I was back at the bleak place again. That place thrumming with filth and despair.
It was like a rewind tape, like I was going through the motions, which has been replayed before. The dream that I had when I had been thrown into the holding cell, when I had been in a coma.
I didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed it would keep coming until I discovered its purpose, its reason for visiting me.
Yet, why me?
I sighed when a woman’s despairing cry echoed in my soul, tearing at me, reprimanding me, drawing me back from the edge of a great precipice. I was starving.
It was just as before.
Every cell in my body craved food and something else, something I could lay my finger on, mostly because I had rehearsed the dream by now.
Blood.
I was somewhere underground.
The hunger raked at me with merciless claws until a red haze covered my sight and my pulse hammered with the need for immediate sustenance.
Desperate, I scanned the area above my resting place for the presence of enemies and, finding none, burst through the rich layers of soil, into the air, my heart thundering in my ears, my mind screaming.
I landed in a crouch in the midst of dense shrubbery and thick vegetation, and took a slow, careful look around me, not in the least concerned about how I could jump out from the ground. I’ve tried wondering, but nothing pops up. I should be as a human, yet for some reason I wasn’t in this place.
For a moment, everything was wrong-monkeys shrieking, birds calling out a warning, the cough of a larger predator, even the brush of lizards through vegetation. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I knew that. I knew that it was the rainforest, and that it smelt like home.
I shook my head, trying to clear my fragmented mind. The last thing I remembered clearly was resting in class, or was that really?
Waves of weakness rocked me. I found myself on my hands and knees, my belly in hard knots and my insides heaving.
Fire burned through my system like molten poison. Disease didn’t plague me often. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t remember if I had ever gotten really Ill.
‘Even my thoughts were the same as in the old dream.’
It seemed like I was two in the same body. One that had been around during the first dream, and another that was me now.
“I couldn’t have become ill with a human disease. This was manufactured by an enemy.” I heard myself mutter, yet understood that I was playing out an already drawn out script.
I felt, rather than watched, my white teeth snapped together in a show of aggression, my incisors and canines sharp and lethal as I glared fiercely around me.
Another fact to wonder about. Why I had long canines. Why did I even have them in the first place? Was the dream to point me in a direction?
How had I gotten here again? Kneeling in the fertile soil, I tried to sort through what I did know.
Another jolt of blinding pain lashed at my temples, blackening the edges of my vision. But I knew it would happen. I tried to mentally brace myself for what was coming next, but it still didn’t prevail.
I covered my eyes the next second as I had always done in the previous dreams to try to block out the shooting stars coming at me like missiles, but closing her eyes worsened the effect.
“I am Maya,” I murmured aloud, trying to force my brain to work… to remember… pushing the words through teeth clenched tightly together in a grimace.
“I have a boyfriend, Adam, and he would not leave me if he knew I had a need for him.”
I mentally snapped at my dream self. Adam was no longer the boyfriend. Yet, it didn’t quake.
I felt ‘myself’ pushed past the pain to try to uncover the truth.
Why was I in the rain forest when I should have been in the holding cell? Why had I been abandoned by Adam?
I shook my head in denial, although it cost me dearly, as the pain increased, spikes seeming to stab through my skull.
Was I really going to go through the entire episode as Maya from the Lycan’s region before her almost death?
Well, so be it. I will just observe, and conserve my strength for remembering.
It had been a turmoil trying to remember the dream once I was conscious, but maybe, this time it would be different.
I shivered as the shadows crept closer, ringing me, taking shapes. Leaves rustled and the bushes shifted, as if touched by unseen hands. Lizards darted out from under the rotting vegetation and raced away as if frightened.
I pulled back and once again looked warily around me, this time scanning above and below ground, quartering the region thoroughly.
There were shadows only, nothing flesh and blood to indicate an enemy close.
I had to get a hold of myself and figure out what was happening before the trap was sprung-and I was certain there was a trap and I was close to being truly caught.
Throughout my time with bullies, I had been wounded on many occasions, but still I survived because I had always used my brain.
I was cunning and shrewd and very intelligent. Nobody would best me, sick or not.
If I was hallucinating, I had to find a way out of the spell to protect myself.
Shadows moved in my mind, dark and evil.
I looked around me at the growth of the jungle, and instead of seeing a welcoming home, I saw the same shadows moving-reaching-trying to grasp me with greedy claws.
I was confused. Not because of what was happening, but the why.
After all, I was already familiar with what was happening. After all, I had been here before in my dreams.
Hopefully, I will learn something this time.