"Stop!"

The sound was metallic and ratty, not at all the sweet velvet that I'd grown so accustomed to. It was harsh. It was demonic. Shivers trickled down my spine.

I abandoned the remote.

Gilbert's haunted gaze remained focused on my face. The hypnotic swirls reappeared around his head – and my terror started to fade. The anxiety in my stomach soothed, settling into a calm sense of peace and acceptance. I couldn't fight it. It was like the television knew that I was watching.

I took a hesitant step forward. And then another.

A shock of thunder rocked the apartment, so violent that I stumbled forward. My arms stretched out and I scrambled to catch myself. Pain blossomed through the side of my head.

Dazed, I lifted a hand to my head and grimaced. "Owe."

Gilbert's face had vanished. The swirls of bright colors had taken over again, pulling me forward like a magnet.

I blinked and realized that only a few inches separated my nose from the screen. The colors were indescribable, a whirlpool of everything laced with something more. I reached out again, timid.

The pad of my index finger pressed against the screen.

It sunk through.

Shock bristled through my veins. I let out a yelp and jolted back, pulling on my finger. The colors had vanished entirely – replaced with a dead, blank screen. My finger remained locked into place. Almost like I'd jammed it into the center of a wet cement slab and let it dry around my skin.

"Let go," I hissed at it.

My free hand curled around my wrist, and I yanked hard. One foot flattened against the dresser that the television sat atop, and I used that to leverage a bit more strength against it. For a few seconds, the television seemed to lean forward, as if it were about to fall off the stand.

Then it pulled back.

Strands of shadows erupted from the screen, wriggling around in the air like electrified snakes. My jaw dropped to the floor. A shriek tore past my lips, dancing through the quiet of the apartment in an endless echo. The dark tendrils slithered through the air – darting this way and that, searching. I felt my finger being sucked forward. The sudden pull caught me off guard, and I was wrenched forward, my entire hand devoured.

I screamed again.

It didn't hurt. My hand had emerged through something hard, and the air around it was chilled, like I'd reached into a pile of snow. One of the tendrils coiled around my bicep and started to pull, helping the television pull me forward.

"Nana!"

My screams were hardly anything more than a raspy whisper. The pain that I'd felt on the side of my head seemed to grow, flooding through my skull. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't focus.

And there was no response except for the loud keening sound that the television emitted.

Another dark tendril erupted from the screen, arching upward. It flicked out and wound around my throat, constricting like a python. I squirmed and struggled. It was as if a thousand little beads of imagination had banded together to strangle me.

I tried to scream again. The sound choked off with a gurgle. It was foreign to my ears – I'd never heard such a broken noise before. Another shadowy tendril darted forward and added to the pressure around my neck.

Air rocketed out of my lungs with a pained wheeze.

My freehand flew to my neck, desperately clawing at the darkness. Without any remaining resistance, the tendrils lifted me upward, into the air, and my feet dangled above the floor.

Then I shot forward through the screen.

A thin layer of warmth passed over my body. It felt like the laser of a cat scan and mirrored a weird, fluttery feeling that raced through my body. When that feeling reached my toes, the top of my skull exploded with a sharp, splintering pain. My entire body crumpled against something hard, shoulder scraping against a jagged surface. Agony fanned through the entire right side of my body like I'd landed in a splash of fiery lava.

My eyes were open -- but I couldn't see at first.

It was hard to focus on anything through the pain. My cheek was pressed against something icy. It was rugged, the surface of a brick. Shadows surrounded me, dancing together in a whirlwind of blurs.

Then the pain started to fade, and I was left alone with the cold.

Moonlight shimmered above my head. It bathed the area around me in a dim, white light. Billions of starts twinkled in the sky, and I squinted at them, confused.

"That's strange," I murmured. My voice sounded so far away. "The stars shouldn't be visible in the city."

As the words left my mouth, a searing pain split through the side of my skull. I groaned and gingerly probed the area with my fingers. It burned at the touch.

"Ouch," I whined. The entire right side of my body ached in agreement.

I lowered my head and looked around. There was just enough light that I could make out some of my surroundings. There were a few old crates stacked along the wall to my left and a rusted metal trash bin. Weathered brick walls covered in mold and dirt enclosed the space.

"How the hell did I get outside?"

My heart pounded for a frantic second. Thoughts spun around inside my head; a torrent of chaos that I couldn't fully decipher. All I could remember was that I was supposed to be in my bedroom. I was supposed to be watching the newest episode of Supers.

This...This wasn't right.

I pressed my hand flat against the wall behind me for support, pushing myself away from the scratchy surface. A hiss bristled past my lips. "Oh, come on, Piper!" I tried to coax myself into a sitting position. "Don't be a little wimp!"

Somehow, I managed to peel the right side of my body away from the wall. I started twisting to the left, trying to turn so I could see the rest of the sketchy alleyway that I seemed to be sitting in, and my arm gave out. The frosty brick wall hit my back. Another strangled sound escaped me.

I just sat there for two seconds.

"Guess I need to find a hospital or something," I muttered to myself.

It was harder to tally up all my potential injuries. Blood stained the material covering my right shoulder, ruining my favorite white cropped shirt. My right arm dangled, limp and useless. It wasn't broken – but it hurt enough that I was genuinely surprised I could still wiggle my fingers. And my head...

My head hurt something fierce.

Shoving my left hand into the back pocket of my short, blue-jean overalls, I fished out my cellphone. Aside from a nasty looking crack across the screen protector, the device was actually still intact. It flickered to life when I pressed the unlock button, and I started to search for a nearby hospital.

A somewhat familiar croon sounded to my left.

Startled, I lifted my head, instantly locating the source of the sound.

"Holy macaroni."

The snowy white kitsune stood on its hind legs, only seven inches tall. Its large round eyes were clouded – colored a brilliant cerulean blue – and focused on the cellphone in my hands. It crooked its head to the side, curious, and its pink nose quivered as it sniffed the air.

It was a fox demon.

The same kind of fox demon that typically appeared in the fictional world of Supers.

In the show, kitsunes were mostly used for comedic relief. There were thousands of them that plagued the bustling city streets of Eerie City, and they loved to steal things. According to the internet, their hearing was impeccable – and it made up for their limited sight.

It took a small step forward, toward me, and I realized that it seemed to be watching the bright light that emanated from my phone screen intensely.

"Stay back, you little rat," I warned it, and hugged my phone protectively to my chest. Vivid hallucination or not, I was not about to let steal anything of mine.

It crooned again, moving to sit beside my foot. All nine of its fluffy tails fawned across the cobble-stone ground around it. I tried to glare at it. "What do you want?"

The kitsune tilted its head again and moved a little closer.

I just stared at it for a moment – contemplating whether I wanted to touch it and see just how creative my imagination could be. Obviously, I knew that the kitsune wasn't really sitting beside me. It was physically impossible. But it looked so vividly real.

It had to be the blood loss. Or the blunt force trauma.

Or both.

Something was messing with my brain, formulating the little kitsune as a distraction from the pain. I was hallucinating – plain and simple. It didn't matter that I could see its individual little whiskers twitching with interest or make out the small spots of gray that decorated its little paws.

The kitsune wasn't real.

That notion was questioned though when the kitsune lifted one of its front paws and delicately stepped down, onto my thigh – and I felt the pressure.

"Hmm, not sure how I feel about that," I said to myself.

I slid my phone into the large front pocket attached to my overalls. Then I reached out, prepared to pet the creature. The kitsune shied back, away from my hand. I didn't move – my hand hovering in the air between us. Its wet nose bumped my fingertips, sniffing furiously.

"This is worse than I thought," I told the kitsune solemnly, "That felt entirely too real."

A heavy sigh escaped me, and I leaned back again, allowing my head to rest tiredly against the bricks behind me. The kitsune climbed into my lap, focusing all three pounds of its weight into its tiny paws, which dug painfully into my thighs. I grimaced. I didn't have the strength to fight the hallucination or question my sanity anymore.

I just stared at it – and then at my legs beneath it.

"Good gracious," I groaned under my breath. My pale legs looked almost luminescent in the moonlight. "I'm freaking glowing."

"Like an angel, of course," a smooth baritone voice purred from the darkness around me.

My scream caught in my throat. The kitsune bolted from my lap, hiding within the shadows and the few random abandoned crates that plagued the alley. I scanned the mismatched shapes surrounding me, struggling to find the source of the voice.

Then he stepped out, into a ray of moonlight, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

He smiled; his narrow lips twisted gently. One of his hands was caught, holding his hair away from his eyes. I watched, unable to breathe, as his hand lowered back to his side. His bangs gradually flipped back into place, haphazardly framing his forehead. The rest of his hair spilled out of a thick rubber band in a waterfall of color.

His hair was a distinguishable lilac that made my stomach turn somersaults.

I tried to become one with the hard wall behind me. My body's screams of pain resurfaced and fell on deaf ears. He took another step forward into the light, moving completely out of the shadows. His gray eyes lingered on my outfit – on the skin exposed. The outfit was among my usual assortment of comfortable school-wear. Now I wished I'd chosen something different, something a bit more appropriate for a walk through a dangerous alleyway that also happened to be filled with fictional, but murderous criminals.

"No," I heard myself say. My voice sounded far away again. Faint. "You're not real."

His eyes snapped open wide, and he pressed a hand to his chest. "What? I'm not real?" he repeated, distraught. "Oh no! That means I'm just an imaginary monster!"

My entire body started to tremble. The pain had vanished now – replaced entirely by solid, unrelenting shock. No. No, no, no.

This was just a dream.

There was no way that Break, the most notorious villain in Supers, was now standing in front of me.

It just wasn't possible.

♡♡♡

eeeep! just gotta love those mini-cliffhanger endings ;) 

don't worry though! the next chapter will be posted this friday! I'm not sure what time exactly. i'm still trying to figure out what time works best with my schedule lol. 

as always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this far!! i can't wait to see what you think of this chapter and the next! ♡

love, ash