Waking Nightmare Part II

The room spun as Mystril took her first unsteady steps forward. It was as if her bones had been replaced with jello. The complacency of her mind grappled with the utter strangeness of the situation to create something that was adjacent to fear, but not quite. Her mind was feverish. Jagged fragments rather than full blown thoughts darted too and fro like windblown snow in a blizzard. The edges of her vision crowded with a static fog like a TV out of tune, and her ears rang in harmony with the EKG that grew evermore distant behind her. She walked like a zombie, half dragging whichever limb happened to be trailing.

Her eyes were locked on a wide metal basin she recognized as a sink, like the sort you would see in a laundry room, or restaurant kitchen. She staggered to it, watching the curved neck of the faucet grow ever closer, seeming to tower over her in her state. It was a difficult reach to get her hand to the blue tagged lever, and she pulled on it, actually momentarily pulling away in surprise at the stream of water she had summoned. She stuck her head in, not bothering to move her hair from her face as she eagerly lapped at it. It was like an oasis in a desert. She drank, and drank until her face, and bangs were soaked, and then without much grace she fell back on the ground, panting at the exertion.

The water helped some. It made the buzzing in her limbs go away, and things were becoming more clear now. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to place the material of the hospital gown between her, and the cold linoleum. Then she brushed her wet hair away from her face. That's when she noticed the first oddity. Her hair which had historically been a bright strawberry blond was now the color of a moonless night. This was her first real conscious thought, and the memory sparked her internal dialogue again. She scrutinized it, feeling its texture. It felt like hers, but was the wrong shade. It was the wrong length too. Normally she would grow it out long. It had always been unruly, and curly when it was this short as was the case now.

That and her hands, and her teeth. She licked them again, mouth starting to feel normal after so long spent dry. These weren't her teeth though. They were replaced with perfectly smooth and uniform equivalents. They weren't just polished but it almost felt like they had been sharpened. Her heart started racing again. She clawed at her torso, feeling as if she was stuck in a stranger's body. Her head started to ache like the roots of a migraine, and reflexively she reached up with one hand to massage her temple. With sudden revulsion Mystril found the space her ear should occupy vacant. Like somehow all the wrongness thus far was excusable this was finally the catalyst that made her gut turn over. A sudden pang of nausea struck, and with only enough warning to get onto her hands, and knees she fell forward. All the water she had drank was still tap cold coming up.