Dreams

The noise pierced my ears, almost screaming and I awoke with a start. Just the alarm clock.

“Come on Cole!” I said to myself. “Dad will be back in two weeks, that’s the holidays.”

My head pounded from fatigue, I had slept for just over an hour.

Then, everything changed after The Glow, I trudged to the bathroom, blissfully unaware of my day ahead. My pale blue eyes were hardly visible under my tired lids, and my brown hair was squashed into a shape that a month’s ration of gel couldn’t fix. Dad always said to look my best, even if no one else cared anymore. No one could afford to, they were only interested in finding food for the table.

Dad left for The Cage the week before, part of the big push as he called it. Dad was part of the resistance, a rebel force against the Cleansers.
The Cage is their base, in a secret location. Last year, to this day, a bright light appeared in the sky, it was the moon. Except it was glowing. Not shining, but glowing with a pale blue light. It was beautiful, I thought it was some sort of extravagant advertising campaign, but Dad saw sense. He rushed to the phone, called us all inside. Seconds later, Dad’s voice was on TV:

“Go inside, everyone!” he had ordered. “This isn’t a trick, go inside now, don’t look at the moon, whatever you do, don’t look at it.”
Not everyone was watching the TV at that very moment, I’m not sure how Dad managed to broadcast that message onto all channel, but that doesn’t matter. This was the first attack of the Cleansers. Our neighbour, Dorian, was laughing her head off, calling my Dad crazy. She wasn’t the only one, but she’s the one I remember. They all walked outside and began to stare at the moon.

My Dad began to shout, warning them to go inside, but they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t seem to hear him. So I joined in. Dorian turned to look at me sharply, her eyes glowing the same colour as the moon. And she turned to dust before my eyes. That day was The Glow.

We don’t know what they want. The Prime Minster says that the Cleansers are terrorists, but that’s just to comfort people. That is how bad it is, that calling them terrorists is a comfort. They aren’t from Earth, from somewhere else and they believe themselves to be a superior race. Dad thinks they want Earth, a planet where they can live, but they don’t want to coexist with ‘inferior’ beings. We know hardly anything about them.

The only reason we call them the Cleansers is because after The Glow, words were written in the ashes: you have been cleansed. It was terrifying, but Earth wasn’t just going to sit there, we fought back. That’s were my Dad is, planning nuclear strikes and air assaults, but the problem is, it’s almost impossible to find them.

It’s a school day, meaning a whole day of boredom. So many people died during The Glow, that there aren’t enough farmers to grow enough food. Dad thinks that there are about 3 billion humans left, that’s all. Some countries are completely uninhabited. Anyway, school isn’t about learning facts anymore. No one cares about History, Maths, just survival. We learn to shape the future, not to dwell in the past. That’s what I’m told anyway. They teach us how to grow our own food, build shelters and what to do when something unusual happens. Any unusual event is regarded as a possible attack. For example, when the fire alarm went off, we weren’t allowed to leave the school building; the Cleansers could be waiting outside.

School is like a prison, literally. All structures that hold over a hundred people were demolished after The Glow and concrete, sturdy, ugly buildings were created. They were built to withstand anything. Glass was replaced with high strength transparent plastics, with metal bars between the two layers of plastic. Life was depressing enough as it was. I was about to go into school, but my best mate, Quest, stopped me.

“You don’t want to go in there,” he said gravely, I had never seen him so serious.

“I can’t bunk again, Mr Stevens will kill me.” My grades at school weren’t bad; it was the behaviour report that sucked. Accidentally throw a ball at your head teacher’s head once and you’re damned for life.

“I don’t mean bunk, something weird is going on,” I don’t think he realised that the more he tried to stop me, the more I wanted to go in!

“What does weird mean? Mrs Snow has grown an extra nose, is it weirder than that?

“There is a trial in the form room, Angel is putting people on trial. I saw it from the inside, I wasn’t going to get mixed up in her crazy stuff.”

Angel was the queen of Cognito High, her word was the law. Her family were extremely religious, they believed The Glow was the work of God, punishing those who had done wrong and were possessed by the devil. Angel was religious in some ways, not in others. There was no chance her family could get her to become a nun like her sister. The parish priest had to intervene, calling her family insensitive and blasphemous, but it just added fuel to the fire. No one went against Angel.

One girl called Cyra, decided that someone should stand up to Angel, so she organised a group of people to gate crash Angel’s birthday party. They found her stabbed in an alleyway two days later. She lived, but the convenient head injuries she sustained prevented her from being able to identify the attackers. Angel said it was the work of God to punish her, I don’t remember the football team becoming Gods.

It wasn’t like Quest to chicken out of a potential fight. I stormed towards the form room, where Angel sat on a large chair, her oafish, muscly boyfriend Tarrison by her side. When I tried to enter, two football players whose names I didn’t know, and didn’t care to find out, barred my way.

“Cole and Quest,” she sang in her sickly sweet voice. She waved the football players away. “They’re not clean, but they are safe”

The football players stepped aside, something wasn’t right. Her last comment was confusing, what did that mean? My heartbeat quickened, I could feel danger all around me, but I didn’t know where it was coming from. Quest look equally distressed. I went to turn around and leave, but the football players moved back into position.

“Don’t go, or you will miss the main event. Here she comes now!” chided Angel.

Zandra was led to the centre of the room. I didn’t speak to her much, but she was really funny and kind. Her fell in long, black curls over her face, I had never seen her with it pinned back. I went to grab her, to pull her away, but the football players pushed me back.

School sucked, but this was weird.

“Is it true that your father is a member of the rebels?” Angel shouted, grabbing Zandra by the hair.

“No, he’s a mechanic!” she screamed. “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“I had a dream last night,” Angel said as she walked around the room. “About how the rebels were actually working with the devil. The dream told me that someone in this school was connected to them, and your Dad hasn’t been seen for weeks.”

“He is on a business trip, I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zandra gasped, she was so scared she was hyperventilating.

“TELL ME!” Angel screamed. Then I saw it, for just a split second, her eyes shone. Not in a romantic way, but a pale blue colour, just like The Glow. This wasn’t Angel. This wasn’t human.

Then I did a really, really stupid thing. I grabbed a pair of scissors and drove them into her chest. The whole room began to scream, as Angel began to radiate blue light. She was glowing. I covered my eyes; I saw piles of ash begin to form on the floor. The creature began to sweep across the room, screaming inaudible words, or just noises. I could feel it getting closer to me, I waved the scissors in front of me, but it wasn’t going to fall for that again. It grabbed me by the neck, lifted me off the ground.

“It’s you.” It said, released me, and disappeared.