Excerpt:

“You are late,” the teacher screeched, her eerie high-pitched voice sending tremors through my spine.

And that was all it took. My lifetime full of an attempt to conceal my true feelings was all gone. My much-strained efforts in showing only a mask of serene calmness were thrown away with my reaction to those three simple words.

Rage built up through my body as it fully incapacitated me. I stood completely still as fire burned through my bones and my muscles strained beneath my skin, my veins attempting to burst open my suddenly exposed skin. My brain seems as though it was going to break through my skull. Just when I thought my brain could not expand any longer, it surprised me by continually expanding until I could no longer think straight. My thoughts were incoherent, muffled by the burning fire and the tremors ripping up and down my body like an earthquake.

At the point of complete burning, my mind seemed to break away from the rest of my body. I could feel my soul ripping slowly away from my body, though the throbbing in my bones was still present without any intention of stopping. I watched from what seemed as slow motion as my body stood completely still, along with my teacher and everyone else in my class. Nobody seemed to have moved in this long moment of agony, though I was in too much pain to contemplate why this was happening.

Suddenly all the pain completely stopped. Almost as quickly as it appeared, the fire was gone, leaving only a pain free bliss. I could feel my mind and soul rising higher and higher as I watched my body stand utterly still from a standpoint way below.

It was a dream, I was almost positive, though it felt so real I could hardly be sure. At first, I was relaxing a pool, all of my fears melting away like pasta in a pot of boiling water. I was lying down on a see-through blue raft, not worrying about anything else than just settling my nerves.

Unexpectedly the lovely clear pool transformed into a wide, yet still calm, ocean. I braced my body instinctively, tensing as if for a war. The serene ocean began harboring waves, which quickly turned choppy and hazardous. I attempted to sit up as I felt a tiny beating sensation on my back, yet I was unable to move. It felt as though there were miniscule rocks being thrown at my back from underneath the ocean and I gazed through the raft to have my suspicions confirmed.

The rocks only thumped at my back for several minutes before the soft thud of their arrival became spiky and held the resemblance of an insignificant sharp edge. I glanced down to see pines being tossed at my back, which mysteriously morphed into razor-sharp, skinny needles right before my eyes.

The needles then changed into swordfishes, beating their prickly noses into my back. I felt a slight sense of unease as my back refused to move from the raft, which seemed to be ripping apart little by little from the simultaneous attacks. The key scare came from the last modification, when the swordfishes stretched and amended their bodies until they developed into man-eating sharks.

These sharks resembled no regular sharks, as they embraced permanent grimaces and ravenous looks among their too-human pretenses. The sharks slashed and tore their teeth through the immensely weak raft that suddenly ripped to shreds beneath my body. The last thing I remember was looking down at the multitude of sharks as the sensation of falling overcame me and took hold of my consciousness.