SECRETS BEST UNKEPT

-Chapter 8: Fire Dream-

The heat was unbearable. Hot smoke seared his lungs as he fought to crawl to the door. A door he could not find. All around him, he could hear the sound of glass exploding from the heat of the fire.

He tried to call out the names of the others there. But they stuck in his throat. Not Egon, or Ira, or any of the others in the center. This wasn't that place. It was another. A place he knew but could not remember. What was he doing here? What were their names? He had to call out to them. To reach them somehow.

He tried to call out to them, but there was no voice in him. Somewhere in another room, someone started calling his name.

"Bryce!" Egon shouted as he tried to awaken his thrashing roommate. "Bryce, wake up."

Bryce suddenly sat up.

"It's cold," he said, sounding relieved.

"Yeah. They like to keep the heat in here down to about sixty-eight." Egon told him. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. Sorry I woke you."

Bryce had been at the center for about a week, and he and Egon had become good friends in that time. When asked, once, what Bryce's favorite dream was, Bryce had replied that rather than dreaming he did mathematical equations and computations in his sleep."

"What happened?" Egon teased him. "You forget the fifty-seventh digit of pi?"

"No," Bryce admitted. "Strangely, I think I just had a dream for once."

"What was it about?" Egon asked.

"There was a fire and I couldn't find everyone."

"A bonfire?"

"No. The bad kind."

Egon looked seriously at Bryce. "That's not a dream. That's a nightmare."

Bryce nodded. "It was really scary. But the scariest thing is that I don't normally dream at all."

"Maybe it isn't a dream," Egon suggested. "Maybe it's the beginning of a memory. Why don't you talk to Dr. Anderson. She's supposed to be your therapist. Right?"

"Dr. Jill Anderson, yeah," Bryce recalled. "I'll talk to her in the morning."

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