The Pyle Inside

I never really realized what I could do. I lived with it my whole life but it took me twelve years to figure it out. It started small like being able to guess what hand someone was holding something in. Then it became dreams. I would be having a normal dream and then suddenly it would become sequences of flashing images and sounds. It was jumbled at first but it became steadily clearer. For 9 years I never realized what they were. I told my parents when I was young and they dragged me to doctor after doctor, therapist after therapist. But the dreams never stopped. They got worse and more frequent. I constantly woke up in the middle of the night panting and gasping for air. Then one day in 5th grade the day before my 11th birthday I had one of these ‘dream sequences’ in the middle of the day. I remember it like yesterday. I was in math and bored out of my mind. School had always been easy for me. I was smart but (at least I like to think) not too nerdy. I watched the clock crawl by. I seemed to move slower and slower the more I watched it. Then all of the sudden it stopped. I stared at the clock and raised my hand. Then suddenly it sped up going lightning fast. The classroom blurred and images flashed before my eyes, none staying long enough for me to really understand them. Jumbled sound pounded my ears. Then one image stayed. It got deathly silent. Quieter than anything you have ever heard. Quiet. Yet my brain was pounding me from the inside out. I remember it clearly. It was a girl. I now know who she is but at the time I couldn’t tell. She was wrapped and blankets sitting on sidewalk. Snow fluttered before her eyes. She thought about how snow used to be a wondrous thing. With a sadness, like a sword through her heart, she remembered the joy of waking up and rising to the window to see beautiful soft flakes swirling about. She would throw on her snow clothes and run outside to sled down the monstrous hill in front of her house. Those days were long gone. She longed to see them again but knew she couldn’t. That clear stillness and silence suddenly moved at the speed of light as a noise louder than describable shook my head. Screaming in terror. Strapped to a table like a specimen in a science lab. Men in white suits all around. Touching her as though she was some awful disease they feared they would catch. Terror shook through her. One last scream of terror and then a blinding light. Then darkness. Darker than anything. Everything was dark, not just my sight. I heard, touched, tasted and worst of all felt darkness running through my veins.