Step 2- Hallucination

I wasn't lonely or bored in my little white room, even though I saw no one except the staff from time to time, because while my body may be still and unmoving, in my mind, I lived a life richer and fuller than many really live.  I have friends and adventures, so much happens that I don't miss 'freedom' at all.  I AM free.  As I sit there, lost deep in my own thoughts, I'm running through a meadow on a beautiful summer's day.  Jumping brambles and shrubs, laughing up at the lazily drifting, ever changing clouds, watching the insects hum over the brilliant and varied wild flowers.  Here a patch of golden yellow cowslips, some white and gold ox-eye daisies, scarlet poppies and pimpernels, purple belladonna and violet, and yellow and purple flags.  Breathless and happy, I tumble to the ground, rolling through the long grass, listening to the birds singing from the hedgerows and trees, freewheeling overhead.

Suddenly, whole mood of the place changed, the sky turned an inky black, lightning flickered across the sky, rending the once peaceful afternoon with a ferocity that made the clouds crash together with a tooth jarring crash of thunder.  Rain started pelting from the sky, feeling like bullets as it ricocheted off my skin, drenching me in a split second, chilling me to the bone.  As the sky relit with flares of electric flashes, I spied a shadow, a silhouette, lurching across the now sodden grass toward where I still lay prostrate, hugging the grass.

Another flicker of harsh light, and in this one, I saw it was my friend, my best friend.  My emerald eyed, ice blonde haired, skin pinkish with life, hotter than hell best friend.  But... something was wrong, something wasn't right. His skin... he was almost as pale and blue as me.  He was holding his head awkwardly, as if scared to move it, and his clothes were ALL red.  He NEVER wore one straight colour, except maybe black, and even then the shirt would have a pattern, not be just one flat tone.  Something was definitely wrong.  He was getting closer.

For a moment, I'm afraid he's angry.  But has he gets nearer to me, I can see that he's worried.  I stand up and wait for him to come to me.  He looks relieved that I'm alright.  When he reaches me, I can see that he's dripping, the red is dripping from him in the downpour.  The first thing he does is hug me, he wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tightly.  I hug him back, glad that he's here.  When we finally pull away, I see that i'm now covered in some of the dripping red too, I look at my hands and torso, wondering what the substance is.  Gerard smiles a tired smile, "I'm so glad that you're okay."

"I'm fine," I smile back, "But what happened?"  I want to make sense of this madness, why would I not be okay?  Why is Gerard covered in red ooze?

Gerard looks at me sternly, "They were coming for you."  His eyes are dark, obviously remembering the events that preceded his arrival.  "They were going to take you away.  So I stopped them...."

None of this makes sense, who is after me?  I put my hand on Gerard's shoulder (this isn't easy because he's significantly taller than me).  "Who's coming for me?" I manage to ask.

"Men, all in white.  I've never seen them before, they looked so out of place," Gerard explains, "I heard them talking, I heard them say that they were looking for you."

"But what happened?" This only explains half the story, what is Gerard not telling me?

"I had to keep them from getting to you Frankie," He looks at me, a worried crease in his brow.  Then he looks down at himself and for the first time seems to realize that he's covered in a red liquid.  Looking back at me, he says, "It wasn't pretty."  Realization dawns on me, this is blood.  Gerard is covered in the blood of some strange white clad men and now I am too.

I need to know more, so I ask, "What were the men like?"

Gerard thinks and says, "They were in all white clothes, talked with strange accents and mostly to each other.  There were two of them, but I heard that they were scouting for you and that more would come later.  They sounded like they would hurt you."

White clad men.... Where else would they be from!  My room, my hideously white room, they must be some staff looking for me.  But aren't I still in that room?  Why do they care so much what I think about?  All I know is that I have too many questions and not enough answers.  "Why are they here?" I half wail, half moan.

Gerard takes me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes.  "We need help, we need answers," he says as if reading my mind.  I nod vigorously.  Suddenly, he looks up, scanning the area, he says, "We can't stay here...."

We walk away from the meadow and Gerard grips my hand tightly as we walk, tightly as if he's afraid of losing me.  He hasn't done this before, but right now I need him, so I don't pull my hand away.  In fact, I'm glad to have his strong presence.  We walk to the edge of the meadow, to the line of trees surrounding it.  All of a sudden, I'm not actually sure where I am, I know I've been to these parts before, but I've not usually spent much time here.  But Gerard seems to know where he's going at least and this reassures me, he walks with sure footing and direction through the woods, with me following by his side.  I want to ask where we're heading but I never bring myself to say it, I feel like I should already know, but I don't, not this time.

Soon enough, I find that we've reached a town that's on the edge of the woods.  It's a small town, but now I know I've been here before, in fact, this is where Gerard spends most of his time and therefore I join him.  Mostly we just hang out around the tavern or the surrounding wilderness.  But today, Gerard leads me away from all of that, he leads me away from the other people who give us strange looks as we walk by, but Gerard doesn't seem to notice, he just moves forward.  He brings me to a small house on the far end of the town, to a place I don't even recognize.  How can this be, getting lost in my own mind?  Gerard leads me into the small house, it's bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.  There's enough room for a small sitting area, a kitchenette and even a cot in the corner.

When inside, Gerard finally lets go of my hand and I kind of miss the warm touch of his hand.  He gestures to a seat before sitting down himself.  I sit down, waiting for him to speak, when he doesn't, I finally say, "What should we do?"

"We need to find out why they're looking for you,"  Gerard brings his eyes up to mine, "We need to know where they came from."  I feel a little bad about this part, because I think I have a pretty good idea of where they came from, but I just have no idea how it would even be possible.  Gerard continues, "I'll start by asking around town, but you should stay here."

"Why?" I exclaim indignantly, "I want to find out too, we could work faster with two of us."

"But there'll be more and I can't..." Gerard looks away, as if he can't look me in the eye, "It wouldn't be safer for you."  Without further discussion, he gets up and walks to the door, before leaving, he turns his head speaking over his shoulder, "Please be careful... please just stay here, I won't be gone long..."

I can't bring myself to say anything in response, I just watch him leave.  He closes the door and I can still hear him walking away.  He must really want to know what's happening, he didn't even bother to wash off any of the almost dry blood.  I sit in the room until I can't hear him anymore, how can he just expect me to stay here?  I decide to go ask around too, so I check the window in the front of the house, no sign of Gerard.  I walk out of the door and head for the nearest street.

The streets are alive with people, everyone buzzing around, I have absolutely no idea where to start.  I try not to let this deter me and head for the nearest tavern, maybe there I can at least start a conversation about the people looking for me.  I reach the swinging doors and glimpse inside and there they are.  They're impossible to miss even though I've never seen them before, they're sitting at a table with some locals laughing and drinking beer.  I back away from the door and move to a window, at least this way I might not be noticed.  I watch them sit there, two aging white men with receding hairlines and glasses.  The thing that's weird about them is the fact that they're dressed in long white coats with two rows of buttons and black slacks ironed so much that the creases in them look like they could be used as knives.  To top it all off, they have white rubber shoes, perfectly shiny, perfectly smooth.  There's not even a speck of dirt on any of the white, but there should be, it just rained and everything's muddy now.  My own white tracksuit is covered in drying blood and the pants are splashed up to the knees with mud.

I don't understand why the people here are even talking to these strangers.  I mean, they don't look like aliens, but like Gerard said they obviously don't fit.  I strain to listen to their conversation, mostly they're just laughing and telling bad jokes, but then something catches my ear.  "Yeah, we actually came to this area looking for an old friend of ours, maybe you've seen him.  He's pale, black hair, black eyes," one of them says, I can't differentiate which one of them spoke, they both look the same and from what I've heard, they both sound the same too.

Luckily for me, one of the locals says, "Well by that description, that could be a lot of people here!"  Everyone laughs and takes another swig of beer.

The other stranger says, "This man goes by the name of Frank."  I take a sharp intake of breath, at the sound of my name, the danger just got very real.  I turn away from the window and lean against the wall, not daring to move.  I decide that I can't stay here, that Gerard might be waiting for me.  I turn away from the window and am immediately face to face with Gerard.  I laugh guiltily.  He sighs, although I can see he's fighting a smile, he puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me around.  He nudges me to start walking and we walk away from the tavern, I start to head back to the house Gerard brought me to earlier, but he leads me a different way.  I look at him, "Where are we going?"

Ignoring my question, Gerard says, "You couldn't just stay there could you.  At least you didn't get into trouble with those two."  He smiles down at me before continuing, "I tried asking people what they knew about those two in the tavern and no one wanted to talk.  Most people just didn't know anything, but some of them were wary of the strangers.  All I could get was to go and talk to someone named Savvy, everyone said she'd be the one to know what's happening."

"Is that where we're going?" I ask, rather unnecessarily.  He just nods.  We keep walking, we walk away from the town, away from the houses, away from the people.  Amidst all the trees, we finally come across a small house made entirely of wood.  The place looks extremely old and like at any moment it could burn down.  I look to Gerard and he nods, answering my unasked question if this is the right place.