Free A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) by L.H. Cosway

features because her entire body was pulsating
with energy, vibrating with long threads of incorporeal waves. Waves that were
flowing from the mess of blood and guts and hacked up limbs that were on the
floor encircled by the women, who were wildly and ravenously devouring the
fresh human remains. They licked the spilled blood from the floor, bit into the
ripped flesh, crunched the bones with their teeth, sucked out the marrow.
Crack. Crack. Crunch.
     Something inside of me wanted to stop them, to put an end to the
cannibalistic and inhuman act that was taking place. But not only did I want
them to stop, I also wanted to punish them, because what they were doing hit me
deep inside of my heart. Struck a chord with my morality, my faith in humanity,
and even though I’d seen many an atrocity in my life, this was undoubtedly the
worst.
     For a moment I didn’t care that I was amongst monsters, that if I made
my presence known I might very well be the next victim on their list. I had to
act. I let out an almighty scream, probably the loudest noise I had ever made,
timid and shy as I normally am. But the women didn’t budge, didn’t hear a
sound. I shouted, “Stop this! Stop this now!” but still none of them turned to
look at me, didn’t act as though they heard me at all.
     Even the woman up on the altar didn’t look at me or acknowledge my
presence, and right then I had a feeling that maybe this was just a dream.
Not real at all. Because surely if it had been real then these murderous
cannibals would have heard my screams and my shouting. And then, sure enough,
just as I was thinking this, something began to drag my body backwards, like an
extremely powerful gust of wind.
     Back, back I went, across the room, to where the whole episode had
begun. Dimmer and dimmer the scene faded from my vision. Faded to black until I
woke up, sweating and gasping for breath in my bed. I ran my hands down my face
and over my body to make sure I was really there, safe in my bedroom in Gran’s
house.
     I sat up and shifted to the edge of the bed, pulled on a jumper because
even though I was sweating, I was also freezing cold. Which didn’t make one bit
of sense, but less and less was making sense to me. My throat was almost too
dry to swallow without pain so I went downstairs to get a glass of water, the
clock in the kitchen said it was four-thirty in the morning. I took my water
and sat down at the kitchen table by the window.
     It was a quiet, starless night. I tried to focus my thoughts on
something, anything other than what I had just witnessed. Dream or not, it was
the most shocking and frightening thing I had ever seen. The images were
imprinted into my brain, and try as I might they weren’t shifting. I didn’t
want to think about the implications of such a dream, what exactly it meant.
     If I’d learned anything from my obsession with Buffy the Vampire
Slayer , it was that freaky dreams such as the one I’d just had meant
trouble was coming. Although my trouble would be the kind involving a strait
jacket, instead of the dangerous adventure variety, ultimately culminating in
triumph over an evil adversary. No, my life was certainly not a television
show.
     When I finished every last drop of the water in my glass I returned to
the sink for another and then sat back down again. What could be going on with
my brain, throwing out such a horrendous dream, straight out of a horror film?
I’ve thought about some messed up things in my time, like what it would be like
to kill a man (my dad, not that I’d ever act on it, of course) but this, this
scene of monstrosity, it really was something else. I took a Xanax for my
nerves and then sat in that seat in Gran’s kitchen for the rest of the night,
replaying my “dream” over and over again in my head. Never once deigning to
return to bed to sleep, I wasn’t going back to wherever it was I’d visited.
     
    The next day at school I skip lunch to go to the computer room, I