I’m currently regretting about 99% of the decisions that I have made in my life so far. Not because I learned from my mistakes or anything, it more so had to do with the fact that I am now about to get beaten up in an alley by a bunch of guys that look like they really shouldn’t still be in highschool.

I’m panting as I run as fast as I can down the corridor and past all the lockers that are lined up against the wall. Why the hell does this school have to be freaking built on a hill? What kind of idiot sees a mountain and decides that it’s the perfect place to build a place of learning on.

While still sprinting and puffing air, I chance a look behind me. Great, they’re still on my tail.

Oh, I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Cay Flanner, and I am about to get my legs broken by two oversized gorillas. I guess you could call my looks average, I had dark skin and wore my hair in a loose afro style, and my body wasn’t something to write home about. All in all, I guess you could say that I was just an ordinary highschool student that you could find anywhere.

Now you might be wondering why an ordinary guy like me has been caught up in something as dramatic as being chased by two bullies who would probably look more at home in one of those old 80’s films. That would be because I sort of stopped them from beating someone else up.

I see a turn coming up into the cafeteria and put a bit more speed into my legs as I dash through the already open doors, hoping to get lost in the crowd and to escape my strangely dedicated pursuers. I step through the doors and immediately burst through into one of the groups of people talking. I shimmy around them until I’m positioned so that anyone approaching from the door would not be able to see me.

Is it just me or was I actually a genius for coming up with this? Not to toot my own horn but I actually consider myself the foremost expert in the art of bully escaping in this district. If there were a prize for it, I’d be sure to receive it every year.

A sudden shout wrenches me from my musings.

“HAS ANYONE SEEN FLANNER?”. Damn this guy was really loud. He seriously had no consideration for other students. That screaming voice just now was John Sanders, and one thing you need to know about John Sanders is that he’s a very loud guy. Oh and also super violent. He was Caucasian and had brown hair. And his looks were everything I wasn’t. He was tall, good looking, and confident. Sanders knew that, and he knew that the girls knew that, which is why to no one’s surprise he was one of the most popular guys in school.

Both among guys and girls. I honestly have no idea why but it’s probably because he isn’t trying to cave their heads in.

And flanking Sanders was his best friend since 6th grade Malcolm Stone, this guy was pretty much Sanders’ second in command. By the way, the reason I know that is because we’ve gone to the same school for the past five years, not because I’m some sort of stalker. He was the guy that did what Sanders didn’t want to do. He was like the counterpart of Sanders. He was good looking, dark skinned and had a shaved head. His eyes were intense as if he was about to laser beam you. He was also tall and muscular. And the girls loved him as well.

They were both very different to little ol’ Cay, I was average height and standing next to these behemoths seemed like I was less.

“Hey Flanner, show yourself.” This time it was Stone that called out my name. The difference between Sanders and Stone is that while the former was more of a stereotypical loud and angry guy, Stone was a psychopath. His tone was always calm and formal even when he was breaking your arms.

“Hey Flanner, why are you wasting time like this? You know that you can’t escape” Stone said with a voice that spoke as if he already knew that my fate was to get punched today.

“Yeah Flanner, just accept it, you can’t run you bastard.” And there was Sanders. I was still shimmying behind a couple of people that were surprisingly in my class that I never bothered to learn the names of. There were three guys and two girls in their group, and when they head the dynamic duo call my name, they looked directly at me.

I looked at them in desperation. “Come on guys are you really gonna rat me out?” I whispered with beads of sweat dripping down my forehead. Their unamused eyes told me the answer.“Goddammit,” I hissed. They immediately split so that I was completely visible to everyone in the cafeteria. And suffice to say that everyone included Sanders and Stone.

“Thanks a lot, you guys, now I definitely don’t feel guilty that I never bothered to remember your names” those were my parting words as I dashed forward into another full sprint to the exit door of the cafeteria that was thankfully not blocked for once. If I could just get through that door and to the stairs that lead to the gates, then I would be free.

My feet pounding against the shining linoleum, I ran with all my heart. I was around ten or so meters away from those blue doors that lead to heaven when I felt something make contact with my shoes.

It was a foot. Some jerk had just tripped me. Just before my victorious escape I collapsed and slid forward a bit on the cafeteria floor. Was this bluish colour new or was that just the brain damage? As I woozily put my hand down on the floor to try and stand up, I felt two horrifying shadows fall upon me.

I turned my head and sighed.

That had hurt a lot. I was currently walking down the street that leads to my house. Well maybe saying walking was a bit of an exaggeration, it was more hobbling and moaning like either an old person or a zombie. The Double S duo had surely not gone light on me today. I was now the proud recipient of one black eye and numerous bruises that highlighted whole sections of my body.

I sighed as I kicked a can that had been littered on the pavement. I kept walking forward until I felt sort of uncomfortable and immediately went back to grab the can. Since I was near it I might as well just put into a rubbish bin. I couldn’t get the picture of dad looking at me disappointed.

Still hobbling only now with rubbish in my hand, I made it to my home. If you could even call it that, it was more like a hovel. It had two bedrooms one for my dad and one for me, and it was absolutely tiny. It’s outside showed bricks that may have once been red and colourful but were now brown and gloomy. The corrugated iron on the tin of the roof was similarly in bad shape and made a ton of noise whenever it rained. Let me tell you that trying to sleep in the middle of a thunderstorm is not fun. The path leading to the front door was full of gravel that somehow always got stuck in your shoes.

I pulled out my keys from my pocket and put them into the lock on the door. Dad wasn’t here yet, so I had some free time to goof around a bit. Well as much as I could handle being in constant pain while doing so. I threw my bag into its designated corner in the corridor.

I immediately went to the kitchen and got a bag of peas that were in the freezer. I once more walked into my room holding the frozen goodness directly against my eye.

I slumped down to the chair in front of the computer. Since it’s basically metal with a thin piece of leather on top, it’s not all that comfortable.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

And so I get to reach the best part of my day.

Reading about the sightings of all of the new hallucinations.

Recently there have been many sightings of impossible things happening around the world. A man getting electrocuted but not dying in America. A woman disappearing from her prison cell in China. And much more happening at an extremely fast rate. Nothing that interesting was happening in good old New Zealand. No hallucinations had occurred here yet, but I knew that it was only a matter of time. And I was going to be the one to find it.

Plenty of groups and individuals were promising rewards of up to ten thousand dollars if someone managed to capture a hallucination. Now by hallucinations I don’t mean the ones where they’re only visible to one person as a result of taking some drugs. Apparently with these incidents multiple people have been on record saying that they each saw the same thing. One guy that was floating after trying to jump off a building, another that recovered almost instantly from a bullet wound.

I looked through the various posts on different news sites that talked about even more of these aberrations occurring.

I was scrolling so fast that I was almost scared that my computer mouse would break. Something interesting was happening around the world right now, and I wanted to know more. As I kept reading through, time passed until I heard the sound of a door opening and then closing. Dad must have come home. I guess now is a good enough time as any to get started on helping him cook dinner.

It had always been me and my dad by ourselves. My mom had died due to childbirth, and my dad had never had the heart to remarry or even date after that. He still tried his best to raise me, and in my biased opinion, I’d say that he did a pretty good job of that.

I stepped into the kitchen and see that dad has already put down the ingredients for dinner today on the kitchen counter. I look directly at him as he turns his face to me. He shares a lot of my features obviously as he is, in fact, my father. He had the same dark skin but had no hair on the top of his head. And his face was weathered and seemed aged beyond the forties that he was supposed to be. I guess that was due to him being fired from his job that he had been at for the past twenty years. For the past two years, he had been trying to get a new job, but apparently, managers don’t want to give positions to older people.

He smiles at me as he notices me walk into the room.

“Hey, Cay,” he says with a twinkle in his eyes. For some reason, he really loves that line. He’s been saying it since before I could remember. He motions at me to come in and get started on helping him out, which I do. However, that twinkle fades as soon as he notices that my face. Oh, right I was injured. Before he can ask me what happened I give him a look that says I don’t really want to talk about. So he just motions me to come and get started on helping him out, which I do. He knows that I’ll just clam up if he tries to get it out of me.

We split up our work evenly and begin working. My dad didn’t know that I was getting into altercations with Sanders and Stone. It had only become that bad during the past year. Before that they mainly ignored me, and I avoided them. However recently Sanders dad got promoted at some company and became an even bigger donator to the school. The reason I know that is because Sanders literally could not shut up about it. I shake my head to clear my thoughts — time to focus on cooking. I didn’t want to burden my dad anymore, so I tried to avoid telling him the truth. I just knew that if he found out who did it he’d try and get them punished and we so did not have the money for that.

My dad and I have been cooking together for the past five or so years, so pretty much since I was eleven. I guess at first it was just to teach me how to cook, but now I’m a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, so we just chill out together. This is like our bonding time. We usually chat while cooking.

I glance over at dad while he’s getting the water in the pot to boil.

“Unlucky again?” I question him as he stares at the pot with an inscrutable expression on his face. He smiles while still watching the pot,” No, not unlucky. I just need to put in a bit more effort after all”. That was how he always was. Ever since I could remember he always prided himself on trying to be his best. When others would get angry, he wouldn’t and when others would get scared he wouldn’t. I didn’t know exactly why he was like this, but he must have been one of the best people on this planet. If there were one person that I would say exemplified the goodness of humanity, it would be him.

He suddenly speaks up surprising me a bit. “Who’d you help this time,” he says. I turn to face him and see his brown eyes staring directly into my own. “What on earth are you talking about,” I say while averting my eyes. His eyes are smiling while looking at me.

“I know you, Cay, I know that you’re not the type of person to get into fights for the fun of it” he’s looking at me with a kind and also somewhat amused gaze. I could tell that it was already time to give up the goose.

“It was this guy in my class” I admitted. He had been cornered by Sanders near the dumpsters at the side of the school. So since I didn’t want to have to see some random guy get beaten up, I threw a clump of dirt that I had scooped off of the ground at him.

I tell my dad, and he starts chuckling. He seems really happy about what he’s just heard. He always gets this way when he hears about one of my half baked rescue attempts. And he always says the same thing after. “You did the right thing.” It’s like it was his mantra or something.

He looks at me while still chuckling, “You seriously threw dirt at them?”, I looked away somewhat embarrassed, “Hey it’s not like there was anything else there.” It was true, the only other things near me were rocks, and I was just trying to scare them not kill them.

Dad, all of a sudden, grabs my shoulders and spins me so that I’m face to face with him. His face is stern. “Don’t be embarrassed about what you do when saving others” he looks at me with his eyes almost burning into my soul,” Because, heroes always help.” He then releases my shoulder and pats my back. “You can relax for a bit today. Let your injuries heal up”. He waves me off so that I can go rest in my room. Which I honestly think is a bit too much, but the more time I get to research the recent mass hallucinations the better.

I’m back to sitting in front of my computer while getting the latest info on what’s been happening around the world when it happens. It starts with my fingers tingling and then spreads to my whole body. I guess this is how a phone feels when it’s being charged.

I suddenly feel something jolt my entire body. It’s almost as if I’ve been struck by a lightning bolt. My vision blurs, and as I try to stand up, I immediately lose my footing. Luckily I collapse onto my bed and not the hard wooden floor. As I lay on the bed, my heart starts pumping insanely fast. Sweat starts pouring from my skin, so much of it that I feel like I’ve just emerged from a pool. My heartbeat is still speeding up. It so fast now. It won’t stop. The sound of the beats sounds loud in my ears. I can barely feel anything other than my chest throbbing. Was this a heart attack? The thought runs through my mind terrifying me. Until suddenly the sound stops.

And then Nothing.

I feel nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing. Nothing is all that exists. Yet somehow I am aware of this nothingness. This ‘Nothing’ is eternal yet imaginary.  I slowly start to feel again. I gain awareness of my body, but the Nothing is still there. My body is alone in this void. What’s happening? Did I die? What the hell is going on? These are the questions I ask myself as time passes.

It feels like I’ve been suspended here for hours. That’s when I see it. A white star in the distance. Wait it looks like it’s coming closer. The star shoots forward at ridiculous speed, leaving a white tail behind it. Wait a minute; why is it coming this way? Oh god, am I gonna die in a collision with a star? I don’t even have my license yet. The star is coming closer and closer, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping. I can feel its heat as it gets closer. It’s becoming uncomfortably warm. Wait now it’s hot. And now it feels like I’m being boiled alive. Even though I can’t bear the pain I can’t scream, no sound exists in this place just the heat and light. And then with a flash of pain and light, the star reaches me. It penetrated my chest consumes me from the inside out.

I gasp and sit upright on my bed. My eyes are wide and feel painful. Had that been just a dream? Or should I call it a nightmare? My clothes are soaked and so is my hair. I slowly calm myself by taking deep breaths. When I feel sufficiently calm enough, I think back a bit on what had just happened. Calm down, Cay. It was just a nightmare. A weird, surreal and kind of terrifying nightmare. Repeating those words in my mind over and over I slowly feel as if I’ve returned to normal. I look at my t-shirt and see that it is absolutely soaked in sweat. Gross, I’m gonna need to take a shower now.

I take my feet of the bed and place them on the cold hard wooden floor.

Stretching a bit while standing up I reach towards the doorknob, and as I twist it, it gives no resistance. Huh? Normally it takes a bit of strength to move it. I inspect the handle and what I see is honestly ridiculous. The metal knob was crushed. I flinch and take a couple of steps away from the door. What the hell was that? I keep going backward until I almost trip on my bed. I grab the bed frame to steady myself, but I feel my hand almost mold the metal like play dough. Sweat still streaming down my face I turn to look at the metal frame of my bed. Just like the door knob, it was crushed and twisted. I raise my shaking hands and look at them and then at my bed frame.

“Is this a hallucination?