1

Life comes in odd stages. You find yourself stumbling through the different steps, each one strange and completely foreign. It's always difficult to separate how you should react and how you want to. What's right and what's wrong starts to blend together after a while, mixing together, you can justify and disagree with practically anything. Morals are sticky things. It's funny because no one will ever walk in your shoes.

These are the stupid things that run through my mind when I'm in the shower. Thoughts that I wish I could turn off. I wish I could turn off a lot of things lately, it seems to all be building up. There's this pressure in the back of my head in which makes me feel urgent and panicked at the same time. The only things that really make me feel any better are Jaren, and beating the shit out of one of those punching bags downstairs.

I squeezed my eyes shut, letting the warm water run over my face. Usually, showers calmed me down, but this one was doing the opposite. My hands felt waxy, and I could feel a breeze on my back where the water wasn't touching. It was faint enough to give me goosebumps. A faint..breeze?

I opened my eyes, the sudden lashing of fear running through my nerves and into my bones in an instant. It had become all too obvious to me in the heartbeat of time that it wasn't a breeze at all, but breathing. Panic turned me around before I had the sense to run, the painful curiosity of the human mind at it's least faithful encounter. Adrenaline had me running, the time came in gaps, before my mind even registered what had been just towering over me, inches behind. A horrified scream ripped from my lips as I jumped out of the steaming water, and I could hear the crashing of the alien thing behind me as it tore down the curtain to make it's pursuit.

I slipped and let out another strangled screech of terror, unable to get my grip, unable to escape fast enough. I somehow got into the bedroom, time was skipping. The violet lights were casting a glow that made my skin appear to be paper and I was bleeding, my knees were split open from the fall. I lunged onto the bed, snatching one of the bed side table lamps and smashed it into a weapon. Holding onto one of the jarred pieces of ceramic I watched as the thing slowly walked out of the bathroom.

It's movement were so fluid and slow that the inhumaness of it shot another wave of panic through my core, and I gripped the ceramic until it cut into my hand. It looked as though it were neither walking nor floating, it's movement was almost untraceable, the only evidence being that it moved spaces. It was breathing calmly, staring, slowly getting closer.

"What the fuck do you want?!" I screamed, my voice was unfamiliar to my own ears, the words hardly formed and my throat was raw. Slowly, then, it began to cock it's head, the eye in the center of it's forehead widening and going black. As if it's pupil had swallowed the entire surface.

Merely information. A foreign voice droned in my head. My stomach twisted violently, and my hands began to shake more viciously than before. I couldn't determine if the voice was male or female, it was completely neutral and unnatural. The sound hardly sounded like a noise at all, nonetheless words of any kind. The alien moved forward, and it's calloused face began twist, as if it were smirking.

"Stay the fuck away!" I screeched again, holding my piece of ceramic so tightly that I was sure it would do me more damage than it. I was shaking it at the monstrosity, my lips curled back over my teeth and my feet were beneath me, ready to spring.

Open your mind, human. You are outdated, your communication is dull. Let me explore your own perception of what is real. I could feel scraping at the edge of my brain, then a short huff of air- perhaps a laugh? Suddenly, then, my mind was on fire. Buzzing and thrumming, it was as if the devastation of the whole world was collapsing inside me. I let out a guttural scream, pure agony ripping through my flesh in hot streams. My fingers went to my temples, ripping, scratching at the flesh as if I could tear open a release from the torture...


"Iris!"