When We Were Still Human by Vaughn Foster (best ereader for textbooks .txt) 📕

return seconds later. Blurred. Blurred and with everything spinning.

After the fourth blackout, Avia felt like the floor was about to give out. She staggered to the living room and fell back on a couch. The turtle tattoo guy was still stationed at his loveseat across the room, smoking away to oblivion. With renewed strength, Avia stumbled over to the loveseat. She snatched the blunt from his hand, then quickly returned to her spot. His hand grasped the air, reflexes slowed, but he seemed too high to process what had happened. He shrugged and laid his head back against the cushions.

“Avia!”

Cheshire stepped into the room and sat down on the couch. “You look terrible,” he said, taking the weed out of her other hand.

“Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, grabbing the blunt back from him. “I’m not there yet.”

“Avi—”

“Ches, why are you trying to stop me?! We’ve gone so long without ev- without you, with, without you ever acting like such a buzz kill. Just take a few shots!” she yelled, throwing her arms on his chest. “Just weelaxxx… Wait.” She poked him on the nose. “Or are pussy cats too pussy to have a good time?”

Avia took another deep puff and blew the smoke in his face. Giggling maniacally to herself, she seemed to have completely forgotten he was there. Cheshire pushed her arms aside, to which she blinked in surprise. Something in her eyes snapped and she started to convulse.

“Avi!” he screamed, wrapping his arms around her.

Her vision greyed. The walls and floor began to melt. The air cracked and shattered like glass. The shards that made up reality started to fall into an abyss. The thin wall that separated the world from endless darkness was caving in. While she normally would have welcomed the nothing with open arms, something felt wrong this time. Terror struck her heart like a bullet. Everything was numb, and she couldn’t see or speak. Her mind raced to remember what drugs she’d taken, but her thoughts silenced at the unimaginable pain. Her body and mind were slowly being torn apart, thread by thread.

She writhed in Cheshire’s arms, muscles tensed, eyes rolled back. She tried to force out the tempest, but all she could feel was rage. Not at Cheshire, not at her parents, not even at Julian. Only rage. An inconceivable, unrelenting hatred that mirrored the flames of Hell itself.

Avia opened her mouth and a banshee-like wail shook the entire house. Her body glowed a pale orange and sparks shot from her skin like fire.

Cheshire dove across the room and grabbed a blanket lying on the ground. He sprinted back to Avia, cocooned her in the cloth, then carried her up the stairs to the bathroom. He set her down, then closed and locked the door, going the extra mile to prop the small cabinet under the doorknob.

“Avi, talk to me!” he yelled, trying to avoid the sparks as he leaned over.

“I just wanna burn it all away! Burn it all away!”

“Avia, you’re slipping! Come back!”

The blanket erupted in flames and her body was engulfed by fire. She screamed and rolled back and forth on the floor. Taking several deep breaths, Cheshire threw himself to his knees beside her. Despite the heat, he grabbed her shoulder and placed a hand on her burning forehead.

 

Chapter 14

A heaviness hung over Avia like she had entered a funeral service. The heat that had been burning through her nerves was gone. In its wake was… nothing. A gentle lull was softly rocking her, and she couldn’t help but feel like she had breathed in someone’s last breath. Even so, she embraced the peace for a moment.

The reprieve was short-lived.

Cold air coiled around her body and the soft sway was now a deathly lurch. She was almost positive that she was splayed on the deck of a ship, but she still couldn’t see anything. She shivered and ran her hands over the rows of goosebumps down her arms. Realizing her eyes were clenched shut, Avia released her breath and slowly opened them.

She gasped. She was trapped inside a glass bottle, rocking violently in the ocean’s waves. Outside, black clouds were painted with streaks of lighting. But there was no thunder. She was met only with silence.

Terror clutched her heart as she stared out of the opaque glass. There was no visible way out, and even if there was, she was surrounded by water. Avia gingerly reached out to touch the glass, but another roll of the sea sent her stumbling back to the floor.

“Where am I?!” she yelled. The sound was instantly swallowed by the bottle and the silence pressed back on all sides.

Then, after about a minute, a soft voice answered from the outside. “That’s a good question, Avia. I guess you’re in my head.”

It sounded like Cheshire, but there was something different about the voice. Cheshire’s tone would carry life, or peace, meaning with breath. The speaker outside of the bottle was completely devoid of those things. The voice was that of loss. Of sorrow. Of death.

As she squinted to see outside of the bottle, Avia saw a silhouette form a few meters away from her glass prison. A smoky outline solidified into flesh and bone. The figure cracked his neck before looking up into the seething clouds. His height and build were similar to Cheshire’s, but his back was turned so she couldn’t see the face.

“Avi…” the hollow voice spoke again. “I’m sorry you ended up here. I really hoped you would have gone a different path. Ever since we met, you’ve been going a million miles a minute. I guess it’s a curse for people like us to end up nowhere.”

“Cheshire…” she whispered, positive it was him now.

Turning around, Cheshire began to walk across the waves towards the glass. A flash