META'S POV:
I woke with a gasp, my body seized by a cold, violent tremor. It wasn't the slow crawl from a bad dream; it was an ejection, a desperate clawing back to a reality that felt thin and fragile. My breath hitched in my throat, each inhale a ragged, painful attempt to pull air into lungs that felt like they were filled with ice. It was another nightmare. A new one. A different set of horrors, but the same suffocating conclusion.
This time, the dream did not take me to the decaying husk of the house I had just visited. It took me to that same house, but it was alive, vibrant with the eerie, gas-lit glow of an era long past. And inside, on the worn wooden floor, was the old woman. But she wasn't old. She was younger, her face unlined, her eyes wide with a terror so profound it felt like my own. Her body was a grotesque tableau of violence, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her skin a sickly, waxy pallor. The scent of iron and viscera was thick in the air, so real I could feel it coat the back of my throat, a phantom taste of death.
The horror intensified as another figure stepped from the shadows. It was Thyme. But not the Thyme I knew. He was older, his face a hollow mask of silent agony, his youthful eyes now haunted and dead. His hands were not just covered in blood; they were dripping with it, a thick, dark crimson that pattered onto the floorboards with a grim, pulsing rhythm.
He looked at me, not with recognition, but with a silent, desperate plea that was more terrifying than any accusation. Then he pointed, not at the body, but directly at me, his finger trembling. The dream shattered, and I was back in the waking world, tangled in my sweat-drenched sheets, the scent of phantom blood still clinging to my senses.
My head was spinning, a dizzying vortex of impossible facts. How could Thyme, the boy whose panicked blush I'd seen just yesterday, be an adult in this dream? How could he be the murderer of a woman who was supposed to have died in 1990? The doctor's words from my hospital visit yesterday echoed in my head—a flimsy, rational shield against a rising tide of madness. The diagnosis was simple, logical: a side effect of the medication for the inflammation in my head.
But how could a simple side effect create a narrative so specific, so vivid? It wasn't just random images. It was a story. A story of a dead woman, a younger version of a ghost I'd actually met, and a killer who wore the face of the person I was so desperately trying to understand. My mind screamed for a rational explanation, but all it could provide was a cold, terrifying fact: the line between my reality and this delusion was no longer just blurred; it was dissolving.
I spent the night in a state of agitated wakefulness, a prisoner in my own bed, haunted by the loop of blood, terror, and Thyme's accusatory face. My logical mind was a compass spinning wildly in a magnetic storm. Was the past I was remembering—the park, the shared lunchbox, the feeling of his hand in mine—just another hallucination? The more I tried to make sense of it, the deeper into madness I sank. But I couldn't waver. I needed more evidence. If my memories were a delusion, they would break under scrutiny. If they were real, they would be my salvation.
Finally, the dawn came, a gray, washed-out light that did nothing to soothe the turmoil. I went through the motions of preparing for class, my body on autopilot. I was in the faculty parking lot, my head still throbbing, when I collided with a man, sending a stack of old books scattering across the asphalt.
"My apologies, Professor," I said, my voice flat, as I knelt to help him. It was Professor Boranwitee, a scientific genius and a campus anomaly, known for his eccentric belief in the supernatural.
"No, no, my fault entirely," he said with a kind, distracted smile. "Thank you, Meta. You are a good boy." He hurried away, muttering to himself about quantum entanglement and ancient spirits.
As I stood up, a glint of metal on the ground caught my eye. It was a charm, a strange, intricate piece of silver wrapped in red thread. It had to be his. I picked it up, intending to return it later. The moment my fingers brushed against it, an unnatural coldness, a deep, pervasive chill, radiated up my arm. It felt less like a drop in temperature and more like a void, an absence of warmth that felt fundamentally wrong. I ignored the unsettling sensation, pushing it into my pocket as I hurried to class.
I was at the entrance of the lecture hall when a group of students—mostly young women I had always politely ignored—blocked my path. My "admirers." The term felt like a bitter joke.
"Meta," one of them, a girl with a sharp, predatory look, sneered, her voice laced with venom. "Is it really true that you and that disgusting, pathetic excuse for a gay—Thyme—are in some sick, mutual understanding?"
My mind went still. I could feel my temper, a cold, brittle thing I kept locked away, begin to crack. The casual cruelty of their words, the way they spat his name like a curse, was not something I could ignore. They were filming me, holding up their phones like weapons, hoping to bait a reaction they could post and dissect. They thought they had me in a box. They knew my aversion to conflict, my desire for privacy. They thought I would back down.
They were wrong.
The word "pathetic" echoed in my head, not from their mouths, but from the ghosts of my past. I remembered a different time, a time when I was the subject of such vitriol, when I was the one called a "pathetic excuse" for being poor, for not fitting in. I remembered the violence, the relentless attacks. I would not allow these vultures to inflict that same pain on someone I…
The word lodged in my throat. Love. I would not allow them to inflict that same pain on Thyme.
I took a deliberate step forward, my shadow falling over them. My voice, when it came, was a quiet, dangerous whisper that cut through the hallway's chatter. "You claim to be my admirers. But you stand here and insult the one person I cherish. You use the very things I hate—gossip and public shaming—as weapons. For what? A moment of pathetic entertainment? For the validation of your own shallow desires?"
A different girl, emboldened by the cameras, shot back, "We're your admirers! We have the right to know!"
My gaze swept over them, cold and dismissive. "It's pathetically funny. You care only for your own happiness, and you're willing to defame and destroy a person to achieve it. You live in a delusion where you believe I am an object to be possessed. So, to answer your question: yes. Thyme and I have a mutual understanding."
A collective gasp went through the crowd. The lead girl's face was a mask of furious disbelief. "What does he even have that we don't?!" she shrieked, her voice cracking with indignation.
I leaned in, my voice dropping to a near-silent hiss, meant only for her but felt by everyone. "Substance. He has substance. He isn't blinded by his own desires. He knows how to respect others. He acts with genuine kindness, a rare and precious thing. He has the ability to give love without expecting anything in return. To you, that might make him seem foolish. But to me," I held her gaze, letting the full weight of my conviction land, "that is what makes him so unbelievably lovable."
My words, harsh and unforgiving, hung in the stunned silence. I took a deep breath, the anger that had fueled my speech beginning to cool. And then, a memory, warm and ridiculous, cut through the tension: Thyme, his eyes wide with childish glee, staring at a plate of food. He wasn't blinded by his desire for me, no. He was blinded by his desire for Pad See Ew.
A small, genuine smile touched my lips, the first real one I'd felt all day. The wave of tenderness was so profound it washed away the last of my anger. I looked at the shocked faces of my "admirers," their cameras forgotten in their hands. I had nothing left to say to them.
I was done.
I walked past them, the silence of the hallway a testament to the shattered delusion I had just exposed. I entered the lecture hall, leaving the murmuring crowd in my wake, a private smile on my face. That kid was going to be the death of me.