I wake up, and this time I don't meet a cold, wooden floor. 

I don't move a muscle, too confused with my mind to sort reality from fiction. So, I close my eyes, and absorb the way that my head, comfortable and covered in soft pillows, and my body warped in warm clouds, becomes numb and slug, like jelly. I pretend this is my reality instead, where I don't think of masks and death but the want, the desire, for it not to exist. 

But then I open my eyes, and I feel eyes on me.

Then I hear these god-awful rustles and grunts, and I get up to start my day, but with a sense of confusion, caution, and most relevant, disgust. 

I don't move to get ready for school, but I walk straight next door and swing the already cracked door open. 

"Hey Zach-," I received a greeting from my little brother with his hands down his pants. I turn away, covering my eyes with one of my hands "Bro-I-.! H-haven't I told you if you really need to do that, lock your door and keep it down. You live with three other people, man."

I get a pillow thrown at my face in response. "You could have knocked." Zachary said, sounding more annoyed then embarrassed. 

"You don't get knocks in this household." I laugh, shrugging my shoulders playfully. 

Zachary glares at me. "And you could have ignored me."

I eye the adult film playing loudly on Zachary's phone. "It's like seven in the morning and your room is next to the bathroom. I couldn't even if I wanted to." I said. 

"It's not my fault I'm a growing man." Zachary bites back.

I snort. "Man is a strong word." I said. 

"Oh, shut up dude!" He finally turns off his phone, throwing it somewhere on his bed. "You don't have time to ruin my fun time. Go get ready for school before ma grinds your ass."

"You make no sense," I said. I lean against the doorframe, my blond hair tickling my cheeks and brushing against the smooth wood. "You need to get up and get ready-actually you should already be on the bus. Don't tell me you're playing sick again."

"You wish, fuck brain," Zachary said. I roll my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. Why does Zachary feel the need to talk so aggressively all the time? "I have off today, and your loser ass has a half a day. And ma's making you go-!"

"What?" My feet, bare under the cold ground, shiver with my nerves. I tuck my hands in my pajama pockets, seeking warmth in my palms. "You shouldn't have off-you never have off. Is it some holiday or something?"

"Should I care?" Zachary smirks. "You old people will be out the house while I do whatever the fuck I want!"

I roll my eyes, but I crack a laugh. "You're literally starting high school next year dude, so you're not staying young forever." I said.

Zachary flips me off. "Just throw me back my pillow please."

I snort, but bend down to pick it up, only to realize two things. 

I have a half a day. I don't remember having a half a day for at least another month.

And I have nine toes. 

I scream. 

One, two, three, seven, eight, nine—I have only nine toes, the tenth little toe bare and showing nothing but hollow bone. There's no skin, no blood, but a piece of a skeleton popping out my foot, covered by a see-through piece of blue skin. It doesn't hurt; it's not painful, but I almost feel numb, naked in that area, like a part of me was taken under my eyes without its absence affecting me, until I remember toes are a part of my foot, which is a part of my body, and holy crap my toe-! 

"What?!" My brother hops off the bed, ready to come near me. I raise my hands up, shifting my body and leaning against the door. "Nothing!" I yell back.

My brother stares at me, like he's both worried because of my scream and annoyed that I made him worry. "What's wrong?"

I laugh, but my hands are shaking behind the door frame. "Just though I saw a spider." I said, eyeing my blue toe. 

Zachary looks like he doesn't believe me, but he also looks like he knows I don't want him to ask any more questions. 

"Throw me my pillow dammit." I bend down and quickly throw it at his outstretched hand. He glares at me when he doesn't catch it. 

"Just please lock the door next time a-and turn down the volume. B-both ways." I stutter out, my eyes glued to my toe. "W-we can hear it and you." Before slamming Zachary's door shut behind me, I ignore Zachary's loud cussing echoing through his door.

I run to my bedroom and shut the door.

My eyes, perplexed and fearful, wander to my missing toe. For god's sake, I would rather have a chopped off toe than one that's just missing, dust and hollow blue smoke now coming out of it like its dispersing, disappearing into nothing. It feels like nothing, which is odd, because it looks like it's supposed to hurt, but it doesn't, and I should be freaking out way more than I am, but I'm both afraid and calm, like I'm alive and dead. 

"Andrew." There's a loud knock on my door. I already know it's my pops on the other side. "What are you doing taking so long? You have school. Get moving quicker, eh?"

"A-alright pops!" I said, an awkward laugh following behind my words. My pops doesn't move from the door. He takes a minute to breath, like he's thinking up something and finally remembered. 

"Oh right, my car was acting up again, so I borrowed yours yesterday." He said, he takes a second and shifts, like he's leaning against the door. "I didn't fill up your tank…I don't think you're too low to make it to school and back okay. I'll fill up the tank when you get home."

"It's alright pops," I said. I'm staring at my toe, not thinking at all. "I should be okay."

"Sorry about that, son." I can hear the smile in his voice. "Get going, eh?"

"I will, pops." I said. 

"And try to beat your mom home and come before the last train." He continues. "You know your mum hates it when you stay out late on a weekday."

"Alright, pops." I said. 

"And I'll make sure to look at those doors for you. Crap, I forgot to yesterday-."

"Pops," I said; I hear a hitch of breath, "It's okay. It's fine. It happens. I appreciate it." I laugh, snorting at my dad's clumsiness. "I'm gonna get ready now."

I hear him pause, share a quick laugh back, and leave; his loud footsteps linger in my mind. I don't move right away, but I take a minute to stare at my missing toe, feeling everything and numb simultaneously.

Wait, when did my car ever have door handle problems?

I frown at my bedroom door, like my dad was still there, talking to me. I didn't contemplate too much on the shitty car doors though. Instead, I collected my bath stuff, and open my bedroom door.

 …

When I head out my front door and try to open my car, my doors really were busted or something because of the hard tugs I had to omit on the car handles to get in. Even shutting the door was a hassle, taking a good slam to close it good. When I finally get settled and start the car, I roll down the road, ready to get to school early, but I don't expect the main roads to school to be closed. 

And I didn't expect that my pops almost blew most of my gas.

I don't let it linger in my mind. I mean, it's probably enough gas to get back home, and if I take the back roads home, I should be fine. 

I scrunched my toes, reminding myself that one of ten is missing.

 …

The scene is the same, the actors are the same, but the only difference is that I'm both captain and goalie of the soccer team again, and now we have practice today until the evening, and we have to wear practice jerseys this time. 

Oh, and the scene is written again; instead of water boy, Sebastian helps set up and clean during practices, so he's water boy plus the maid. 

Oh, and Coach H has a bigger pot belly and rages more when you look at his bigger pot belly and not his face. So, I'll never let my eyes wander again.

Oh, and there's Kyle being Kyle.

Oh, and soccer still sucks.

"You need your water re-filled?"

I run a hand through my short blonde hair, feeling drops of sweat adorn my cheeks and flow like a river down my arms. It's about fifteen minutes before practice ends, and this is the second time I've interacted with Sebastian all day (the first was when he almost dropped the goalie on my foot when I said hi to him first, which was weird because I usually try to greet him when I see him-does he hate me that much?). I've barely spoke to him until now, but I know my eyes kept glancing at him, or mostly his back-to-not-white-hair-but-it-was-white-yesterday hair. Kyle keeps asking me why I kept peaking at Sebastian, but if I told him I saw a completely different Sebastian from what we usually know, he would laugh in my face (worse than when I insisted we play football), and I really can't take another Kyle-laughs-in-my-face without breaking a fuse this time.

"Uh…" I shake my empty water bottle, hearing an absence of waves inside the plastic bottle. I didn't even realize I was running low, probably because of the adrenaline coursing through my veins. "Yeah, sure. Thanks man." I said.

 He grabs my water bottle; our hands touch, and I feel this spark, this rush that ignites through my blood. It's a sensation that almost causes me to push him back, but the more we touch, the more I see blood, and snow, and masks, and death again, and again, and again, like previews of movie scenes rolling in my mind.

Then, our hands rip apart, our eyes lock, and our breath match a haggard melody of tension. The water bottle loudly drops and rolls, the water remaining inside squish violent in its containments. 

"I-." I started, surprised.

"What-?" Sebastian asked.

We stare at each other until I look away first, my fingers tingling, my lungs hot, my mind racing, and my face flushed. Sebastian bends down to pick up the water bottle and rolls it in his hands. He stares at the sports label, his large hands easily cuffing the wide water bottle, and there's a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Your hair," I suddenly start, contemplating what I'm about to say next, but then I say it, confused by my own patterns of speech, "was it ever white?"

Sebastian looks up at me. For the longest moments, he stares at me, a flabbergasted expression on his face. I don't know if I was reading his face right. I don't even know why those were the words I plucked and picked out my vocabulary, but I waited, silently, coherently, coaxing him with my eyes to respond. 

"N-no," he stutters and shakes his head, "b-but why?"

"I-." I sigh, "I saw white hair. On you. Yesterday. And the day before. Didn't I?"

Sebastian doesn't look weirded out, or perplexed, or confused, but crude. "No." He said curtly. 

"Okay, yeah." I sniff. "Sorry, probably someone else."

Sebastian doesn't respond but opens the cap and fills the water bottle up to its brim. He closes the lid and lifts the bottle, ready to hand it to me, but not without doing a once over at something a few feet away. 

"They seem close, huh?" I turn and spot Kyle and Jessi talking during our break, Kyle laughing at something Jessi said, Jessi playing with her hands, her pale cheeks a little rosier than normal.

I take time to take the scene in, before I look at Sebastian, nodding my head. 

"Yeah, they do." I said. "Closer than ever." I said. 

 …

We end forty minutes after 6:00 P.M. because Big H is upset that he had to drive his kid to school for some rehearsal instead of sleeping in, but then complains he hates kids, so why have them? Because? Because, because.

Because.

I walk with Kyle to the parking lot, the one in front of our high school, sweat and ache hugging my skin. Out of laziness and a series of skeptical appraisals, I only put on my sports teams' matching sweats and left with Kyle, mostly because it's cold--freezing almost--and that dream of that masked thing coming for me again scares me enough to be fully ready to run and-well--because it could be a dream, or it could be reality.

I don't know which, and that--that makes me scared. I feel more petrified about an entity that I don't even know exists then the homework assingment I have due in a few days.

Kyle presses a button on his keys and opens his car parked a few rows down and waves in parting: his mum on the other side of the phone tucked to his ear. Kyle sounds exhausted, but he still has this tired smile on his face until his turns away, and I can't seem his smile anymore. 

I shout a goodbye before heading to my car, a pair of red keys readied in my hand. I hop in and shut my door, my eyes shift upward, spotting Sebastian walk past my car, towards his own. I sit up, suddenly attentive, my eyes staring at the now shadow of a boy who once stood in front of my sight. 

I stay fixated on the empty spot until finally, I turn my keys and start the car's ignition. 

I haven't taken the back roads home in months, but I remember it enough to make no mistakes or wrong turns. You take a left turn from Don's Donuts, take a right on Old Billboard Street, take another right on Grape Vine Avenue, and head straight for a quarter mile until you come across train tracks from the local station. Then you keep going straight and eventually, you get to my house.

Ironically, I didn't make it past the train tracks, but right in front of them, or so I thought I did, until I felt something hit the back of the car's trunk, hard. My back jerks, my hands almost slip from the driver's wheel by the sweat already on my palms; there's sweat forming on my forehead, my neck, under my shirt, near my neckline. I'm sweating profusely--actually--my nerves in bundles of flames, screaming at me loud enough for the drum of my heart to plunge my ears. 

I shake my head, groaning and hitting my forehead on the steering wheel. Of course, I run out of gas right before I get home. Of course. Because why? Just because the world likes to fuck with me at the worst times. 

I groan but shake off the self-pity and frustration ready to surface. I grab the car door handle and try to open the door. Fail one. I try again. Fail two. One more time. Three times a failure. I take a minute and sit back, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. I'll just call my pops to get me. If it's not seven, I should still have some time to try to get the door open and call for help.

I reach for the driver's seat to grab my phone and turn it on.

6:52 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

I turn off my phone and turn it back on. 

6:52 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

One more time.

6:53 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

I panic. 

I grab my phone and type in my passcode. I go to my contacts and look for my pops. When I finally find his contact, I click on call and pressed the phone to my ears, continuing to tug the door.

Ring.

One ring.

Ring.

Two rings.

Ring.

Three rings.

I click the end call button and try again, pressing the phone to my ear and trying for the driver's seats' door.

Ring.

One ring.

Ring.

Two rings.

Ring.

Three-

"Andy?"

I gasp in relief, hurrying to the back seats' doors and trying for their handles.

"Hey pops." I greet breathlessly. "Sorry to bother you, but I need your help. I'm-."

“Can this wait bud? I'm kind of at work." I can hear my pops whispering, the phone tightly clutched closely to his mouth. "I'm not really supposed to be on my phone right now…Can I call you back?”

I can hear it. 

I can hear this loud horn, screaming. The distance is closing in on me, and I'm certain time's losing a close race. 

I swing my elbow and try to break the car window, but nothing is working. I swing harder, but the glass only bounces back, mocking me. I can feel my breath become shallow, lost in my anxiety and ultimate doom.

"Pops," I breath, hollowly. "Pops, I'm stuck, and there's a train." I can hear my voice creak, tears threatening to escape my blue eyes. There's this click in my ear, but I can't hear it over my cracking voice. "Pops, I'm stuck and there's a train and I'm stuck-I'm stuck, and I can't-I can't get out and the door's n-not-and I can't. Pops, I can't…I can't get out-!"

I realize the click was my phone, the call long ended and gone. I look back at the time, my breathing hitched, shallower under the half-moon staring down at me for the last time. 

6:57 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

The train gets louder, closer. 

This time I'm shaking, the phone clutched in my hand, my conscious self, lost at what to do.

Until a light intersects the darkness, and my eyes squint to see what's beyond my car window and on the other side of the train tracks. 

A car door opens, slams, and all I see is white hair and blue eyes run towards me. 

6:58 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

Sebastian or Not-Sebastian-but-has-to-be-Sebastian bangs on my car door, worry and fear on his face. He's pulling the car door handle, but the handle breaks under his strength. He throws the handle in frustration and turns his head, but stops, his face gone pale. He franticly bangs on the car window, screaming something through my pounding ears.

6:59 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

"-ack up." I look up, my watery eyes reading his loud lips, "Back up!" He screams.

I move back and put my arms up, where I feel pieces of glass shards scratch my face, hitting my cheek and bare neck. I hear the loud train pouncing on the tracks, only seconds to smashing me and my car in billions of bloody, grimy pounds of flesh. Not-so-Sebastian grabs me first by the back of the neck, then my waist, finally my legs, and pulls me out of the car and falls hard on the grassless ground of mud and rubble. 

7:00 P.M. October 31st, 2018. 

The train arrives, and runs over my car, breaking glass, metal, and steel, turning my car into vehicle soup.

Not-so-Sebastian-but-has-to-be-Sebastian sits up, groaning in pain. 

"Jesus Christ..." He mumbles, before his large hand grabs me and shakes my trembling shoulders. "What the hell were you thinking stopping on train tracks?! Are you crazy-?"

I sniff.

Sebastian turns me from my side to flat on my back, looking down at me with surprise as I cry, loud and snot filled and gross and ugly and filled with every fear and trepidation and weakness that rolled through my bones and my veins through waves, filling my lungs in desperation. I sit up, and cry. I hug myself, and cry. I close my eyes and shut them as hard as I can and fucking cry my eyes out, shivers raking my already cold body. I don't realize Sebastian's holding me in his arms until his big arms hug me warmly in his chest, his soft hair tickling my cut cheeks and neck. 

"Sorry," Sebastian apologizes like all this fear, all this agitation, this misgiving of consternation was in his hands and not my shitty luck. "I'm sorry."

I'm trying to breathe through wet tears and mucus and a scratched throat, but I'm also trying to hold everything in—even the air exhaling through me—because maybe the bridge that's already falling can keep in something, anything. 

Sebastian pats my back, his big hand slowly rubbing up and down in comfort. For a minute, I didn't care if white haired Sebastian and black-haired Sebastian are the same guy, but if they both carried the same warmth, that—to me—is all that mattered. 

It was then I realized, maybe the reason why I let him hold me, see me vulnerable and scared under the half-broken moon is because he brought warmth to this sudden cold artifact, build to be my reality.

Then the iron realization that I knew was staring at me, fearlessly, through my eyes like glass.

Because it is reality.

Because it is reality.

Because I keep dying, and I don't know why.