Burn.

There was a white light that rang from one ear to the other, and this high pitched buzzing I could see through this haze that blurred my vision. My teeth ground together and I felt heavy, like I was falling to the ground from an impossible height; wind rushed all around me and a chill cursed my spine like ice cubes after hot coals.

Rushing, rushing, rushing. There was this automatic rush that crawled underneath my skin and buried its claws in my organs. My stomach felt it first, that thick knot that was forcefully pulled at on either end. Both my hands grasped out in the air and I felt fists forming in the nothingness that surrounded me.

My throat was raw. It was always raw.

There was crying, tears that cascaded down cheeks that weren’t mine and mascara that washed off on clean, white sheets I had never owned. I could see it, feel that passion of hate and depression that poured from the core of her.

It was always the same.

I would first feel the initial blinding light surrounding me, then the ice on my back, then the rush that gusted around me like a hurricane. I’d never forget those feelings, in the order in which the came - but even more so, I would never stop being caught off-guard by their appearances. I never learned not to fall asleep. I never learned not to dream. I never learned not to stare off into emptiness.

I kept hearing the words: “She’s gone, she’s gone.” And then choking sobs that raked through her chest and her sobs that squeaked out her mouth. The gasping that shook her chest and the pillow she pressed over her head to muffled her crying from her younger sister’s bedroom that was just down the hall.

It was like this every time. The feelings I felt when I dreamed were always hers, never my own. There was never a moment I had just to myself unless I stayed awake.

I felt this undying sadness rake throughout her chest, and, when my eyes shot open, it was gone. My face was red and beads of sweat dripped along my hairline. My breathing came in short gasps and my throat was so ragged and raw, and I could feel the cuts in it that the screaming had sliced open.

The girl that I had been having visions of since I was thirteen was familiar to me. The people in her life were like characters in a television series that never ended, each with their own personalities, flaws, and aspirations.

She was the star, but she didn’t know it. At least, I don’t think she did.

The roof of my bedroom was low and, since I was so tall, I had to duck a little when I got up from my bed. The house we lived in was quaint but I didn’t mind. We had what we needed - a bedroom for me and a bedroom for Mom and Pop. Since the house was small and didn't have much space, I stayed upstairs in the attic; the ladder dropped down and there was a mark on the hardwood floor beneath the attic door where its metal ridges hit the wood each night when it was time for bed.

I stood up, my back aching as though I’d just gone through some sort of exorcism, and leaned forward as I made my way toward the attic door. The watch on my wrist read six-forty on the dot, meaning it was time to get up and get ready for school. On my way out of the attic, I picked up a t-shirt from my pile of clean, folded ones Mom had put there for me. Then I left.

My footsteps were loud and I felt like the walking dead as I entered the bathroom. I pulled back the shower curtain and felt myself choking on what might have been tears. But I wouldn’t let them fall. It wasn’t my life.

The shower was warm. When I got out, it was only slightly brisk. Everything that happened outside the visions of that girl.

I knew more about her than I did myself, really. Her name was Julia, she was sixteen and had the warmest heart; I remember in the winter, when it was cold outside, I would often stare off into the snow banks as I walked home and her thoughts would greet me. And the contact of just her soul and mine was enough to keep me from freezing on the long walk home from the bus stop. Julia was a singer and had this voice that made that white light that blinded me sear my pupils. And I didn’t mind. She’d been in love. Her mother was her best friend and her father was distant toward her, while her younger sister was annoying at best. They all had lives they led, but the only one I knew note-for-note was Julia’s.

That morning before school, I’d dreamt her. There was an accident and her mother was killed.

The same holes that plagued her heart plagued mine. It was like I couldn’t breathe. As I walked to the bus stop and waited, it was like smoke filled my lungs and I wanted to cough. I had to get it out of me or else I’d suffocate. Those thoughts plagued everything I knew, and before I could tell what time it was, the bus had pulled up in front of the school and I was there.

My feet wouldn’t move from the places they were in, and I couldn’t leave the bus. Eventually I had to forcibly take my legs and lift them from their weighted positions suctioned to the floor and heave myself down the aisle.

I didn’t know enough. There wasn’t enough information yet and I didn’t know what had happened to her mother yet. All I knew was the tears and the sobbing and the yelling I’d done since that light had shot through my dreams.

I was restless without reason or rhyme and I thought back to the last vision I had. Julia shook from her sobbing.

The anxiety was killing me.