Dreamwalker

A test. That’s what she said this was. A test of your abilities. 

“We just want to know how your visions work, as they could prove very valuable.”

You were sitting in a room at a metal table. The walls were the same gray concrete and you already knew that the door was locked. In front of you sat the doctor with her clipboard and pencil and cat eye glasses. She had a smile on her face. There was two way glass behind her and about five people in the room adjacent as well. Two guards and two scientists. Another was a psychologist, you think. 

You also had a bunch of patches attached to your head with wires coming out of each of them. They were also attached to a machine with some needle writing lines into it. 

“Do you know what usually triggers your visions?” 

You shook your head. 

“Use your words, please.” Someone was probably recording this. You looked toward the two way glass. They were so close that you could feel them shuffling slightly. Narrowing your eyes, you tried to focus more on at least one of them. It was almost as if you could see him, one of the scientists, very faintly. 

He was an older man with deep circles under his brown eyes and graying hair. All the lines on his face were deep and his face was round, but had a squarish jaw. He wore a tie with a collared shirt and a light grey jacket over it all. 

His head turned abruptly toward the mirror, eyes looking directly at you. You jumped, breaking your concentration. You couldn’t see him any longer, but you still felt his presence. 

“No,” you said curtly as you turned your head back to the doctor. 

“Okay, well, I’m going to say a few words to see if anything happens.” Her eyes studied your face for a second before she glanced at the mirror as well. 

You doubted that this was going to work at all. 

“Dog. Building. Warrant.” 

You didn’t feel anything except the doctor’s eyes boring into you.

“Possum. Delusion. Wet.” 

You sighed, looking around the room at nothing. The walls had a few cracks in them, small and nothing serious. 

“Class. Green. Time.” 

You looked over towards the mirror again, trying to peer into it as you had done a few minutes ago. Of course, that was on accident, something you didn’t know you could do. You couldn’t focus enough with the doctor saying more random words, some you didn’t even know.

“Death.” 

Your heart rate quickened immediately. You could feel your breathing quickening as a result, trying to compensate. Your hands drew into fists as your eyes began to water. 

The doctor’s eyes snapped toward your reaction. She heard you take in a lungful of air and saw your irises glow yellow, pupils contracting. 

“You’re going to kill me.” The words came out fast and accusatory, the English the doctor often wanted you to speak harsh. 

“Who told you that, dear?” The doctor looked at you, eyes widening. She hadn’t heard anything about killing you. In fact, all of her reports had advised against it for the time being.

“I read it. I see it.” Eyes smarting, you looked through the wall. Your eyes recognized the man as the scientist. “He’s writing it right now.” 

“Who? We have no reason to kill someone as valuable as you.” You felt a thought run across her mind. ‘You’re safe here.’ The only reason she didn’t say it was because the both of you knew it wasn’t true.

“The man on the other side of that wall.” Your eyes returned to him. You saw him clear as day and the paper he had written advocating your death. He started looking at a small radio on the table he was sitting at. You didn’t know what he was listening to. 

The doctor didn’t say anything, just looked at you as you continued to look at him. After a few seconds, he looked up and straight towards you with a sickeningly sweet smile. You watched as his hands grabbed the paper that asked for you to be killed and crumpled it. 

“You haven’t been completely honest about your abilities, have you?” The doctors voice was laced with disappointment. 

Returning back to the present, you find the doctor’s writing scratching at your mind and filling up the room. There’s a new person in the room looking over the paper the machine spit out. 

You’re still working on calming down your breathing and looking at everything. 

“Fascinating,” the doctor says. She looks up at you. “Did you know that your eyes glow when you’re experiencing these visions? I must have told you, right?” 

The male doctor in the room speaks. “She seems to be completely still during the episode, but completely invulnerable.” In his hands are the patches that were on you. “They all came off.” 

“Self-preservation, perhaps? A way to keep safe while she’s not really…in the right mind.” 

“Sounds about right. Brain activity elevated right before the patches came off as well.” 

“Blood pressure and heart rate goes up, as well, right? That would explain the hyperventilating. The need for everything to catch up.” 

They keep talking about you as if you’re not in the room. You zone out, not wanting to listen any longer. Your mind searches for something to focus on. Someone to focus on. You feel pulled towards someplace, the mental map of people milling about aiding you. You don’t really know who or what you’re looking for until you hear her saying your name in your head. 

‘Wanda?’ You thought out tentatively. 

‘Yes. I felt you. I felt you near in my mind.’ This confused you. Feeling the people around you was easy, but you’d quickly been able to discern some key people from others. Wanda was one of them. You’d feel her presence from farther away and could feel it intensely when she was close. She didn’t feel close at all. 

‘I didn’t mean physically,” she added, clarifying. 

‘Are you reading my thoughts?’ 

‘I can’t control it. Your mind feels so close that all of your thoughts sound loud to me right now.’ 

‘It’s fine. I don’t even know what I’m doing or how this is working.’ You knew that physically, you were sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair, but mentally, you were with her. You could visualize where she was, almost. 

She was in a room identical to the one they gave you, except hers had two beds. She was watching the television, hoping for some comfort and trying not to think about where her brother was. He wasn’t in the room with her. 

‘You’re talking to me. That’s a good thing, right? I know that I could hear other people’s thoughts and that they can hear me when I deliberately speak to them, but it’s usually only people that are close or that I can see. I don’t even know where you are. Your thoughts feel… different.’

The more she spoke (or thought) to you, the more you could see her surroundings. You saw them more clearly. You saw her more clearly as she fiddled with her hands and her eyes glued to the television. It was almost as if you were in the room with her. You wanted to be in the room with her and not in this concrete room with no windows. 

‘I feel your thoughts differently, too, Wanda. I feel—‘

The sound of metal scraping against the ground startled you out of your mind. Your eyes darted around the room for the source of the sound. 

“What? What happened?” Your question was in Sokovian and not exactly toward anyone in the room. 

“What were you doing? Tell me.” The doctor was standing up, clipboard in hand. She was looking straight at you, her gaze unwavering. 

“Nothing.” You sat up straighter. You couldn’t hear Wanda anymore. 

“Don’t lie. There are consequences for lying.” 

You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know what she saw. You couldn’t look and see, either. You didn’t know if your eyes would glow, revealing yet another thing you haven’t told her. 

She wasn’t angry, but her voice sounded cold. She felt like she was trying to be neutral, not trying to feel anything. 

“I need you to tell me these things, dear.” 

Dear? 

“It is very important that you do. I am in charge of your developments and in charge of knowing what to do about you.” She sat back down, looking at you straight. “You would not be the first uncooperative person I have dealt with. You should know, however, that you will also not be the first person that I won’t make tell me what I need to know.” 

“Threat?” 

“Promise.” 

“You want the truth? Nothing happened.”

“Do you have anything new to tell me?”

“No.” 

“Hmm..” She grabbed her pencil once more and didn’t bother flipping to a new page before writing. Your hands unclenched from the fists they were in. 

She let you sit in silence for the entire duration of her writing. You said nothing and let your mind drift nowhere. You didn’t even look at the mirror, didn’t notice that the man you saw earlier had left. Completely unaware of him entering the room while you were zoned out, speaking to the doctor in charge of you. 

You were only focused on one thing: making sure she believed you. If she didn’t, they would be watching even more carefully than they already are.