The First Jab
(The dream from the sidewalk)
It was lovely, the warm feeling. She was in a place that made her happy, the sunroom, filled wall to wall with more of her precious plants. She loved it there, loved to feel as the sunlight caressed her face, her arms she thrived on the sunlight..
But something was wrong.... She stood up and watched with dawning horror as cracks began to web the windows, that telltale sound or cracking glass assaulting her ears. One by one, the windows smash, one by one to let the bitter cold in.
No! No, no, no!
She could feel the welts raise on her skin from the winter wind, and slow motion took over to make it agonizingly long. No, nonono! Please! Oh god, it hurts!
Suddenly, she was transitioned into an all white room, floor to ceiling. A blinding light shone down in her eyes, and there were voices.
".... Inject the syrum."
Pain. Ungodly pain... What wee they doing to her?
"..... No more, you fool, we don't want to kill her."
Burning in her veins, the green liquid mixed into her blood and hummed around her body, changing her................... Then, the world seemed to flicker in and out.

----End Weird Dream---

The Last Dance
(A dream in the Infirm of the sister school - after Seizure gets her)
She could see herself in the arms of her dead boyfriend, nearly ten years ago as she danced the first dance of the night of her sweet sixteen. It was a formal party, and the crisp black of his tuxedo stood out in contrast to her champaign colored ballgown, silver jewelry sparkling in the dim light. The strains of music that the band played was their rendition of "Save the last dance for me," updated into the rock and roll of the current, guitar rift coming from less than skilled fingers.
She could see herself smiling up at the football star, his muscles rippling under her fingers with the swaying movements he made, his blue eyes smiling, crinkled at the corners. His wide, firm mouth, was a lopsided grin underneath the full, blonde moustach that so matched his unruly curls. His class ring was on her finger, they were going steady. Ah, young love.
He leaned in to say something in her ear, but it wasn't something she remembered him saying. Infact, it was something more puzzling, "You smell funny..."
The scene took on that sinister color of red, then, and she could feel her belly clenching with a cold dread. The music took on a more, macabre tone, remniniscent of evil clown music. The first screams started to fill the room as the glass of the windows shattered, and bullets started to fly. "Find the freak, find the freak! There, there she is!"
That wasn't how it happened, she remembered that much, but this was just a dream, and dreams were weird, sometimes good, this one bad as she saw the tormentors take her former self away, to a place she wished could be wiped from her memory, much like most of her childhood and everything leading up to the day she met the man who turned her into something she wasn't... Only now, she saw the grinning faces of the present, leering at her, fingers pointing. She saw Calley, gesturing gleefully at her, "We've got her now!"
And then there was the young teenager, holding a giant Belladonna Berry, mouth open and dripping with the purplish juices, pupils dialated, crazy sounds spilling from her as she took another bite of the berry..
"This won't hurt a bit.... For me..." She suddenly realized that she saw herself on a table, but not in her current place of rest, but the lab where she had been changed. The man with the labcoat, Seizure, stood over her, teeth bared in a sickening smile as he slowly injected her with a sarynge full of green liquid. She could feel her arm starting to undulate unnaturally underneath her skin, and remembered screaming as roots broke through her skin............................................................................
Everything went black, then fogged with gray, and there she was, in the middle of all of that. Just her, dressed in champaign silk, laying curled up on her side in that carpet of fog and darkness.

The Coma
(A dream from the infirmary)

The place was horrible, darkness all around. Her face pressed against something cold, she could smell the musty smell of basement. Her eyes were gritty with dirt, her mouth filled with fuzzy mold, water dripping loudly enough to echo against stone walls, Drip-drip-drip..... drop-drop-drop...

...

"Hello?" she rasps, chapped lips parting painfully, as she tries to force her eyes to crack, just a wee... tiny bit.
.... Drip-drip-drip... Drop-drop-drop....

She manages to open her eyes a mere millimeter, a grain, for all she could see was red... And now... Blinding light. Her hand shoots up so sheild herself from the sudden brightness. "He-hello?"

"Hello, I've waited here for you, pretty. Is the light too bright?"

Who was that, who was speaking to her? She felt a sudden tightening in her throat, her eyes started to bulge some, started to dialate whether the light dimmed or no.

"There, there you are... Now drink..."

She could see a silhouette, once her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the blind spots faded. She could feel as a cup was pressed to her lips, and the contents of the container start to pour into her mouth. Mud?!

At first she tried to spit the vile liquid out, but a calloused hand plugged her nose against her struggles, "I know, it's horrible, just horrible... You'll get used to it, just drink, my girl." She did start to feel better.

She wrinkled her brow in confusion, before the world faded to darkness... that offensive echo of water droplets, still in the background. Drip-drip-drip-drip-drip.. Oh, my god. Oh god, oh no...

Her head hurt... Really hurt! Pain at the base of her skull, oh god, oh my godithurtsohmygod!

Blinding light -again-... this one beckoning... No pain where this light is, no sorrow, yes, no, she couldn't, she -had- to.... No! She had things to do, something told her she wasn't ready for that kind of light. So pretty....

She pulled away from the light, and was thrust back into herself, with a jolt. The darkness was as blissful as the light.

The Hill
(Dream from the infirmary)

It was a lovely place, filled with wildflowers and trees. She was running, fast, faster, through the woods, over a hill. The hill was tall, so tall it was like a mountain. The hill grew steep as she ascended, steep, and steeper.

Her breaths were starting to wheeze in and out as she ran further and further up the tall hill. Sweat poured from her forehead, dripping into her eyes and blurring her vision. When would the giant hill end? She gasped for breath, heart hammering against her ribcage, thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-THUMPTHUMPTHUMP…

There! The hill’s crest! She could see it now, it stretched in front of her, so close she could almost feel it. Xavia perked up, smiling a smile of triumph as she scaled toward the top. There it was, there it was! Keep going!

Just as she would reach the top, then, the earth shifted underfoot. With the sound of dirt crumbling and rocks shifting, she started to slide downward. The more she fought the pull of the eroding dirt and debris, the more it seemed to destroy itself.

Down, down, down, she went, falling to her hands and knees, scraping her skin raw. Grit filled her mouth and nose, her eyes tearing up from the cloud of grime. As hard as she tried to stand, she never managed to get to that point.

A cry tore from her lips as she tried to reach the top, as she tried to get passed the sliding dirt. She lost purchase on the soft ground, and began to roll. She rolled down the hill like an overturned trashcan, so fast that she grew dizzy.

And just when she would have hit the giant tree, the dream was over.

Just Weird
(Dream from the Infirmary)

She could simply bottle up the sunshine and keep it for herself, if she so desired… It was one of those lovely days where the birds were chirping, and the breeze was wafting softly northward, bringing warm air from the tropics I the south to dispel winter’s final chill. Xavia felt happy in the midst of her little garden, laying down and feeling like Alice, talking to the smoking caterpillar and singing flowers.

Inside her head, she was composing her next song, a light airy tune rattling around in that active brain of hers and a gentle hum in her throat. Her foot tapped against the air, tap, tap, tap, and she waved her fingers like a conductor for a symphony orchestra. Dadadadum, deedeedadoremifa.

Her eyes were closed as she waved her imaginary baton around in the air, and she knew only content in her dreamt up garden. Her mouth curved up in a smile. This was not a bad dream. This was the first peaceful musing she had ever had while asleep. She did not want someone to pinch her, because she enjoyed this dream.

However, we all know that dreams have the tendency to take a turn for the strange or frightening. Lucky for her, it only became strange from what it was.

She could see herself sit up and look around. The birds suddenly stopped chirping ad the air seemed to grow still. All was quiet. Too quiet. What would she see now?

She then had the urge to get up and run, run as fast as she could away from her little grove of flowers and trees. Her mouth curled downward as she began to do so, getting up ad running as if her life depended on it. She did not know why she was running, why she left her haven. She just ran.

She could feel her chest expanding heavily with every breath she took, her heart beating a staccato against her ribcage, like drums of war. She could see that overhead, the clouds became dark and heavy with the prospect of rain, and thunder began to rumble in the distance.

The wind picked up to whistle through the dense trees through which she ran, faster and faster, a stitch in her side. What was going on with this strangest of dreams? There was no visible danger in front of her, merely the trees whizzing by her as she ran.

And just as she thought it wouldn’t get any stranger, her foot hooked into the roots of a tree, and down she went. And that is when she woke up.

Intrusion of the Red Monkey Man
(A dream from the abandoned house)

They were there again, in Central park by the river in the Ramble. She was freezing, her form soaked to the bone from the icy temp of the water, and he was leaning over her to breathe life into her again. The red monkey man… He was still a nameless face, and though he was red and had a monkey tail, he was still very handsome. And his lips, they were softer than they looked as he moved to breathe for her, and it somehow turned into a kiss.

Boy, what a kiss it was.

She vaguely remembered twining her arms round his neck, because she was so focused on this kiss with this complete stranger. Why did he haunt her brain so readily when she did not know him? Why had he bothered to save her at all? The kiss had only been meant to stop him from trying to do CPR on her, but it became much more than that, and it confused the hell out of her.

But this was a dream, she knew, and as always, her dreams took twists and turns into the unknown.

Instead of pulling away like she had in reality, the kiss kept going for awhile longer until it was he who pulled away. He reached out to touch her cheek and said, “You’re so beautiful.” But it wasn’t the same voice he had spoken with before, his voice was so very familiar and caused her to stop breathing.

Though his coloring remained the same, his face began to contort and change before her eyes, into that of her high school sweetheart, who’s lips curled upward in that familiar smile of his. “You can’t seriously be thinking of moving on with this weirdo, can you?”

“What do you mean? I… I don’t even know him…” she said in protest, and saw his grin turn sour.

“You’re kissing a freak. He is not like us, Sah-sah.” His words were mocking at this point. It had been common knowledge that he had a particular dislike for those affected by the mutant gene. His eyes were hard as they bore into her own, and he reached down with the hand that wasn’t his, but the monkey man’s. She could feel it around her throat the same as before, in reality, pressing down on her windpipe slowly.

“Like us? I… I am one of THEM!”

His face contorted in anger, and he pressed down harder, “You are a freak? I can’t believe I was going to take you to prom!”

Just when she thought she would pass out in her dream state, his hand let go, and his face shifted back to that of the man from the park, who’s face had softened since the kiss. “Come with me, I can help you. You are one of us…. One of us… One of us…”

She did not wake up just yet, but as she slept, she tossed and turned.