Chapter 2

Since the morning, something or someone had been irking me. A lilting sound, pounding the back of my head like a perfectly aligned clockwork. 

It began in the early morning, a dizzying headache like I'd drank until dusk yesterday. 

My answer was a frown, because no half-opened beer cans sprawled near my bed. Forgetting about it also appeared to be a stretch, thus, I pushed through this mild discomfort. 

A spilled cup of coffee stained my wooden table, one of today's many mysteries, as my blurry memories didn't contain the living room one bit. 

With a shrug, I buried the issue under the mountain of pressing matters. I was late for college. 

Well, not that big of a worry. 

Yet, the headache rung like a metal ball slamming against my brain.

When I opened my flat's door to grayish rays of light, scattering through a faraway window, a descending row of stairs filled my vision ahead. 

Without a warning, the world spun. 

A burst of heat began to fill my body, now soaked in sweat. In alternance, an icy cold froze me, then a hellish warmth, many times until I almost passed out. 

As my head cracked open from the inside, human-shaped hallucinations formed on the stairs, clogging my flipped foggy vision. After cooling down and wiping my forehead, they had disappeared. 

Was I sick? Definitely, although it irked me to admit it. 

'Elevator, for sure.'

It didn't work. I cursed inwardly, as it should've been. 

The stairs appeared one after the other like an endless pit. Due to my dizziness, stretching a minute into a complete journey, I limped with a slouched gait. 

Eventually, I pulled my bike, opened the complex's entrance, then slapped my cheek as a desperate wake-up gesture. It worked, somewhat. 

Despite pondering whether my condition was accident-inducing, basking in the, luckily, dim sunlight, black liquid rose to knee level, a muddy sludge that seemed to seep into my pores. 

I gazed down at my knees, hugged by a blue rugged fabric. Raising my right leg, the motion, though sluggish, was a conclusive success. 

A hallucination, yet I climbed on my bike regardless. Perhaps the reverbing headache had grown so big that it hindered my mental strength. 

'Whatever'

Describing my travel was pointless, as I forgot most of the scenery. By all luck, a parade of pale green trees and gray concrete.

The music, blasting thought my earbuds was low compared to the banging head pains, like a bell's muted ringing. 

That didn't matter, really. What did, though, was that I managed to survive.

'Survive', a rather strong word for the incoming torture. Listening to a college lecture, while being sick, was an ordeal few would attempt. 

The reason being; it was dumb. Quite so. 

I balanced over a thin line, pondering over two choices. 

On the one hand, an unnatural heat was spreading on my skin, the light reflecting over its glistering surface, like I'd ran a marathon. 

Drops of sweat dirtied my forehead, I cleaned them using the loose end of my shirt, now turned soggy. 

On the opposite side, now sitting on the last row of a spacious lecture room, bland and rugged, my will had gone too far for me to go home. 

For a good minute, I scavenged my bag, searching for my laptop. 

Despite opening a gray and flat rectangle, whose screen switched from black to a blinding light, the blow didn't manage to knock out my daze. 

Opposite, actually. I plunged deeper into this slump, one that shook my senses around and on themselves, until eventually turning numb. 

A loud silence, interrupted by hushed breaths. It suffocated my being. 

Then, I floated. Like my mind was dragged upwards into the celling, leaving behind an empty shell, sprawled on a wooden table. 

Time passed, an amount of no importance. 

"Are you okay?"

These words pulled me back, painting the pure black world in shades of gray. 

I gazed upward at the clock. An hour had disappeared. 

A downward gaze revealed a burly middle-aged man, shrunk to a pebble's size at this height. His voice carried a half-sincere, half-annoyed kind of tone. 

"You've been sweating like crazy. Don't come if you're sick."

Only then did I realize my moist skin, whose presence was enough to accentuate all of the previous symptoms. 

The clocklike headache, at first bearable, now spun my consciousness, shook it, emptied it blank, as I pressed both hands on the sides of my skull. 

It was pure pain. I craved something, though its origin stayed foreign. Hidden deep within my mind, allegedly.

Standing up in an unbalanced motion, sounds and smells shut down, muted, buried under the discomfort, twisting my nerves on themselves.

I scanned the room, painted with boring shades of gray, as the taste of metal entered my mouth. 

Then, like an animal instinct, a sudden burst of lucidity, I ran towards the door downstairs. 

Many gazes fell on me, hinted with worry, fear or indifference. Bothering with them was a luxury. 

At the room's exit, straight on the right, a narrow corridor extended towards a dead end for a distance; twenty meters or so, about that range.

I entered the bathroom, a gap somewhere in the path. In a pale white, the wall's painting blinded me for a second. 

A mirror reflected my damp and contorted face. Hushed breathes were mute to me, only the sensation of an army of crawling bugs on my skin lingered. 

There was something that I'd missed or forgotten. The meaning behind this pain, whose nature cold water couldn't wash away. Now, my face looked soaked, not in sweat, but rather in the icy liquid. 

On the edges of my ears, a deafening high pitch scream made me shiver for an instant. Turning my gaze to the left, a hallucination peered at me. 

It was a girl in her twenties, blessed by dainty features. Be it her thin nose, sapphire eyes or sculpted eyebrows, they worked together to form a beautiful entity. 

Yet, she didn't exist. That, I was sure of. 

With a cool looking posture, her back against a peeled gray wall, the cropped black shirt she wore let out a tiny bit of her pale skin. 

A dreamy voice, almost a lullaby, intrigued me.

"Are you lacking something?"

I fell on my knees, numb to the creak of bone colliding with the ground. 

My body felt heavy like a black hole, yet light as a feather. 

It felt as though a cog had been removed from my brain. A unique word conveyed my thoughts, lucid for a moment.

"Yes." 

Like a fairy, the girl smiled, a perfect and ethereal kind of grin. Despite the everlasting blur of my mind, I knew the answer to her question. 

Then, nothing existed anymore. All of my senses withered away, hid deep in a corner of my soul. 

I could tell my conscience somewhere in this tangled mess; although my actions were automatic, like pulled by a hidden and all-knowing will. 

Reality broke, distorted, before eventually reforming in a slow process.

The first sensation I recovered was heat, as my body acted like a scorching sun on my organs.

In second came the feeling of touch. Round and foggy drops of sweat crawled across my skin, each and every inch of it. 

A smell of fresh paint filled my nostrils, together with hints of metal and rust, which wasn't of much use in discerning my environment. 

I opened my eyes, or rather, forced them open. For a few seconds, the gray light blinded my retina, until the fragmented image resumed its form.

Ahead of me, almost stroking my face, was my flat's door. A worn-out wood covered by a fresh coat of brown paint. Fresh, but dry, nonetheless.

How I ended up here was meaningless. Maybe my mind was tired enough to nudge this concern away. 

I wanted to sleep. I was sick, terribly so. If not, then my behavior would've landed me a place in a mental hospital. 

With a slow gesture, I pulled my hand over to the round handle. One twist, that was what I needed.

However, it never happened. A glimpse of another door entered my vision, whose bright red paintjob caught my interest.

Well, that's quite a lie. I wanted a reasonable explanation for my curiosity; thus, the color came to mind. In truth, though, I never understood it. 

In slow, wavering steps, my position changed a few feet to the right. I stared at a door; a different, scarlet one. 

A feeling brew in my mind, an intuition that the poison and antidote responsible for my sickness belonged in the other side of this red limit.

I arced my arm backwards, slammed my fist against the wood. Once, twice; each resulting in an echoing loud noise.

'It'll break at some point.'

Another sound broke the silence, this time, a meek creak. The door opened and left a crack, from which a half of a body and fluttering black hair seeped through. 

The other half emerged, a girl's. A black cropped shirt hugged her upper body, while white short covered her thighs. 

A couple of meters behind her, sitting legs crossed on a sofa, was another girl, a double, perhaps a twin. 

She had an opposite getup as her sister, which, piling up on top of my throbbing headache, confused me like nothing else would.

I glanced back and forth between the two, until the front sister parted her lips to a sweet voice. 

"Mae, he's come back." 

The girl had a teasing tone, bordering on mockery, while her face raised a grin. Across my memories, one stood out to me. 

The hallucination. That was her, right? Or was I going crazy?

While I wanted to speak, my brain was working overdrive to keep me awake; thus, nothing slid off my tongue. 

"Hmmm…" The act of peering at my face seemed to be a delight for the girl, who let out a satisfactory moan. Her lips twitched erratically, as thoughts she would begin laughing any time. 

"Who are you?" I pieced together a coherent sentence. 

For an answer, I got a gesture; the sofa girl walked up next to her sister, flashing the same dainty smile. 

Their pale blue pair of eyes were bewitching. I lost myself.

One of the girls hugged my neck, rested her head on my shoulder, before breathing in my ear a faint whisper. 

"The ones that will make you happy."

I heard the door close and fell for the pleasure a second time.