Sort of Deadly

I woke up for real this time around, drenched in sweat, smelling like fear.

My head was swimming, and the walls around me seemed to be contorting in the craziest of ways. My bed performed calisthenics and I nearly threw up, as though you had given me some paraben.

Turned on the lights. Looked into a mirror.

Saw a red dot (temporary mark; if Pops saw it, he’d never stop calling me dots) embossed right in the center of my forehead. Where that witch had touched me.

Now, you should understand that the 'mares aren’t like any ordinary nightmares. They’re state-of-the-art and oh-so-horrifying – mainly because they’re very real.

At least, real enough to kill you.

But I didn’t want to believe that then, so I grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen silently, so as to not disturb my parents' sleep. They must have been tired enough as it were, what with the whole dinner preparation, and the cleaning up after. I drank that glass of water. Returned to bed.

Looked at my space clock. It showed the time as 11:59 pm.

Oh, so it wasn’t as late as I’d assumed. The party must have ended quick. Good. Aar didn’t get to swoon over that Niffy for long.

Seriously, Bee. You still on that?

Well, what was I supposed to do? Think of that ghastly woman who almost killed me and my friends last month?

Point taken. But you still saw her, didn’t you? Are we going to not acknowledge that?

Ignoring the voice, I grabbed a banana from my bedside (I always keep a few there, I love me some bananas), peeled it with my eyes on the now-frightening moonlight creeping into my room, took a bite with my cavity-less teeth.

And choked.

With no one to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on me, I coughed and coughed and coughed. Jumped like a baboon. So much so that I fell off my bed. Eventually I managed to spit the bite out.

It had tasted like sand.

Felt like sand.

Had been sand.

Literal sand.

Just like the fruits back in Lakoswanion, if Mar told you. I’m sure he did.

I looked at the rest of the banana, carefully tore another bite off the head – this time with my hands, of course – and saw more fine, brown granules, gleaming under the mean, creepy moonlight.

The space clock now proclaimed 12:02 am. ‘Ho, ho, ho, and a merry Christmas to you too,' I muttered, clearing the remnant grains from my throat.

I tossed the banana away, all of it. Trounced it deep inside the bin.

Didn’t sleep a wink.

how do you like em bananas?