youth [ic/closed]

Marwan let Erin take him by the arm, though part of him had a desperate urge to wipe her off of his body. His mind went blank and he tried to focus on one thought--I'm going home. I'm going home. I'm going home. That's right. Erin was taking him home.

"It's a sh-sh-shortcut," Erin said.

"No! No! No shortcuts!" He twisted violently in her grasp, but she wouldn't let go. He flapped his hands. There were no streetlamps. There was no road. "Oh god, where are we? Where are we?!" They were in a middle of a field, a huge meadow surrounded by trees. A strange light emanated from within, bringing pain to Marwan's eyes. A carousel. His heart began to drum faster faster fasterfasterfaster. Why was there a carousel here?

Marwan tried to flail out of Erin's grip, but she held on, moving as though in a trance towards the carousel. Inside, Marwan felt strangely uneasy. He figured it was fear. That and perhaps anxiety. Dr. Rainer would have been proud. "I have to get home," he said to the others. "I have to get home. I have to get home." But Erin didn't respond.

She let go of his arm, and Marwan stood there, rubbing it for a moment, while he watched Erin climb onto the carousel, her face alit with some expression Marwan didn't think he'd ever seen before. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them, muttering, "Habeas corpus filings demand a writ of certiorari. . . "

"Come on; one try, get on this, seriously! One try, guys, come on! Please? It'll be awesome, and we only need to do it the once, come on!" Erin's voice called out gleefully over the meadow as she clung to one of the ornate horses on the carousel.

Marwan stepped backward. "No," he said, "no. I can't. I have to go home." But inside, he felt a bubble. A bubble of desire. It was as though a bacteriophage had latched itself onto his thoughts and was trying to alter his DNA sequence to match its own. Get on. Get on. There was a sense of urgency. A sense of demand. It wasn't his thought. It wasn't his thought. He had autistic thinking, Dr. Rainer had told him. He couldn't possibly have come up with that thought. Marwan took another step back. "Home," he repeated.

The sounds of breaking twigs, hushed foot steps - through the woods and onto a clearing, a field. As she stood there by the edge of wheat field she couldn't help but wonder what a carousel was doing there. Looking as if it was lost - the carnival was a few miles away now, this didn't make much sense at all. More over, it made her flesh creep. Everything about it - the time, it was dark ... the middle of the night, the music playing from the carousel seemed so oddly familiar yet she was sure she had never heard it before. Grey eyes wandering over the somewhat eerie scenery. The brightly lit carousel - with all the creepiness it might emit, had also a strangely enchanting charm which for some reason moved her body by its own accord.

She had subconsciously started to walk towards the railing of this festive looking ride, her eyes fixated upon a black carriage, yet she couldn't make herself speak. All she heard were the voices of her friends, Erin already on it, Noah following suit and Marwan was muttering something - as always. Serra stood there, eyes following the carriage, he body merely waiting for the right moment to jump onto the carousel. Unwillingly she had started to hum the tune which was playing so loudly from the ride. A swift breeze catching her locks, causing her to bop forward almost falling onto the platform.

A last look towards Marwan who was still standing there - not wanting to move she smiled at him like she always did before heaving herself onto the ride's platform. Walking over to the carriage she didn't even notice the other two - it all seemed like a wild dream. The vibrant lights, the music and a warm sensation washing over her entire being causing her to smile crazily. There was something awfully wrong about this but right now this carriage was begging her to sit on it.

Sitting herself down into it, she felt weirdly tired, exhausted - remembering she had skipped breakfast and lunch again, though this felt different. Within moments she felt as though she was slipping ... no ... falling down somewhere. Those dreams, she had them like a ton of times. Falling over a ledge, tripping over a step - falling, she would wake up in a second ...

But this time it wasn't like that ... she kept falling, deeper into the darkness - and the worst part was ...

... it felt too real to be a dream.

(OOC: Sorry I took so long. Was with a friend most of the day, and returned to some Firefox issues. Namely, it lost my cache of my last session and all 25 tabs were closed. Now I'm scrolling through weeks worth of history to find them all. Some were, indeed, weeks old, but for some reason important. Having Asperger's myself, I have this obsessive quality where I need to know what they were and to find them all again. . . Grr! And I can't find the stupid cache file anywhere!)

First Erin. Calling to him, again, and again, her voice resounding until he couldn't escape it. . . Noah followed Erin, touching a black horse, the carved curves wicked in the glowing lights of the carousel. Marwan squinted. Serra. . . she was next. She moved towards the horses as though in a strange trance, her body lilting to one side, the expression on her face unreadable. Mysterious. Each of them collapsed into unconsciousness. A full rotation passed, and Marwan saw his three best friends lying unaware of the world around them, on the carousel.

Get on. It’ll be fun. It can’t hurt. The voice was persistent, nagging. Even without Dr. Rainer’s constant therapy, he knew this was a bad idea. He could deduce that getting on the carousel had led to unconsciousness. It wasn’t safe. He couldn’t. And yet he found himself unable to move from his position. He could reach out with his hand and touch the side of the carousel as it turned, the music floating in the air around him, the lights and colors splayed out over the meadow, which he didn’t remember ever having seen before.

He looked around. His nose was almost to the carousel. He was drawn to it. What type of supernatural power is this, Marwan wondered. More likely, it was a hallucination. Or a mind-altering drug, the types experimented with to induce psychopathy, or for use as a truth serum, or. . . the date rape drugs, both of which altered the state of one’s mind so that the individual was unaware of his surroundings, suffered from impaired judgment, released many natural inhibitions, and resumed sobriety without many mental faculties—namely, short term memory loss.

His hand brushed against the side of a handsome ivory horse. Marwan was standing on the carousel, the lights whirling all around him. The music. The lights. The music. Strange, sad notes that stirred some sensation within him, some distant memory beyond reach. . . it blurred. His vision blurred, his thought process slowed. I’m becoming unconscious, he thought. The same effect. I wonder what psychotropic drug is being

Then all was black and his thoughts came to a sudden halt, his body falling the way it did in dreams of long ago. . .

The sensation of falling continued, and Marwan felt his senses and mental faculties returning to him at an accelerating speed. He supposed his body had reached terminal velocity, 9.81 m/s². It was a common physics constant, one memorized by every first year physics students. It represented the speed that any object falling towards earth would approach, and, if given enough time, climax. The formula representing the velocity of an object opened with the figure for the initial velocity. However, Marwan reflected, he didn't have that figure. If one replaced a certain variable with 0, the formula would tell him how long it would take before he smashed into the ground. Unfortunately, he had none of the requisite givens to calculate that length of time, and certainly, he had no idea how much time had passed, or where, in fact, he was.

For it was highly unnatural and inconceivable that merely touching a plastic decoration on a carnival carousel would send him flying through the air. Was he still in the meadow? He reached out his hand, fumbling for nothing but air. Smash. With a jolt, Marwan felt his body make contact with the ground, jarring his bruised ribcage. He heard a snap and felt a rush of potent pain coming from his outstretched wrist. He guessed it was broken. Marwan rolled over onto his back, blinking up at the sky. It was grey and cloudless, with neither sun nor moon to speak of. He frowned. That was highly improbable, that neither the sun nor the moon would be whirling at an angle within Earth's visibility. And also that the sky would be grey without the presence of clouds. He supposed it could be smog of some sort, or perhaps condensation, but saw no hint to either.

After a moment, Marwan realized he no longer heard the strange, sad music. And the lack of bright lights was pleasantly conspicuous. Other than the fiery pain materializing in his right wrist, this world might be heaven for its lack of sensory stimuli. He breathed slowly in. . . and out. . . Just like Dr. Rainer had taught him. His own mind was in a blissful state, happy to remain lying on the wilting grass. In the corners of his vision he saw the trees ringing the meadow, somber for dearth of leaves or blooms. Barren. That was the first word that came to mind. When writing speeches for opening statements, Marwan had been told to use descriptive vocabulary. Despicable instead of terrible. Prosper instead of do well. Barren instead of empty. His creative writing teacher had said the same thing.

Get up. Walk away.

The voice, Marwan mused, was quite the same as the one that had cajoled him to climb onto the carousel. Clearly, not the best decision maker in the world. For he was suddenly, painfully aware that wherever he was, it was far from home, likely past ten, and nowhere recognizable. And his friends. . . he wasn't sure whether they were around here or not. Likely, they were.

He sat up. All around him, he saw the meadow, and the thought occurred fleetingly. It looked as though it was hastening towards death. It was dying. No leaves to be seen, the grass turning yellow and dry. Dust. The sky looming over him overcast without clouds or condensation. The whole place was slowly dying. Beside him, the carousel, its extravagant colors and lights and music now gone, broken, with the horses and mirrors lying in shards around it. The paint faded. All of it seemed strangely unnatural and dangerous, with the air of impending peril heavy around him. Wherever he was, Marwan felt it forebode evil. With Dr. Rainer's help, he had been able to identify and recognize his own emotions and intuitions. This one was practically screaming at him.

Go. Don't look back. Just get up and walk away.

He stood, hugging his right arm to his chest, the wrist dangling at an odd angle. One impossible when the bones and tendons were at their normal state. His body, Marwan was sure, was no longer maintaining adequate homeostasis. The wrist was broken. The world around him remained. The meadow was the same. But the surroundings were different. Besides the obvious lack of life, he realized this was not Shalebridge. Unsteadily, he advanced, the pain now acute and burning. But the voice had commanded, and, somehow, he found it difficult to resist. Strangely, a relevant Supreme Court ruling didn't come to mind as he shuffled forward, his feet leaving shadowed imprints in the dying grass.