Italics- thoughts/ flashbacks/ dreams

Bold- author talking

Underline- narrator talking, known as the main character

Normal- normal story

2204 words

ꨄ❦ꨄ❦ꨄ➪

I say bye to everyone before running out the door with my bag of stuff to Athena's car. 5:30 is so early but we gotta get back to college which is a few hours away.

"So how was your vacation?" I ask her.

"You should know, you kept texting me everyday demanding details."

"Oh yea."

"Well how about you?"

"I told you everything too."

She starts the car and drives out the parking lot. The sun hasn't even risen yet. The sky is a dark purple with singing birds filling the silence. The wind is asleep along with everyone else.

I look down at my phone and see the home screen was changed again to a shirtless selfie of the all and powerful angel of death.

I'll happily keep these pictures. They automatically save to my phone if they become the background.

I change the background back to my simple abstract water dragon before adding the two pictures to a new album.

I go through all the notifications before uploading a backup video to my YouTube channel. I forgot to upload one this week.

I fiddle with the necklace my grandma gave me while watching the streets and buildings fly by under the dim lighting from the street lights.

I also think about the dream that ended an hour ago. I never got called sexy in a dream before or in life. Well that was a first.

Why would I be getting dreams about him just now? I always dream about something dramatic years after it happens. Why brain, why?

And that dream was so realistic. Well many of my dreams are realistic but always have the craziest plot twist so I know they didn't happen.

But that was something else. Lucid dreaming? I could shift so why not lucid dream?

"Irina?"

I turn and look at Athena, "yes?"

"Wanna get breakfast?" She asks.

"Sure."

"Where?"

"Churro waffle."

She smiles, "I knew I love you for a reason."

We laugh.

After a few minutes she pulls into the parking lot. We get out of the car, she locks it and we walk in.

And we get...

Churro waffles.

ꨄ❦ꨄ❦ꨄ➪

I went to my carving class. The professor wants us to carve little cities. He said the more details the more points.

So now I gotta carve wood. I could just make the school and area around it.

So I start designing what to make with the help of Google maps and the windows that show the buildings.

This is probably gonna be the only work I do till it's done.

Once classes are over for the day I decide to go outside to get more accurate angles and drawings of everything.

I also play music with earbuds. My phone is hidden in my waistband with the earbuds under my shirt just to feel edgy. I also have my backpack.

I don't know how that makes sense either.

I walk around the school's campus drawing for hours on end and the closet 5 buildings that surround the school.

I walk to the back of the school where there is a ton of ice. Just ice.

The red bricks look so nice compared to the ones that make up home. Well home is like 200 years old and was a bakery.

This school is only 25 years old so there's a huge difference.

Do I actually need every little detail? The scale model will be too small to get every little detail.

But does my artistic heart say I need every little detail? Yes.

Either I'ma cry while making the model or I'll give up within five hours and skip half of everything like I usually do.

I'll just do half-ass. I'll save my energy for something more important.

Like trying to figure out why I feel like I'm being watched. Or why I felt like that since I stepped out of school.

Damn the fantasy books I read are really getting to me.

I shuffle my feet to get off the ice without falling. I then put on my hood and tuck my hair in it. I have to protect my hair.

I lay on the grass that doesn't have ice on it and pull out my phone.

The cold hard ground does something to me and temporarily fixes my broken back.

I don't have motivation to draw or read or write my 3 books I decided to write at once like an idiot. I'm surprised I haven't gotten a burn out yet.

I'll watch YouTube.

Why the fuck am I watching YouTube while laying on the ground at the back of my college building at 8 pm in the dead of winter? What the fuck?

And why am I just laying here when some sense thing is saying I'm not alone?

I get up, grab my backpack and walk around a corner to the parking lot to get my bike.

I don't trust myself with a car. Especially not after dying in one while thinking one of the most important people in my life died.

Great, now I'm all teary. I unlock the bike and get to my apartment that's a few blocks away.

Once I get to my apartment, I unlock the door and gently throw my backpack onto a chair. I would drop kick it across the apartment for fun but the computer is in there.

I'm not going to break a $300 computer just cuz I wanna act dumb.

It's a small apartment. Like the type in New York that are $4k for a square but it's not that expensive.

It's an open floor apartment. The front room on the right with the kitchen on the left. The door to enter is right in the middle. There's a wall for the counters in the kitchen and on the other side of that wall is the bedroom. The bathroom is across the bedroom on the other side of the front room. The wall between the bedroom and bathroom has three tall windows that take up almost the whole wall except for a foot on each side.

I'm on the 5th floor so I have an okish view of the street.

I also have three giant, fat goldfish.

I walk over to the big ol tank that's between the bathroom door and the TV that hangs on the wall in front of the couch.

I feed them and watch their fat selves eat. I love fish, they are so cute and simple to take care of.

Well easier to take care of than 90% of other pets.

Now should I do homework? I take my phone again and check my grades. Some A's and mainly B's.

I walk back over to my backpack that's on the chair next to the door just for it.

I take my computer and see what assignments I can skip for laziness reasons.

15 are from science. 3 for English and 5 for math. Those are the only classes that'll make sure I pass.

Prick of a science professor giving so much work. He doesn't even collect most of them. I look through the assignments. Only 2 say they'll be collected.

So besides the city project I only got 10 assignments due by the end of the week.

I'll do half of it now.

ꨄ❦ꨄ❦ꨄ➪

It's now 10 pm and I actually did 7 things so not bad.

I'm fucking tired.

I get ready for bed and walk into the bedroom. It's very simple like the one at my family's home but has twenty times the amount of art stuff.

I take the bag of stuff that I took with me for Christmas break and put everything away.

I then put Pikachu at the head of the bed where he respectively belongs. I put my phone on the desk that's under the 2 windows on the same wall as the other windows.

I turn off the light and lay on my stomach diagonally to the bed. If any ghost were to walk in the room they'd see me ass first.

I bury my head in Pikachu's back and fall asleep thinking of what to write for one story I'm stuck at.

There is a sound of tapping on the window. Is this some fucking marichat fanfic?

I completely forgot about yesterday's dream. Is it happening again? Or is this really sleep paralysis but with extra steps?

Well I'm too comfy and lazy so I'ma stay laying on the bed face down. If I can't see it then it's not there.

The tapping stops. If it happens again, Athena better get ready for a sleepover.

Then something soft slaps the back of my right thigh, travels up my spine and along my right arm that hangs off the bed.

If I can't see it, it's not there. This is horrifying.

The soft thingy grabs my hand. The sleep paralysis demon is probably adoring my nails. My nail lady is too amazing for anyone not to adore her work.

"I know you're awake." That vice is so stupidly deep.

I give him a thumbs up. He makes an annoyed noise and rolls me over.

The first thing I see is the scythe in my face, "holy fuck."

He pulls it away and stands over me by like 4.5 feet, "there's nothing holy about fucking my crippled butterfly."

"What are these names? And let me sleep you goofy dream man." I take a pillow over my face.

A hot second later the pillow is being pulled off my face so I hold onto it like my life depends on it. I then start getting lifted off the bed. I quickly let go and the bed squeaks a single squeak.

"We have things to talk about." He drops the pillow where it was before I grabbed it. "I'm going to murder your fish and eat them while forcing you to watch strapped in a chair."

I sat up so quickly, completely shocked.

"Now that you're awake," his voice darkens, somehow, "you owe me your soul." 

Heh...? "What?"

"You heard me."

"Oh my God."

"God's overrated."

"Why me?" I look at him with a loss for words. What the hellllllllllllll?

"Well many years ago you almost died in a car accident and your family prayed to everything holy that you live."

He faces me like I know anything. 

"And..?"

"Well every holy thing got pretty damn annoyed so they sent me, the most unqualifiable thing in the universe to save anything. we made a deal that you live till you're 19 and die the same way as you should have at 3."

"Then why didn't I die?"

"Your stupid guardian angel got in the way, all I could do was watch what's supposed to be mine escape. Your angel then begged for you to live for 3 more Christmases."

"What happened to my guardian angel?"

"It traded its life so you could live yours. So you got 2 extra chances and I'm so sick of waiting."

I now feel sad that I couldn't thank my guardian angel. They died for me. I look down at the bed with sad guiltiness.

I look back at him with watery eyes as if something compelled me to.

He sits on the bed, "you're mine."

"I'd rather be dead." 

He just looks at me, probably knowing it's a complete bluff. "So you would have rather died when you were 3?"

I think of the amazing life I had. Of course I had my gravely lows but I've helped so many people and I wouldn't trade that in for nothing. I've made online strangers be happier, even if it was only for the time span of them reading my messages.

I started a whole rape survival group for at least 10 people, it's probably at hundreds now. I saved Athena and my online friends. I've helped too many people. From the closest people I know and grew up with to complete strangers.

I'd give it up for nothing.

"No..."

"Then give me yourself."

What does that even mean? "What about my family and friends and school...? I can't just leave them. Or my pets, the dogs and fish. I also can't leave my job, even as mean as the customers are... I also can't leave my YouTube people... or the people that read my stories. I can't leave them with unfinished stories... or what about my online friends? I can't leave them... or my church people. I grew up with them... I can't just leave my life behind, I can't, I can't, I can't."

I fall on my side and curl up in a ball trying my best not to cry. This is my biggest nightmare. Work so hard, so painfully hard and for it all to get taken away.

"I can't leave my favorite people. Not even my sister, we don't get along but I love her so much..."

A hand gently traces from my mid thigh to my hip, waist, up my rib cage, over my shoulder and to my neck while I profusely wipe away tears. Weirdo be touching me.

I don't have the physical or mental strength to fight whoever this is.