... Now, get off of me!" Alyson exclaimed in what could only be described as a cute fit of rage.
Dwayne chuckled as it was the exact reaction he was looking for and removed his arm.
"Jeez... Anyway, I better go before my friend gets more annoyed than she already is." Alyson then turned with a wave and left Dwayne and Sky to continue with whatever conversation she had interrupted.
Upon entering the cafeteria, Alyson found Vicky staring at the food choices on display and contemplating what to get. She stood there for a while trying to choose and even asked Alyson for help, but any suggestion that was given to her was turned down with an "I dunno... I'm not really feelin' it today." But finally, after what felt like forever, Vicky grabbed a plain, old tuna sandwich and headed towards the cash.
Alyson shook her head. "I thought you were in a hurry."
"Yeah, but I'm also hungry."
Vicky paid for what Alyson considered a snack, and they both walked into the seating area to find Brendan who they spotted sitting at a window booth with his laptop. Unfortunately, accompanying him was a less than pleasant surprise.
"Ah shit!" Vicky said in disgust and hastily walked up to Brendan and the curly, brown-haired guy who sat directly across from him. "What's he doing here?"
"We got a group project in psych. Julian and Connor are my partners," Brendan casually answered while typing on his computer.
"Where's Connor then?" Alyson asked right before a spiked, dirty-blond head emerged from under the table. His cheeks were beet red from embarrassment as everyone watched him. He sat down and placed a drawing pencil on the table next to a closed sketchbook. He looked at no one.
"Uhm... Hi," Connor managed to say.
"Anyway, do you have to do your project now?" Vicky harshly asked.
"Yes, we do, but if you don't like it you can always leave, you know," Julian answered instead as he rested his head in his hand.
"I wasn't talking to you, but for your information we had plans."
"Well, sucks to be you, doesn't it?" Julian said. His tone of voice was snarky as ever.
Vicky pivoted towards Julian and slammed her hand on the table. The sound of the hit resonated in the fairly quiet cafeteria, grabbing the attention of most of the students, and startling Connor. Brendan turned down the volume of both his hearing aids and simultaneously let out a sigh along with Alyson.
"Someone seems angry," Julian continued to instigate.
"So, was it the professor who dumped you with them, or did they pick you out of pity? 'Cause I doubt that you were the first choice," Vicky slyly retorted.
Julian's facial expression shifted from arrogant to annoyed. "Look, we need to work, so can you just go?"
Alyson didn't even want to try to stop them. She knew all too well that it was just going to escalate from there, so she took the booth behind Brendan's and sat closest to the window. She pulled out a note book and pencil, and flipped through scribbled pages until she found a blank one. With her pencil in hand, Alyson stared out the window hoping for an idea to come to her. She'd been trying to write a story for weeks, but for some reason she'd been uninspired. Anything she wrote was quickly discarded as trash; unoriginal and unusable. However, she kept on trying.
In the background, she could still hear Julian and Vicky arguing, and as predicted it had indeed escalated. More cuss words were being thrown around than a drunken pirate at sea. But Alyson chose to ignore them. It would eventually die down as it always did. Instead, she continued to stare out the window and focused her attention on a circling hawk in the distance. Dinner time, she thought. She kept on watching it. Around and around it went, flapping its wings only a couple of times to maintain altitude. It wasn't long before Alyson began to tire; her consciousness flickering between awake and asleep. The argument behind her started to sound muffle until she could barely understand what was being said. Finally, she gave in and settled her head on the table. She closed her eyes and drifted into a deep sleep.
Whilst asleep, images flashed and danced around in her mind. It was like a movie, but nothing was coherent and everything was out of focus. The sounds of screams were heard; people that almost seemed familiar appeared for a moment and were gone just as fast. Feelings of anger, sadness, guilt and fear suffocated her then suddenly... Nothing. Everything went dark. Everything went quiet. It felt as though she was floating in a cold, lonely abyss until something appeared: a hand. A ghostly white hand reached out to her. A noise also accompanied the hand; a voice, but it was distorted, unintelligible. However, despite all that, Alyson found herself reaching out to the ghostly hand against her better judgement. As the hands got closer, the voice got clearer, but it was still difficult to understand. And right before both hands met, a sudden shock to her system woke her up.
Alyson jolted up from off the table and hit her head on the hard backing of the booth seat. She winced in pain as she held the back of her head.
"Sorry dude, you okay?" Brendan asked in a concerned tone that only Alyson and Vicky could pick up on. Anyone else would think the opposite because of his nonchalant attitude.
"Ow... What have I told you about poking my sides? Jesus..."
"Sorry, but I saw an opportunity and took it."
Alyson groaned. "Anyway, how long was I out?"
"Not long, about twenty minutes," Brendan answered.
Alyson looked to the booth behind her, but saw that no one else was there.
"Where'd everyone go?"
"Ah, they left after about fifteen minutes. Vicky stormed off, unsurprisingly. I told Connor to go since no work was going to get done, and this big, long-haired, blond dude picked Julian up and carried him away."
Alyson looked at Brendan for a moment wondering if he was joking about the last part, but he was dead serious.
"Okay then... Well, thanks for sticking around."
"Anytime," Brendan said before turning around and making his way towards the cafeteria exit.
Alyson hastily packed her stuff back in her bag and threw it across her chest so as to catch up to him.
"So how's the book coming along?" Brendan asked as they walked outside towards the parking lot.
"Uhm... Not well? I've still got nothing. Not an inkling of a good idea," she admitted.
"That sucks, but I'm sure you'll figure something out, dude." He patted her head as they arrived next to her scooter.
"Hopefully," she murmured to herself while opening the seat compartment of her scooter to remove a full-face, dark blue helmet. "Well, see you on Monday, man."
Brendan nodded and watched as she mounted her vehicle and prepared to leave. The scooter's engine revved and the exhaust pipe released a thick, grey cloud of smoke that made him move back with a cough.
Alyson nodded back and rode away.
~~~
In her apartment, Alyson sat in her favorite blue pajama pants while staring at a blank Word document on her laptop. An empty bag of gummy candies rested next to her on the desk. It had been a while that she'd been eyeing at the blinking text cursor on the screen. Blink, blink, blink. Always constant; always in the same position until the computer screen went dark and snapped Alyson out of her daze. She turned to look at the time on her bed-side alarm clock, which read "6:30PM" and, with a sigh, she left her desk and made her way towards her bed where she cocooned herself within her duvet. I'll try again later, she depressingly thought. She pulled the duvet completely over her head and closed her eyes.
Once asleep, it happened again. Images flooded her mind. However, these ones were different, clearer, but still unfamiliar. One scene in particular stood out, though. She could make out what was happening, but not a face.
It was a stormy night in a shipping port. The harsh winds whistled between the large rows of shipping containers, and the heavy rain smacked against their metal surface. There wasn't a worker in sight, which was for the best because of the sudden explosion that emanated from the center of the port and sent several containers flying in all directions. The destruction caused resembled that of a child who enjoyed making a mess of his toy blocks.
A large scorch mark covered the ground from where the blast had occurred. One of the containers, however, not only had blast marks but also a gaping hole in its side from which a figure emerged. As it stepped into the light it revealed a tall, humanoid body covered in what appeared to be cracked blue-grey, shell-like armor. Its clothes were wet, ripped, burnt and effectively non-existent. The shell-like armor then suddenly cracked even more and fell from its body revealing the figure to be a human, Caucasian male. The man dusted off the remaining debris from his now very exposed body and smirked. The distinct sounds of distant metallic clangs soon followed, and without hesitation the man dashed towards it.
The scene then faded from her mind like static on a T.V. screen, and she was again drifting in that dark abyss from before. The distorted voice and ghostly hand also made their appearance once again. The hand reached out like it had previously done and, like clockwork, Alyson extended her hand without really thinking. As the gap between them reduced, the message from the voice became clearer and louder, and once both their fingertips could meet the voice became a scream.
"Let me in!" It shouted. The ghostly hand then forcibly grabbed Alyson's wrist.
Alyson awoke in a panic to a room viciously shaking from side to side, but in her state of shock she didn't immediately react. It took the sound of several falling books to get her to realise the urgency of the situation. Alyson jumped out of her bed and, remembering what she was once taught to do during an earthquake, ran under her desk. The shaking quickly became more violent and the muffled screams she could hear within and outside of her apartment became increasingly louder. The sound of crashing glass and ceramic echoed from her kitchen. She even witnessed her laptop fall from her desk and crack open in two. Curled up under her desk and terrified, Alyson covered her ears and closed her eyes. She resembled a small child during a thunderstorm. All she prayed for was that it would all end soon.
After a few agonizing minutes, the shaking gradually came to a halt. Alyson stayed in her current position for a minute longer until she felt it was truly safe to let her guard down. She uncovered her ears and opened her eyes. The floor of her room was littered with books, broken glass from picture frames, and clothes from her hamper. She crept out from under her desk and tiptoed over the glass pieces towards her window to inquire on the state of her neighborhood.
Parts of the street were cracked, people were running out of their houses to help others who had fallen, and one car had crashed into the nearby ditch. It wasn't as bad as she had imagined, but it wasn't pleasant to look at either, so she turned away back towards her room.
Shaken up, literally and figuratively, Alyson hugged herself as she tried to figure out how to handle this. And after giving herself a moment to calm down, she decided to check out the state of the rest of her apartment before coming to a concrete conclusion of what to do next.
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