KEEPING SECRETS {18+}

“No! Stop!” I screamed bashing on the glass wall in front of me, knowing it wasn’t going to make a single difference to the outcome.

My fists were red and bruising from beating at it for so long, and my throat was dry and hoarse but I had to keep trying.

My tears were warm and constant over my cheeks, my heart breaking, hysteria bubbling away in my stomach as I attacked the wall again with more desperate screams escaping my lips.

Beyond the glass wall, where my voice could never reach was the same terrifying creature in a dark hood who I had been seeing murder people night after night, for the last week.

I had never seen enough of his face to know who it was, only that whoever I was being haunted by, was not human and that nothing I did would stop it from killing.

The hooded creature leaned over his next victim and sucked the life out of him with a wide mouth and a glowing blue light coming from it.

My screams fell on the glass, my bruised hands changing nothing. Again. The creature didn't stop.

More tears streamed, a frustrated cry escaping me as the glowing light connected the hooded murderer to the large ginger-haired man beneath him, and I knew I was almost out of time.

The blue light only stayed while the hooded thing had his unbelievably large mouth open wide and the victim was still breathing, then it went dark again and I would wake up, sweating, aching, disorientated with the haunting memories stuck in my head.

I shivered, hating this nightly cycle so damn much. I was freezing, my feet buried in thick snow, my pajamas soaked from the light flakes that fell around me in the isolated darkness behind the glass.

I could smell pine like I was back at home, in the human realm near the forests surrounding my old shit-hole of a house but I would still take it over seeing this happen every night.

I had never been able to save the victim before, and the outcome was always the same, but every night I tried, bashing and screaming, hoping that it would be different because it felt too real.

I wouldn’t have believed it was real a week ago. But now I knew the truth. I knew that extraordinary things with extraordinary powers existed.

That had taken the whole week to get used to but I couldn't deny it anymore. I had been in denial at first but being dragged out of my bed, waking up at the gates of Imperium Academy in the Velatem realm had changed my mind real fast.

And ever since I had learned the truth on the worst eighteenth birthday in history, I had been having these nightmares that I knew were real. Somewhere out there, this creature was killing these victims. I just didn't understand why I had to witness it if I couldn't stop it.

The creature was still soul-sucking and I looked around me for some kind of weapon or object I could use on the glass, but there was just more empty, black space with a wall in front of me that never ended and was too solid to get through.

I jumped into it, throwing my shoulder into the glass, wincing as pain exploded in my bones. I grunted and kept bashing, crying as the blue waves that transferred the victim’s life to the hooded figure started lessening.

I bashed and bashed until blood splattered against the screen. I cried out, my knuckles split.

“Stop it! Please! Let him go!” I screamed as loud as my voice could but neither of the beings on the other side of the wall showed any sign of hearing me, not even the victim who was now an unnatural shade of white, his life slowly draining away, almost gone.

When I first started getting the nightmares, I had brushed it off as just that, a nightmare. I had believed my bruised fists in the mornings had been the result of some epic sleepwalking.

That idea was crushed when three days after they started, the newspapers started releasing articles throughout the supernatural realm, Velatem, that reported the deaths of every victim I had seen die in my nightmares.

I didn’t want to wake up tomorrow to another article, another picture of the victim I had seen die. I was already the new girl at Imperium Academy which made me enough of a freak since nobody had ever come from the human realm before.

I didn’t want to be even more of a freak by telling them I also saw the people in the articles die. So, I kept my secrets and every night battled the glass wall, trying to save the new victim behind it, but just like this one, I never could.

The blue waves of light disintegrated, the large man’s hair turned from ginger to white, his eyes rolling back in his head as his body went limp against the bar he had been thrown onto.

Bottles of alcohol were smashed everywhere, tables overturned, chairs broken from the struggle the man had put up against the hooded assailant, but the creature was always more powerful.

I leaned against the glass wall, my bloody palm pressing against it, my eyes dripping tears as I breathed heavily, swallowing hard against the sob lodged in my throat.

I bit my lip, wiping my tears away with my pajama top sleeve, ready to be pulled from the nightmare.

I looked back up to the glass, waiting to be sucked back into reality but instead of the darkness that usually confronted me, I met two large, red, glowing eyes.

I screamed, fear exploding through me so fast I couldn’t contain it. My blood-curdling scream ripped through the darkness and I clenched my eyes shut, hoping the wall would still be just as strong against the red eyes behind it. I was still screaming when my body started shaking violently.

“Kyla. Kyla. Wake up. It’s just a nightmare.” A high voice filtered through the noise of my scream and my eyes flung open to see wide green eyes marred with a furrowed brow staring down at me.

I stopped screaming and let out a breath, my eyes darting around my dorm room to make sure I was really out of the darkness. My body shook, sweat beading over my skin as drops of blood fell from my nose onto my bruised, bloody knuckles. My roommate Sky looked down at my fists and grabbed them.

“Jesus Kyla, how did you get these? What happened? Did someone try to pick on you again? Do you want me to put something in their head that makes them gag all day? I can, I will. Who was it?” Sky rambled as usual; her bright red hair piled high in a mess of tight curls on her head.

I shook my head and sat up, shuffling back to lean against my headboard, “Nobody did this. Don’t worry, I don’t need an Avenger. Just a decent night’s sleep.”

Sky huffed and leaned back, “Well, what’s with the blood and bruises every morning then? Not to mention the fact that I can get into everyone else’s mind in this entire school, except yours.” Sky rubbed my shoulder, handing me a tissue from the bedside table, “Look, I know you say it’s nothing, but people are starting to notice Kyla. They hear the screams at night, they know your scent is different and they can sense the power that falls off you and yet you haven’t been able to demonstrate even one."

These were all things I knew but Sky wasn't done, "Every test done makes you seem human and you came from the human realm at eighteen rather than getting your powers at thirteen like everyone else. It’s making people nervous. You’re making people nervous and when our kind get nervous, we attack.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees, holding the tissue to my nose as my head pounded. Sky had warned me before. She was the only one who had bothered to say what everyone was thinking, to my face. It helped that she knew what everyone was thinking.

“I know, I can feel it. But I don’t know what to tell people. I was dragged here. I didn't ask to come here. Apparently, that means I am meant to be here."

"But you don't have any powers," Sky pointed out. That she knew of. I wasn't sure telling her about my dreams was what she meant. It wasn't exactly a power. Not when I had seen all kinds of power come out of the students at Imperium.

"I just don’t have the kind of powers that everyone here has. How am I meant to know why? I’ve spent my whole life believing I am a human girl from the human realm. I woke up a week ago on the doorstep of a supernatural academy in a realm filled with every lore, legend, and myth I’ve ever read about and suddenly I’m meant to be some kind of sorceress like all of you? I just…” I paused my rant, deciding how to compile my emotions into words but there were so many.

I knew I was going to see another article today, I knew they were going to find a body any minute and I knew that the next night would be exactly the same.

The only thing that ever changed was the victim, “I get that you love your powers, and being able to get into someone's mind must be awesome, but I can’t do that. I don’t know why I woke up here. I don’t have a primary or secondary power like all of you from your parents and I had no idea this kind of life existed outside mine. Now everything has changed, and I guess I’m still adjusting.”

Sky nodded and pulled me into a hug. She was a hugger. She'd been the only one to hug me since I had arrived. To the others, I was too different. I knew it, they knew it. Sky just didn't care.

“If you’re here, it’s because the realm needed you here. Plus, everyone here can sense the power you have, you just have to learn how to access it,” Sky grinned, always the optimist.

I didn’t have the same hope. “Sure. And how do I do that?”

Sky mocked being offended with a hand to her ample chest and a dropped jaw. “With my help of course. So,” She said sitting back on the bed and folding her legs, “What did you do a week ago in your realm that you didn’t mean to do? Did you set someone on fire? Did you freeze someone? Go invisible?” Sky guessed but I shook my head to each one.

A week ago, I’d had my first nightmare. It had been the only one that was different from the rest. The figure in that one had been taller, wearing a long red cloak. His pale chest had been bare, and the cowl had hidden his face.

I shuddered at the memory- he had felt different too. In that dream, the figure had been walking through snow and the electrified feeling of power had rolled through my body so fast it had sunk in my stomach.

Whatever that thing was, it had been evil, and hostile, and his entire form oozed hatred and greed. I shivered and bit my lip. I wanted to tell Sky everything but I wasn’t sure what it was going to mean.

Sky was the only one who had openly spoken to me and not cared that I was the new human girl, I didn’t want to lose that.

I’d never had a close friend. I hadn’t been that girl in the human realm. I had always been the quiet, shy girl who blushed and mumbled.

Now I had to be more than that and it was hard. Being at a new school where no one knew me, no one knew that my parents had been murdered during a break-in.

I wasn’t the sad orphan that nobody knew what to say around, I wasn’t the one who lived with the town drunk, also known as my Uncle.

No, in Imperium Academy I had gotten rid of all those whispers and pity just to replace it with confusion and contempt. But never from Sky.

A warmth spread in my chest as I looked at Sky. She'd never given me a reason not to, which meant I had to trust her. It made my heart race and my chest tight but I felt right about it so I knew I was making the right decision.

“I…” I started then took a deep breath as the words got stuck in my throat, “I see people die,” I whispered, looking down at my fingers, and holding the tissue to my nose with my other hand.

Shadows danced through the room thanks to the moon bleeding in through the curtains and even they seemed to stop their movements as Sky tensed and her eyes grew wide on her heart-shaped face.

“What? Like you’ve seen someone die? That’s not really a power, Kyla. That’s just traumatic,” Sky laughed half-heartedly looking at me for clarification, but I couldn’t give it in the way Sky was obviously hoping.

“No, Sky, that's not what I mean. I see people die before it happens. In my nightmares.”