Your hands are shaking and you stare at them at if that will keep them steady. You try to ignore the shouts from downstairs. They haven’t found you yet.

Releasing a deep breath, you grip the test tube tighter and stare intently at the end of the pipette in your opposite hand. Gently, you squeeze and release one drop of bromine into the test tube.

One.

It fizzles when it makes contact with the blue liquid already inside. You ignore the sound of feet running up the stairs.

You squeeze the pipette again, letting out another small drop.

Two.

The muffled shouts are closer now, and your heart is beating loudly in your ears. Somehow, you keep your hands steady, and pinch the end of the pipette.

Three.

Fists pound on the lab door, and your breath is choked out of you in a mixture of fear and surprise. The pipette falls from your hand.

“Professor, open up!” a shrill voice shouts from behind the door. The doorknob rattles, and more shouting ensues.

You don’t have time to look, just to scramble to the ground and pick up the pipette. Squatting, you drip another bead of bromine into the test tube.

Four.

You only — a loud slam against the door — need — your mouth is dry with fear — one more — a loud crack, and the sound of running feet — drop.

You squeeze again, and the last droplet of bromine waits on the tip of the pipette, as if refusing to fall. You can hear feet stop just behind you, and hands grab at your shoulders, but it’s alright, because — hiss — the last drop has fallen into the test tube.

Five.

“It’s complete,” you whisper hoarsly, and the hands clawing at your shoulders stop. The test tube is warm in your grasp, and you stand and hold it up for all to see.

You blink

And look briefly over your shoulder, but only half turning your head. Did you hear footsteps? Or was it just your imagination following close behind? Looking, once again, steadfastly forward, your warm breath exhales into… what?

Steam?

You wonder briefly. Surely humans don’t breathe out steam. No. That can’t be right! It must be condensation… yes, that’s it. Condensation.

It may sound odd to others, but you often chat to yourself inside your head when you are nervous.

And you are nervous now.

This walk is short and pleasant on a crisp spring evening, or a shining summer’s day. But now! In the dead of winter… It’s cold. And dark. And somehow longer.

Perhaps you should have listened to the others and taken the bus. But as usual, you know best. You laughed at their caution.

Startled you spin round.

Yes!

Certain this time that you heard footsteps.

You turn to run and slam into the strong chest of a strong man. He grabs your arms as you bounce off him.

“Whoa! Steady… Are you alright, miss?”

The question is genuine, but your heart is pounding with fear. He has you gripped by both arms. His grip is gentle, but your fear feels his strength.

From behind you hear the footsteps, closer. Ever closer.

Your mouth opens to eject the scream rising from your gut.

“Oh, hello dear. It’s Cassie, isn’t it?”

Your scream is throttled as you turn your head to the talking footsteps behind. The man’s soft grip releases you.

You stammer and answer to the middle aged lady and her dog. Yes, you are Cassie, you say.

“It’s me, dearie. Mrs Jackson.”

A giggle combined with a sob burbles from you.

It’s Mrs Jackson, your neighbour from two doors down! Without thinking, you hug her.

“I think she was a bit spooked by the dark,” says the soothing voice of the tall man.

Mrs Jackson laughs.

“Oh, hello Mr Thompson. Yes. I think you are right. She is new in this neighbourhood. Come with us Cassie, we can all walk home together.”

And nobody ever sees you again…

You just want to talk, but no one will listen. Your mind is clouded and you need someone to ride the storm out with you, but everyone wants to make the storm fade and move on. Everyone you try to talk to seems to just want you to shut up. So you do. But it doesn't help you feel better. If anything, you feel worse than ever as that storm begins to drown you. Words you can't say shower you and pool around your ankles. You wade deeper in as more people ignore you. The words are on your shoulders and are slowly trickling into your mouth. Vinegary and bitter. They hang on your tongue.

You've gone on ignored for so long that the water is at your nose and is draining into your lungs. A storm you couldn't ignore but couldn't face alone is drowning you. You try to keep your head above water by talking to yourself about it, but at the first whisper of the word "crazy", you stop. The water levels rise until they are hanging under your eyelids, beginning to cloud your vision. Your world view begins to drown in your issues and it's showing. Bitterness has clogged every part of you and is taking over your actions. Without even realizing it, your problems have drowned you, and you can only hope you resurface one day and begin to claw your way out of it.

Dearest,

It looks like you just need someone to care. You keep coming out of the girls' bathroom a little more red in the face, a little more crumpled in the shoulders. You keep your back to the wall and your shiny eyes to the floor. You clutch your sketchbook in front of you as if it were a shield. Only you know what's happened in your life to make a girl of sixteen walk the school halls like a shieldmaiden going to war.

You're brave. Someone should be telling you this everyday. It's hard to face the hordes of faces, all wrapped up in their own confusing worlds, all hoping that someone has it a little worse than they do, so that no one notices the ways they don't blend in. But you know what it means to stand out, to suffer. You're countercultural, a pioneer, a dreamer. The artists and heroes of tomorrow never had a hope of fitting in, in high school.

They weren't made to. They were made to shine, just like you are. And, my goodness, you're blinding bright. Like the sun, like a rocket. Most people don't know what to do with that kind of light. But there are a few, who know how to appreciate the warmth and the brightness, when they come across it. So hang onto this letter, and know that you're beautiful and unique,and it matters. It's making a difference.

Sincerely,

A friend, who's grateful for your light.

Toxic gas fills the chamber, choking your lungs. Light streams through the singular porthole to the outside of the ship, the bright blue light of the star outside illuminating the deadly yellow haze. You feel the drifting of your massive metal coffin, the star ship Bauldair drifting forever through space. Stomping boots echo around you, growing closer each second.

Do you still hold on?

Do you give in to the darkness?

In these last moments, what do you think of? Family? Friends? Your old life on Earth?

Against the haze, a shadow appears. Blotchy darkness against the blue light. Your throat is in excruciating pain, your voice lost long ago to the poison.

Do you struggle?

The shadow approaches your body and places an object against your back. You hear a voice call out, the voice distorted by the figures suit and incomprehensible due to your pain. As you feel yourself slipping from consciousness you hear a voice whispering into your ear, “Thank you.”

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The first thing you hear is beeping, over and over again. Just beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep… Hundreds of beeps accost you as you slowly drift from unconsciousness back to reality. The next sound that you can make out is a regular clicking noise, each click followed by rushing air. Click, woosh, click, woosh… These sounds continue for what feels like hours.

Gravity begins to give you a sense of direction, it tells you that you are lying down. Something is pressed against your back and head. You feel tightness all across your body, something held against your skin. The sensation is subtle, hardly noticeable. You drift between sleep and lucid consciousness as time ticks away, the beeping ever present.

It is hours, maybe days before your mind begins to become coherent, though the past is a hazy mess of disconnected thoughts.

Is it an effect of the toxic?

Did that actually happen?

Your body begins to ache as if triggered by your thoughts. A painful sensation crawls across your skin like laying in a pool of infected blood. Your eyes snap open and reality crashes upon you. As your eyes dart from corner to corner of the room, you piece together where you are. A hospital, laying in a hospital bed with the lights off. The only light in the room comes from the beeping device, a squid looking computer with wire tentacles stuck to your body, measuring you carefully. The word ‘Error’ fills most of the screen, blinking in time with the beeps.

On one side of the room is a cabinet with a counter. A sink sits centered next to containers of swabs and rags. With immense work you are able to sit up and take better stock of the room, seeing the closed door on the other side of the room and see yourself in the mirror against the wall.

It’s a tall mirror, allowing you to see your entire body as you lay in the hospital bed. Your face is obscured by a breathing apparatus, the device that is making the clicking sound. You recognize it, one of your friends aboard the ship had to wear one when their lungs collapsed.

What friend?

When did it happen?

Did it even happen?

A headache assaults you as you think back to your past. Images assault your eyes, disconnected thoughts all fighting each other to be the focus of your attention and none succeeding. One thought begins to take root stronger than the others, a singular purpose forcing other thoughts away, though the purpose is unclear you feel a deeper connection to the thought. Something primal that drives you. A number that is core to your being. The numbers 2548 and 1597.

Why are they important to you?

What do they mean?

Why do you care about them?

The numbers sit centered in your mind.

//Comments

I wrote this a while ago, and this is as far as I wrote. One of the problems faced with making a 2nd person story is that you have to predict what everyone might do given the situation. My friend gave me the idea to ask the reader questions to help guide them to the thoughts you want them to have at the specific point in the story. Hope you enjoyed it!

You are a human thief named Babs. You have left home with a pack of basic supplies (bed roll, flint, fishing line, various fish hooks, spices, a beat-up metal bowl, a spoon, some rope, several knives, a lockpick set, and a makeup set). Your plan is to make your way in the world, but if anyone presses and you're in your cups, you might admit you were sent from home for stealing a neighbor's heirloom brooch (your fifth such theft, first capture). You've been on your own for two weeks following a river when it becomes clear that you've grown bored and want to put your brilliant mind to use in your next great caper.

You know that there are two large towns where you can find fools, jewels, and tools. Capricus is the closer of the two, approximately fifty miles due north-northeast. You know that there is a festival to happen soon. Strangers and chaos are the perfect covers for vice. Steren is a few miles further but to the south. Here, you know, is a thieve's guild headquarters where you could get formal training and improve your skills, but not much opportunity for brilliant capers because cities with a thieve's guild tend to pay for theft protection. Crossing the guild isn't worth even the prettiest of baubles.

Do you head north, south, or stay where you are?

You're standing on a rock on the banks of a wide river. Next to you is someone you don't know very well. She might become your friend eventually, but for now she's just someone to stand next to on a rock on the banks of a wide river.

Blinking in the sun, you're not quite sure how you got here. Obviously you texted her two days ago to plan this hike and then drove here in your car, sweating bullets the whole time because as a general rule you don't make social plans. Regardless, you have no idea how any of this came to pass. You don't recognize yourself as you are in this moment.

You smile. You want to scream in a good way. You don't know why.

It's sunny but it's cold. You wipe at your runny nose and silently pray to whatever benevolent being that she didn't notice you do that. She's watching kayakers in the white water. She's paying no attention to you.

You watch the kayakers, too. They must be freezing. "They must be freezing," you say out loud.

She shakes her head, still watching the brightly colored humans. "They're wearing skirts."

"Ah," you nod with complete understanding. You don't know what skirts have to do with kayaks.

You look away and adjust your hat. It's colder than you thought it would be but you refuse to shiver. You fill your lungs with frigid river air. There isn't a cloud in the sky above you. It rained yesterday. Your smile is a grin this time.

"I love this."

She finally looks away from the river. She raises her eyebrows at you. "You love being cold and watching other people have fun?"

You shrug, stupid grin still plastered across your face. It feels like genuine fool's gold. "Yeah, I guess."

You don't know her well enough to tell her the truth. You love this because you forgot what it was like to look forward to something. The dark days of white walls and blue light are behind you. You just want to scream, "I forgot what it was like to be happy." But you don't. Instead, you hold the words on your tongue and taste them. They almost make you cry.

You turn your lighthouse beam of a face to the island behind you. You wipe your runny nose again and walk towards the trail that leads to only good things. Your friend follows you from the rock on the banks of a wide river, laughing.

The charred heat of summer is past. Those long days when heat ripples in waves throught the fir bows and maple and the sun sucks the moisture from the duff and moss. The nights cool, the owls quiet. And then comes the first rain. Puffs of dust rise like smoke as the first drops splat on deer trails worn raw, it runs away in rivulets, repelled by the desiccated dirt and so scarred by the summer sun it has forgotten the gift of the fall clouds. You don’t taste this first rain, most gets sucked by the gready mosses, but you smell it, a sweet hint at life to come, and you prepare. Most of your neighbors drank in the spring, drawing up the fridgid snow melt and growing rich with the young sun. But they have crisped and crinkled now, their seeds blown with dry winds and their stems laid down to rest with the fallen needles and detridus leaving this glut to those few of you who waited.

The second rain comes, and the third. These you drink, your wide net of miniscule albino tentacles sucking up the moisture, catching all in your wide spread net. You drink and drink, spreading, pushing, striving for a breath of air, a relief from the suffocating soil and the unending munching of the worms. You have waited with patience and a sympathetic ear through the long summer. But with the cool nights and the gray days of rain all patience is lost and you nearly burst with need. Another rain and you push free, gasping. You grow so fast that the sharp spruce needles are engulfed, leaving rust stains in your cream flesh still hidden. Up, up your flute pushes off the crust of leaves like the lid of a slow motiion jack-in-the-box; a known surprise yet all still jump. You grow fast, aware of your vulnerability. This is the first time you have risen above the surface since the bear. He came with his paws, larger than the bigleaf maple leaves, tearing. And his long tounge slurping you up. You almost did not survive that visit.

Half grown you withstand your first visitor. A chipmunk, black eyed and tail a-twitch, takes mouthfuls, eating away at you franticaly until some noise startles it, leaving you raked with yellow gashes. No matter, you grow still. And now other pieces of you have emerged, popping leaf-lids here and around. All are incarnations of a wider being, springing from that fine fillament web that is your soil-self. A raven sweeps in from a low branch, eyeing his choices with a sideways tilt. He starts with you, his beak taking a punch from your umprella edge. Then he hops to another of your selves and with precision snaps through your trunk with his obsidian razor beak. Cackling at his own cleverness he takes your severed body up and away to pick at it on some private perch.

The next rain splatters and you know its time, almost. You wait for the rain to stop, for a whisper of air to pass along the thick damp needle cast. It is while you are waiting that a last passer-by pauses before you and hunches over your selves by the huckleverry bush. With quick precise movements it slices you off close to the earth with an edge sharper than the raven’s beak. The spruce needles and oldman’s beard are picked away, then you are dropped into an over-sized nest, woven and neat. Many are taken away from the you that stays woven with the fiberous fir roots. The smallest of you are spared, along with your chipmunk-nibbled body. It came to that you and gave a gentle caress on the now crusted scars, rose up and moved away.

For seasons after the bear you had hidden below, healing. You wrapped yourself around new roots, fir and spruce, and fingered through the soil and duff. Now, on this gray day rich with the scent of decay, you reach the climax of your self above ground. That breeze you had been waiting for dances along the understory tickling your delicate folds. With a sigh, barely audible, you find your release and send a pale cloud of of regeneration. to dance with the wind awhile. Hopefully it will spread settling down, seeping in and begin a new network of befriended trees, no longer you anymore.

With that last life spreading breath this chipmunk and raven nibbled bit of you is reclaimed, melting back into the duff. Disolving down with heavier rains you ooze to feed your soil-self, perhaps to be incarnated again next season with the soft patter and sweet smell of rain.

You know, in lots of ways, that your parents are finally spiraling, but it's the quiet that really sticks.

The yelling stops.

There are no more broken cups or ripped up papers.

Your mother switches to the night shift, and your father brushes past her in the mornings without a word.

You get the feeling that you are supposed to be quiet, too.

Quiet doesn't fit your bones right, after that.