“You should rest as much as you can,” Charlie said as he helped me into bed. “It’s Saturday, so if you need to, just sleep all day.”
“Oberi already is,” I mumbled. He was at the foot of our bed with his legs up in the air, snoring away.
I don’t think Charlie got any rest, the way he kept tossing and turning beside me, but sleep was never hard for me to achieve these days. My bipolar had made it difficult to fall asleep before, even kept me up for days at a time, but now, if I didn’t get a solid ten hours with a nap in between, I was pretty much dead in my chair.
I laid on my back and closed my eyes. I thought I heard the chirping of a bird before I began to slowly drift away.
* * *
The area around me was stark, the earth underneath me made of nothing but salt. The ground was white, tinted with a hint of red, bloody mountains looming in the distance. A smell like sulfur, rotting and dense, suffocated my senses so I longed for fresh air.
I was on my feet— I could walk again. This should’ve been revolutionary, but I failed to react as I turned in place, surveying the situation around me.
I saw two groups of people, separated by the gleaming rays of a white light, a large orb shining in the sky above us. On one side were students who belonged to The Mission— they wore white robes and sang some sort of low song that had no words. They lifted their hands to the white orb in the sky, facing away from the opposite group.
All around me were my friends. Charlie, Kallie, Marcus, and others. Ivy stood beside me, as did Chancey, my brother, and Opal. We stood underneath a bare tree, one that appeared like it was withered and dying, watching The Mission silently as they continued their song, moving in a circle underneath the orb.
I realized that I was a part of this secondary group. I went to turn away from The Mission, but as I did, burning embers began falling from the sky. They struck my friends, who gave tortured screams as the burning embers ate at their flesh and dissolved their bodies into ashes that were carried away on the wind. As the embers struck the members of The Mission, they didn’t burn, but instead, grew wings, and were lifted toward the sky to join the white orb above. It was a scene out of some kind of apocalypse, until all that was left was Charlie and me, and The Mission being raised up into the sky.
I reached out to touch Charlie, but as I reached for his face, an ember struck his cheek, and he began dissolving. His ashen remains swept across my face, and I blinked as the rest of his body faded through my hands.
Above me, I saw an olive cardinal land on the branch of the withered tree, before that caught fire, too, crumbling into a pile of nothingness. The olive cardinal flew off toward the light and joined the ranks of The Mission, becoming encompassed in the safety of its warmth as the world around me became only dust, and I was left behind.
* * *
I woke up in a haze, feeling like there was ash in my mouth. I relaxed when I saw Charlie next to me, and I ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t turn to dust, so I knew what I was experiencing was real.
His eyes opened straight away. By the haggard look on his face, I knew he hadn’t gotten much sleep. I glanced at my watch, and saw that it was twelve o’clock in the afternoon.
Ugh, it is too early,Oberi complained as he gave a yawn.I could sleep for about a thousand more years.
“Have you done that?” I asked curiously.
A few times. There were points from when the world was first formed to now where it got terribly boring, and there’s no beauty treatment like a nine-hundred-year nap.
Charlie started rifling through our clothes. I took an outfit from him without comment. I felt him approach the edge of my consciousness, where my thoughts were faded and cloudy. He wasn’t invading, just observing.
“You all right, pidge? You seem a little off.”
“Just… really weird dreams.” I rubbed my arms, then said, “It’s probably nothing. Let’s go search the yard.”
When we got to the prison yard, Charlie knelt to the earth and spread both hands over the dirt. There wasn’t anyone out here but us, but still, I looked around, because anyone could be watching. There were a couple of guards at the door, glaring at us, but we weren’t doing anything that unusual. It wasn’t a crime to sit on the ground.
“Can you locate Dante’s grave?” I asked curiously.
Charlie waited to respond, as if double checking, before he said, “It’s a big campus, pidge. There are hundreds of people buried here, graves that are new and old. I can sense where some people have been buried, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right grave, and we shouldn’t be digging up any bodies unless it’s the one we’re looking for.”
Sounds like a good way to get ghosts. Or maggots. Neither are fun problems to have,Oberi commented.
“Looks like we’re going to have to resort to other methods. I hope Kallie and Marcus figured out something.”
We hoped to find them at lunch but they weren’t in the cafeteria. We picked up some food to share before I spotted Chancey and Ivy, sitting at the end of a nearby bench.
I was relieved. Finding a place to eat in this cafeteria was a pain in the ass. Before, I could sit anywhere, but now, I had to sit at the end of the table, because it was the only place that could fit my chair without the stupid bench getting in the way, and people always loved to sit at the end, so I ended up with my food tray in my lap more often than I would like. Sometimes Charlie scared people off, but that didn’t help us stay out of trouble, so I did my best to get him to stop. When my friends were able to snag a spot at the end, it really helped us out.
I hadn’t seen Ivy in the cafeteria in a while. He appeared a little brighter, though the bags under his eyes were still prominent. I didn’t think the effects of the withdrawal had quite ended, although he appeared to be through the worst of it. Now the hard part of staying clean began.
I really hoped he could do it. He—- all of us— had worked too hard for him to start backsliding again.
