I should be in the classroom reserved for detention but I was back at the bleak place again. That place thrummed with filth and despair, just like before.
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. Had I fallen asleep during detention?
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.
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 shook my head, trying to clear my fragmented mind. The last thing I remembered clearly was entering the detention classroom. Was there something else I was forgetting?
Yes! The small octopus.
I hadn’t seen it at first because it had been resting on the ceiling. I hadn’t seen it until it had jumped on my body.
The last thing I remembered was screaming.
Waves of weakness rocked me. I found myself on my hands and knees, my belly in hard knots and my insides heaving.
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 my 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 new family. I stay at the witch’s community, Zophar.”
Was I really going to go through the entire episode as Maya from the Lycan’s region before her almost death?
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.
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.
Things moved in the forest, banshees wailed, unfamiliar creatures gathered in the bushes and along the ground.
The spider legs are next.
I passed to myself, right before I felt it.
Bony fingers brushed at my skin, spider legs crawled over me so that I twisted left and right, flailing my arms, slapping at my chest and back, brushing vigorously in an effort to dislodge the invisible webs that seemed to stick to my skin.
Once again I risked a look at my surroundings. My stomach lurched as the brilliant colors dazzled me, hurting my head and making me sick.
The surrounding jungle held violent color, hues of vivid greens, a riot of colored flowers spilling down tree trunks along with creeper vines. My head pounded and my eyes burned.
No matter that I had stopped anything from entering my brain-something malicious was already present.
Fire ringed me, crackling flames reaching greedily toward the sky and stretching like obscene tongues toward me. Out of the conflagration, handsome men and beautiful women emerged, species reserved for the front pages of porn magazines, and they were naked.
But instead of seducing me like in my dreams, they rushed at me and began to pull my hair from my head, began to sink their teeth in my neck.
I screamed a guttural cry, trying to push them away from me, but all to no avail. One pulled my breast out of its place, I screamed again when I saw the empty bloody space, when I saw the apparition sink the flesh into its mouth.
I tried to stumble away from them, but they wouldn’t budge. Instead they pushed me to the wet ground. When they did that, they merged into four similar faces. Adam, and his brothers, and then Raul. They were with big sticks in their hand. Adam was with a rod.
On the ground, with my hand clutching my left chest where my breast had been, I pushed myself away from them, crawling steadily, as tears slithered down my cheeks. This was different from my dreams. I thought, almost passing out when the first hit landed on my spine.
There was another.
And another.
And another.
Until I was paralyzed. I turned around, to beg them, to ask them to let me be, but there was no one there. Just laughter. A crazed laughter that sent chills down my spine that was already broken without repair.
I couldn’t even move again. I had just been left there for the next abuser.
Where had they gone to? I wondered, noticing with a startling speed that I could feel my left breasts.
I looked down, it was as good as new. I tried to stand up again, and huffed in anger when I found out that the spine was healed.
This must be the detention then. Detention in a magic school. Dealing your irresponsible students with their worst fears.
I wheeled around, when I heard the crunching of grasses, almost fainting when I saw an angry jaguar running toward me.
When would the one hour be up?