“Mum, you have to get up! Now!”

I pulled on her arm, but she just smiled at me.

“Julian, you’re here,” she whispered. Her face was ashen, and her skin icy.

“Of course, I’m here. Where else would I be?” I gasped, still out of breath.

Again, I tried to pull my mum up, but her petite body was too heavy and no matter how hard I tugged, she stayed down.

“Mum, please get up!”

Her eyes were still on me, but there was no more movement in them.

“You have to stay with me, Mum!”

Hastily, I patted her face. It was colder than the rain.

No... It couldn’t be.

“No!”, I yelled and put my head on her chest. Nothing. Not a heartbeat.

“No! Mum! Come back!” I screamed at her as if my screams could bring her back.

“Mum!”

“Julian!”

I snapped my eyes open and sat up straight, forgetting about the shelf above my head as usual. My head crashed into the bottom wooden shelf, which shattered, and books thudded into my skull. A painful groan escaped my dry throat. Completely exhausted, I rubbed my eyes.

When I finally looked up, Mia was standing in front of me, a bucket of water in her hand. Fortunately for her, it was still full.

With a jolt, I looked around, but I couldn’t spot Mum anywhere.

“Where’s...” I stopped in mid-sentence.

Of course. A dream. A fucking dream!

Automatically, I threw back the covers and jumped up.

“You were dreaming about her again, weren’t you?” Mia asked softly.

The sadness in her eyes as she slowly lowered the bucket of water chased another wave of despair through my quivering body.

I quickly rushed to her side and grabbed her hand.

“Not a word to Dad, understand?”

She pulled her hand out of mine. Only now did I realize that I was completely sweaty. Without another word, I disappeared into the bathroom.

I slammed the door, not exactly gently, behind me and hurried to the sink.

As I tried to turn on the water tap, it flew across the bathroom and the cold water gushed out at me.

“Shit!” it escaped me and, in a rage, I smashed my fist against the mirror.

Shards flew in all directions, and there was something redeeming about the pain that coursed through my body. Something I had been searching for, for a long time, but I only found it in my pain. The pain I would be cursed with for the rest of my life.

“Julian. Are you okay in there?”, Mia’s concerned voice drifted distantly to my ear.

I had scared her.

The water was flooding the floor by now, and I inverted a battered bucket over the damaged faucet in such a way that the water coming out was thrown back into the sink.

Finally, I sank to the floor.

My eyes fell on my left arm, with blood running down it. It had been the glass shards that had dug deep into my skin. At that point, my arteries had grown larger and their blackness combined with all the blood formed an eerie image of the chaos I was capable of.

“Julian? Do you want me to call Dad? He still has the serum...”

“No, I’m fine, Mia!” I pressed out angrily, but immediately slammed my head against the wall behind me.

This anger inside me shouldn’t get to Mia, damn it! The last thing she needed right now was this.

“Do you need anything?” she asked cautiously.

She was closer to the door now. Too close.

“No, Mia. I’m fine. Now please go!”

I hated myself for being so dismissive. But it was necessary. I didn’t want her to see her brother like this. Weak. Vulnerable. Aggressive.

I rose, slowly and heavily, propped myself against the sink, careful because I didn’t want it to break under my weight again, and tried to control my breathing. Holding my hand under the bucket, above the cooling stream of water, I breathed deeply in and out.

How had this happened? I thought I was in control, but I had been wrong. Every single damn day, I lost it a little bit more. With every dream, it got worse. Because it was the dreams that controlled me. They revealed to me who I really was. My deepest wounds and my dusty heart.

I was not a lovable person as I would have liked to be. I was a monster. The monster that had killed my mother.

Chapter 7

Bayla

There was only garbage on the Internet. Neither under wild wolves nor in the search for missing persons cases in combination with Blairville was anything to be found. A single page, a chat in the forum on the Vanderwood University webpage, had popped up, and I had joined a heated discussion about the missing student, but it had been locked the next moment.

What remained was the website of the local news station, Blairville Daily, on which in every third picture a Joe with synthetic cheeks grinned into the camera, in every second video his wife Harriet, who wore a blond perm and like a bird of prey on the prowl attacked unsuspecting pedestrians and forced them to give interviews, or the young reporter’s daughter who apparently wrote the town’s newspaper and gathered a massive reporter team of young men around her. The only one who seemed like a normal person was their son, the weatherman, Oliver. 

The more time I spent on the Bexley's page, the more I understood why Mum didn't want me to listen to the news.

Frustrated, I slammed the laptop shut.