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The cool earth beneath me comforts with its unusual softness of its soil. Grass doesn’t even sway in the motionless air. I open the book in my hand and look into the sky. Without a soul at Jesus Green, I relax my body on the arrow head shaped plain. The noir sky with its main exhibit, the stars, starts to engulf me. I begin. With a click, the filter ejects onto my hand. I place it on the grass. This time, no redness overcomes me. Odd. That is seriously odd. What the hell is going on? I look back at the notebook. It is filled with sketches drawn under stars and moonlight over the months. I have three of them now, this one filling every night I make a visit to my subconscious. The sketches of jaws with no lips start invading, teeth baring with no way to cover it. I flip a few pages to find another boy wearing a bloodied surgical mask with one strap dangling to the side. His fleshless fingers hold out the straps of a clean surgical mask, holding it out as if to put it on someone….
“It’s beautiful.”
I stop. I freeze. I hold my breath. My pupils narrow down. I can tell as everything around starts to dim. What the hell? The very thought was shaken, the inner voice of my mind itself loses all fluency as it hears the voice. I look over my shoulder. She speaks out again.
“He is hurt, yet he insists that you put on your own mask. He wants to protect you, even if it costs him his life. His own mask is failing. It is too late for him. He is coughing up blood and even looks like fragments of his lungs. Yet he attempts to wear his own mask, not to protect him but to stop him from infecting you. To protect you. Behind the mask, he has no face, no eyes, nothing. But you can still feel his worry. Even through the baring of his teeth, you can feel his anxiety. He holds the mask up, even with the lack of muscles. His bony hands, even without the flesh, have been sofly rendered in, showing the gentleness behind the expressionless face. It truly is beautiful.”
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The girl sits down beside me and picks up the filter on the grass. She starts wiping it, removing any dirt that it has caught from the earth. “I come here often, it’s close to where I stay. Sometimes I ask to come here, others I escape. Sometimes I sing, sometimes I stargaze. Sometimes, I lie down on my back and rest for an hour. Danny says it’s dangerous for me to be alone. He says that my brain will play tricks on me. But I go anyway. You’re not a trick, are you? I don’t think so because I can touch your mask. It feels hard and cold. You never did tell me about your mask. What is it?”
I turn to her face, her distinctive eyes pierce right through me and the surroundings start to brighten up. I look down at the filter. I can’t see them but I can still feel the effect of the salt crystals inside the filters. I reach out and take the filter out of her hand. Her soft skin grazes against my hard palm as my hand encloses the equipment. She retracts her hand in surprise, holding it close to her chest. A click and I draw a long and deep breath through the mask, the metallic taste in the air always hanging. The thirst returns as sensation brings the redness back but her voice instantly beats it back down. “Danny’s very excited, he seems so confident in you, he says that… that you can, somehow, heal me.”
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My eyes dart to hers. “I don’t know what, he says that I’m crazy. He thinks that I don’t know anything.But, it feels like he is the oblivious one. So, please, don’t take anything he says seriously. Leave while you can.” She begins to falter, her eyes begin to lower lightly. I look at her body and see exactly what is going to happen. I throw out my arms as she collapses onto me. Oh, crap. The hell am I supposed to do? The filter is too strong for her. How the hell is that possible? I put two fingers underneath her jaw and feel the regular gushing of blood in her arteries. Lifting the fingers up, I hover them under her nose. Slightly faster but steady breathing as well. Seems like she just passed out from lack of oxygen.
I fumble with the keys to the apartment and manage to open the door. Putting the keys back on top of the drawers, I return to the door and put my arms underneath the unconscious girl. What the hell am I doing? This is not a good idea. Welp, too late now. We might need extra oxygen though. I turn the heating up once again after placing the girl onto my bed. I eject the filters and place the two on top of the grill protecting the hot water heater which heats the air around the filters. This is going to be hell. I draw some blankets over her and tuck her in. I begin to stumble as my body grows tiresome but my mind is as active as ever. I throw myself onto the couch and turn to the girl. She seems… peaceful. My eyelids drop without consent and before I can force them open to watch over the girl, I am engulfed by the unnatural yet comforting darkness.
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I rise up, the mist around me sends chills down my spine. Panickingly, I look around, desperately looking for something that exists in this dark plane of existence. Then, my eye catches something. A white patient gown flutters in the wind. She looks up. It’s her. Her night black hair flies with the breeze, the sound of the gown fluttering in the air breaks the silence. Her bare feet start walking towards me. As she gets closer, an aura of ice fills the air, slowing my heart beat. The fluttering grows louder, the atmosphere drops to sub-zero, mist begins to whirl around us in circles, the scent of blood fills the air, a metallic taste enters my mouth. She stands before me. She lunges at my mask, ripping it off my face. Blood begins to flow down my neck, with my teeth baring, my mouth ceases to exist. The remains of my mouth is hooked on the mask that she holds. And she whispers the words. “Get out of here while you can.” I continue looking ahead at the empty space where she once was. My hand reaches to my mouth. What, no. How is this possible? My fingers, now covered in blood, scrape against my incisors, with nothing covering them. Looking down, the plane I stand on ceases to exist, and I fall into the abyss.
I jolt up and knock my head into something. “Ah, what the.” My words are drowned by a familiar shriek. In front of me, the girl, now wide awake, is sitting on my legs, pinning me down to the couch. She takes her hands and wraps her forehead, putting pressure on where, I presume, I headbutted her.
“Oww, that hurts.”
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“What are you doing?” She shakes her head, as if denying something. I don’t want to take a wild guess but what the flip was she doing while I was sleeping? Was she doing a cliche ‘have a look at the guy while he’s unconscious’? I begin to hear footsteps. Oh crap. I whip my head around to find the third looking at us with a toothbrush in his mouth. This looks bad. “It ain’t what you think!” He runs to the kitchen sink and spits out the foam in his mouth. After a rinse, he looks back at us, giving us the expression of absolute disbelief.
“Brain dot E-X-E has stopped working.”
“What?” I turn to the girl who has started to talk. “What do you mean?”
“I think you should explain yourself first.” He turns to me. “What the hell is she doing here? And what is she doing on you?” More footsteps follow as the jock walks into the scene.
“AAHH! Whatthefrickisshedoinghere!” At this point, things couldn’t get any worse.
“Everybody, hold up!” All the eyes in the room fall onto me. “Alright, so there is a girl with us right now. Let me explain why she is here. However, I cannot explain why she is sitting here at this exact spot for I have no idea.”
Minutes go by while I explain the events of last night, the fact that I like to sometimes go out on my own and that she somehow turned up at the same location.
“So, wait, she passed out?”
“I did?”
20,000 Words 