He had that dream again. The one about burning the city, and it was even more vivid than ever. Before the alarm had gone off, he'd been twisting a blade of fire deep in Tallulah's chest, the smell of burning meat filling his nose, the crackle and pop of blackening flesh and overheated fat in his ears.

The cook made Bacon with breakfast.

He ignored it, in so much as was possible, though he was sure the fatty, distinctive smell he usually found so appealing was actually clinging to his skin with black, crispy fingers.

He ate his oatmeal in silence, then excused himself to the bathroom.

He threw up. He threw up until he dry heaved, and then splashed cold water on his face. Water made him think of Tallulah and her swim team, which made him think of her startled gasp as the fiery sword knocked the breath and the life out of her...

He spent another few minutes heaving over the toilet, until his stomach cramped angrily and he finally felt halfway under control again.

He splashed more water on his face, then brushed his teeth twice, and gargled, and changed his uniform shirt with fingers that were still shaking. He felt nauseous, shockishly cold, but his Mother and Father would never take 'I had a nightmare' as a reason to stay home from school. Besides, he was staying with them because Cee was coming for vacation.

One had to show a sense of family solidarity for gawkwers. Even if one wanted to punch one's sister in the throat for constantly haranguing his girlfriend.
Civilized rich people did not punch their sisters in the throat. That was for Hollywood people who wrapped their cars around trees and socialized at Rehab.

Already late, he forced himself to jog, though his knees were watery, and his stomach was knotting from an unfortunate combination of nausea and hunger.

The sky was dark, like it was going to storm, and the air had the early crackle that felt like lightning should strike somewhere.

It had, he remembered, been dark in the dream too, like the stars had been snuffed by the columns of smoke from the burning buildings in the city. He squirmed, wrapping his arms around himself as he entered the building.

He barely noticed the jostling crowd in the hallways, they felt like one uniformed haze of barely contained electricity with elbows, several of which jammed painfully into his arms and ribs. The people he bumped into, and who bumped into him in turn, muttered their irritations which he registered only like a distant thunder, an confusion of syllables he couldn't hear clearly through the sounds from his nightmare.

He pushed his way into class and sat down, hunkered down in his seat with all the visual confidence of an overcooked piece of pasta, peering toward the front of the room over his folded arms, his breath making a slightly damper spot on his sleeves.

The teacher was giving a lecture on something about the civil war, people turning on their own family, shooting at people that not long before they'd shared meals with.

He thought of the crackle of burning flesh. He could still smell it, and feel the force it had taken to push a burning blade into reluctant flesh. He felt sick again, and it burned at the back of his throat, in spite of an attempt to swallow it back again.

The teacher was still talking, but he could hear a growing cacophony from the halls. Someone was yelling. No... several people were yelling. Slowly the attention of the classroom filtered, one pair of eyes after another, toward the small window in the door. Students were rushing past, their eyes wide with panic.

He sat up slowly, others stood up, craning anxiously.

Out in the hallway he heard something like fireworks, or something like them. A loud, strange cross between a cough and a pop.

It couldn't possibly be a gun. Nothing as mundane as guns seemed to exist in Destiny City. His thoughts drifted to the negaverse. Did one of them have firecrackers? Cherry bombs? Those ones strung together on a string?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, dialing with his thumb, the lion charms, three of them, tapping against his hand as though they were trying to give him a coded message.

Another string of pops, much louder, and there were holes in the classroom door. He had trouble connecting the two, mentally some how. It just seemed... detached. Unreal. People were screaming. There was no concern for the appearance, they were screams and pleas for help as the teacher, with a vaguely shocked look, stared across the room with eyes growing dull, lying in a growing puddle of something dark.

It looked far, far too dark to be blood. Blood never looked that way in the movies. It smelled like a butcher shop.

He rose slowly, the phone pressed to his ear. He could barely hear it ringing above the chaos as someone walked in through the door. Bodies were cramming their way toward the back of the classroom, students trying to hide behind each other, to shield themselves from the figure in the ski mask, who's gun seemed somehow more alien than any blazing burst of magic and transformation.

The gunman opened fire.

For a few seconds, he actually thought he'd hit the floor of his own volition. The cellphone was nearby, he could hear it still trying to connect with the other phone.

He felt breathless, and was sure he must have knocked the wind out of his lungs hitting the dingy linoleum. Then he noticed the blood, almost black, pooling around him, He did even feel it.

The other students were screaming, or groaning, or crying, but he could still hear the tinny distant voice of the cell phone:

Hi, you've reached the voice mail of Tallulah Cowden, I can't come to the phone right now but if you leave a message at the beep....

--
He woke up half immobilized in his own sweat soaked blankets, and clawed them off numbly. He thought he could hear his roommate, trapped in the throws of his own nightmare as he stumbled loose and ran for the bathrooms to throw up.

It was only after he was wretching into the bowl that he vaguely remembered someone in the dream saying "It's going to rain."

He had no idea why that was as terrifying as anything else in the dream, but the very words made him wretch again and again with fear.