Chapter Text
For a moment, all that Abra could see was red.
A pulsating, membranous veil clouded over her sight, and twitched as she panted to catch her breath. In and out, in and out, just like Uncle Dan said .
In the deep caverns of her mind, she reached for a box. A purplish steel box with marks of age striping the top and the sides. She had had enough of these nightmares to know when it was time to add to her collection.
Wait for it, visualize, then trap. Same as always. She told herself. And she did wait.
For a while, the veiny membrane continued to stunt her senses. All she could make out was a vague smattering of panicked voices and an occasional flash of light, like a beacon searching the waters for wayward ships. Abra wasn’t used to this. Abra was used to quite the opposite.
Abra was dreaming, she knew that. But just because she was dreaming didn’t mean that it wasn’t real. When you have the shine, those things aren’t mutually exclusive. This happened to her occasionally, mostly after her initial battle with the True Knot. It had been months since she had had a vision like this, and never inhabiting a body that wasn’t her own.
In a brilliant flash, her eyes shot open from her fetal position in bed. The searchlight had shone right into her field of vision, burning through the red membrane and shooting through her eyes into the world- the real world.
Her eyes were two spotlights lighting up her cluttered desk in her bedroom, her body went as stiff as a board under her freshly washed covers. All of her muscles clenched as her vision cleared and she could finally see through the red.
A gymnasium, decorated with meager star cutouts and blue tinsel, came into view. From her vantage point, she could see the black lines on the floor that made up the basketball court. She could see all of the circular tables with drinks and shawls and purses placed upon them. She could see a terrified crowd of children- yes, children, not many years older than her- sticking their heads straight up at her, as if she were some kind of hypnotic disco ball.
There was a queer, dark rain falling in slow motion all around her, and onto the spectating crowd. She investigated her body- or whatever body she was inhabiting- and noticed that the rain hadn’t touched her. There was a circular forcefield that had repelled any blood from her levitating body. It was only then that Abra realized just how high up she was. She lifted her neck upwards and saw she was only a few feet from the vaulted gymnasium ceiling. She was floating.
We all float here.
No, that didn’t feel right. Not yet.
Abra looked down again to the terrified crowd. She noticed they were moving at a snail’s pace, one young woman in a lilac colored satin shift dress lifted her corsaged wrist to murmur something to the boy next to her. The arm moved as if the girl was underwater- slowly and without articulation.
Only then had Abra noticed the two dangling feet peeking out at the bottom of her field of vision. Her feet- or whoever’s feet she currently was using- were fat and pink. They were strapped into a pair of less-than-attractive off-white Mary Jane shoes. Using the chunky heel of her right foot, she wedged it under the strap of her right shoe, and pushed it off to tumble to the ground.
The shoe fell in real time, tumbling to the ground in less than 4 seconds, and clunking onto one of the tables below. The crowd didn’t react, or at least, hadn’t had enough time to, at their pace. She looked to her left and to her right, seeing the rain materialize from just above where she floated. The rain fell in black droplets, and marked dark splotches on the floor below. She reached her hand out, and pulled it back to find a palmful of sticky, ruby-red liquid. Blood.
She squinted her eyes shut and saw another vision. A wave of blood cascading down a hallway from an elevator shaft. It felt so familiar, so much more familiar than the gymnasium.
Her eyes opened again to see the rain, the crowd, the terrified looks on their expectant faces.
“You shouldn’t have done that” A voice said. It felt as though it was right behind her, spoken through the nape of her neck. Abra knew enough about these dreams to know that she wasn’t alone in this body.
“Done what?” She asked. She didn’t know if the other voice would hear her, but she tried anyway.
“I am not a pig” The voice said again. The bloody forcefield expanded, repelling rain further from the body as Abra and the unknown voice involuntarily flexed and expanded the body they were both inhabiting.
Abra retreated to her mind, and put her hand on the steel box.
“NO!!!” the voice shouted.
Before Abra could even pick up the box in her mind, she was thrown from the levitating body and hurdled towards the floor.
“YOU WILL NOT LOCK ME AWAY”
She felt her stomach flip and her bladder let out a small spray of urine as she begun her descent to the floor. The rain painted her in maroon dots, an explosive light expanded from the levitating figure behind her as a hellish scream escaped the throat that had, up until a few moments ago, been inhabited by Abra, as well. The force of the explosion hit Abra’s back hard, making her chest push out in an uncomfortable convex form.
She fell to the floor in real time.