Chapter Text
May 22, 2003
Well, this has been quite the couple of days. I’m just supposed to go to school after swim practice, then band, then home, then homework, then bed. That’s my plan until graduation and I guess that hasn’t changed, but weirdness definitely abounds.
I guess it was late in the morning when it happened. Knocked me on my ass, that’s for sure. Friends and I were heading to lunch, same as always. Same old routine. But, I never made it to lunch, or to afternoon classes. I felt like I was hit by a mach truck; my best friend, Mike, said he saw me fly back across the hall, smacking into the lockers so hard that I left a big, me-shaped dent. Hit my head pretty bad, too. I was bleeding, so I had to go to the hospital. I hate hospitals. They smell like wet paint, sterilizer, latex, and death (some might call it formaldehyde). They’re where people go to get sick when they think they’re sick, but not. And they’re where people go to die. Never did learn exactly why emergency rooms aren’t in a perpetual state of panic. I know my mom would’ve panicked. She’s the definition of overprotective.
Doctors say I’m fine. Since there aren’t any bumps or bruises from my spontaneous attempt to fly backwards, they don’t believe my friends’ testimony. I remember the phantom tank that barred my lunch-bound trek, but not the flying. I couldn’t recall any pain, either. And I may be medically fine, but hospital policy said that I had to be held overnight. For tests. Hospital tests. Guess how I feel about those.
First, there’s the no sleeping. Can’t let a concussion have its way with me. But I wasn’t tired. Even with my before-dawn-to-after-sundown schedule, I was alert and focused. Television wasn’t working, so I made a game of trick-throwing my plastic knife into the air. The nurses would test my limbs and reflexes. Everyone said I must’ve been the product of a miracle, “if” they said, “if you aren’t a lying little punk out for attention.”
Okay, they weren’t that mean. They were nice, and gave me lots of jello. But I was dreading the x-ray test. I’ve broken a few bones in the past, been x-rayed before. My arms and legs aren’t the problem. But I keep my secret inside. Something only my parents and doctors can know, because they’ve seen the x-rays. This doctor, his nurses, the lab techs will see my secret; I hoped they’d be kind enough to leave it alone. It is mine, after all.
They left my secret alone, but exchanged curious glances with me and themselves, and then they said I could go home. The parents let me take another day off school, just to make sure I’m still as me as I can be. They kept saying I should sleep, but I felt too good to sleep. I felt strong. I may be a varsity swimmer, but I’m not a jock. Or so I’ve convinced myself, after all I’m not built like the mini-hulks on the football team or anything. Still, on my day off to goof and play video games in bed as per doctor’s orders, I did push-ups, pull-ups, and borrowed my father’s free weights. I didn’t bother counting or setting reps, but when my mother heard the crash as weights were accidentally dropped on the second floor, she’d had enough. And I followed the command to take a shower and go to bed.
Then, I dreamed. I dreamed of me. My hair wasn’t long anymore; it was fiercely short, like in the army. My face looked older and harder. I was bent over a desk, writing in a journal, like this one, only more than the first couple of pages were used. I appeared to have been writing for months, and hitting the gym pretty hard in the same stretch of time. I looked good, and so did the random loaded crossbow that leaned against the desk. And that was the dream.
Which I guess is why I’ve been writing this. I finished my homework, and I decided to see this dream as reality. Maybe without the crossbow… The TV’s on and there’s a story on the news. Apparently, some bizarre freak earthquake had happened a couple days ago. It was kind of cool seeing a massive crater where the supposed town of Sunnydale, CA had once been. Weirder still: the city was already abandoned, before anyone predicted such an event. And no one had.
Oh, well, at least no one was hurt. Probably just another event of the unexplainable. I’m going to bed.
May 23, 2003
I’m fast. I am REALLY fast. No one can figure out what it is, but this morning, when I’m normally yawning and downing a protein shake because I’m up to exercise before the sun rises, I was energized and alert. And no one could keep up with me in the water. I’m not the swimming star by a long shot. I’m good, but certainly not the best. Or I wasn’t. And Coach worked us pretty hard. He said we’d been slacking. Of course, afterwards he asked where I’d been hiding that speed for the past three years of my high school career. Didn’t know how to answer.
Then school happened.
People were much more interested in how I wrecked all those lockers with my collision than they were worried with how I was. But that’s high school for you. Needless to say, I got my fill of repeating “I don’t know” over and over and over.
I had another strange dream last night. There was this woman, long blonde hair in her early or mid twenties. She was really pretty, but there was something else about her. Her face was lined with healing cuts and her eyes burned with fear and determination. It was like she knew that she was going to die. And there were lots of other girls with her, most looked younger than the blonde woman and they were all very afraid. They all stood on the shelf-like cliff side, clutching medieval and makeshift weapons, towering over a massive underground cave that roared with the sounds of fires and shouting.
Then there were the monsters, the source of the shouting below the women. They were the very definition of demonic: mindless and grotesque; who looked like they wanted nothing more than to rip and bite their way through every living creature on Earth. These horrifying abominations took no notice of the girls above them, until – almost like some kind of hive mind – they looked up as one, and charged.
I couldn’t believe what I was watching; I couldn’t believe there was nothing I could do. Those girls were going to die. The pretty blonde woman was going to die. The monster crawled up the cliff side with terrifying speed, and still the thirty some-odd girls stood their shaky ground.
Then, everything changed.
Like a burning wave of energy, a force rolled its way through the ceiling and attached to each of the girls. It sank into their skin, their pores, and their cells in an instance; it sank into me. Suddenly, the fear in that cavern was superimposed with righteous confidence. The grips on weapons tightened with knowledgeable ease and they assumed stances, ready for war. Those girls, whom I had never known, held back the innumerable odds of hellish beasts. Those girls, whom I watched stab and punch and kick with impossible strength, seemed almost like sisters to me. Those girls fought as if they were all that stood between the world’s end, and I believed that they were.
I watched those girls kill and I watched them die. I existed only to watch and shout my silent encouragement, emboldened by their powers, my powers. Then there was another girl, arriving through a hole in the ceiling, who threw a gracefully forged, and undeniably deadly, blood-red axe to the blonde woman in charge. It obviously belonged to her, but it felt like it was mine, too.
The dream showed me this fight, and I woke up before I could know who ended up victorious.