ABOMINATIONS

KYLE

Kyle knew he was dreaming. It was just like when Andi would talk to him when he was alone, he knew it was all in his head, but it felt so real. The ponytail that fell down his back was matted, thick, and obviously brown. Kyle's hair hadn't been brown since he was in high school. He finally looked from his hands and hair to the surface in front of him, which focused into view as a desk. There was a piece of paper on his desk, the words TRIG TEST 4 jeering up at him from the top of the paper. An unsharpened pencil sat next to the paper. Everyone else around him was crouched over their desks, scribbling on their papers and typing numbers into their calculators. Kyle felt sweat beading on his forehead. He couldn't be back here. He didn't study for this test.

He raised his hand and the teacher lowered her glasses to the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Mr. Morris?" She asked, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was annoyed by the intrusion.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" Kyle asked, feeling small.

The old hag of a teacher rose from her chair and walked over to his desk, looming over him and placing one gnarled hand on his desk to grab his paper and pick it up. "You haven't even written down a single thing," she cawed, drawing the attention of several students in the class. "What have you been doing these past fifteen minutes, Mr. Morris? Daydreaming?"

She seemed to be getting taller, craning her neck and staring down her nose at Kyle with piercing black eyes. Kyle was really sweating now, and he could feel the burning sensation of a whole class set of eyes on him. "Can I go to the bathroom?" He repeated in an unsure voice.

The teacher shrunk back, taking his test with her. "Go ahead. I'll just keep this for you while you're gone," she hissed, making her way back to her desk. As soon as his beeline to the door was clear, Kyle jumped up out of his desk and ran out into the hallway. Sweat was pouring down his face and he took several deep breaths as he looked to the left and right down hallways that seemed to warp and go on forever.

"Okay, Kyle, get it together," he told himself, trying to remember the layout of his old school and setting off in the direction he hoped the bathroom was. "This is definitely a dream. Do you remember falling asleep? No, that's stupid, nobody can remember falling asleep." He pinched himself hard on the arm and hissed through his teeth at the pain but nothing changed. The lockers around him seemed to briefly shiver. This wasn't even his high school. The teacher whose lair he had just escaped wasn't even a real teacher. This wasn't his high school, it was a thinly veiled hell. "What the fuck," he said to himself. "What the FUCK!"

"Kyle?"

Not now. Not fucking now.

Kyle didn't even turn to look in the direction the all-too-familiar voice was calling to him from, he just started running. But this body was not his, it was not toned and athletic because Kyle was lazy in high school, and his lungs screamed for air and his jelly legs couldn't run fast enough. The hallways twisted, shrunk, grew, and pulsed around him, and Kyle felt like he was going to throw up. He was barely moving when a hand grabbed his arm and yanked him around.

Trapped, tired, and unable to move, Kyle met eyes with Andi. But it wasn't really Andi. It was Andi from high school, the Andi who only had one set of eyes and who had unnecessarily long, wavy brown hair and supple skin that wasn't blue and holy fuck, Kyle thought he was going to die, he spent so much time not looking at her when she appeared to him, and it had been years since he had seen her like this, and her beauty was astounding, and overwhelming. "Fuck," he whispered.

Andi's face seemed to move delayed compared to her voice. "You can't be here," she said, her voice flat, missing its usual airiness.

"I know," Kyle said. "I'm stuck."

There were tears in her eyes and Kyle wasn't sure what to do. He was frozen, even when Dream Andi grabbed his face and their mouths collided. When he finally gained control and kissed her back he tangled his fingers in her long brown hair. This was all wrong, said the voice in the back of his head. You never kissed Andi in high school. She didn't even know you liked her. But he ignored the voice and let it happen, let himself enjoy those familiar lips against his, and neither of them acknowledged the obvious flow of tears that traveled down Kyle's cheeks and soiled the fronts of his and Andi's shirts. When he finally gained some sense back he pushed her away and stumbled backwards, his head spinning. Andi stood still, looking somewhere behind Kyle.

"I love you," Kyle said, reaching towards Andi to embrace her. "Please come home."

Andi took a few steps back, avoiding Kyle's outstretched arms. "You can't be here," she said again, crying almost as much as Kyle was.

"Come home," Kyle shouted, anger mixing with sadness in his stomach.

"I can't let him find me," Andi said, shaking her head, not making eye contact with Kyle.

"I'll protect you. We can leave, start over," Kyle begged, but he still knew this was a dream, and this still was not Andi that he was talking to. "I love you," he tried again, wiping his cheeks.

"I have to go, Kyle," Andi said. Kyle tried one more time to reach out and grab her but she was gone, vanishing right before his eyes, and he collapsed on the floor of the hallway. He raised a hand and smashed it on the tile, a guttural scream echoing from his throat all the way down the twisted hallways. He sobbed violently and stood up, punching the wall of lockers next to him. The pain wasn't enough to wake him up so he did it again and again, until red coated the white panels in front of him and his white knuckle bones were visible through a mess of blood on his skin.

"Wake up!" He screamed, and he reared his head back, throwing it towards the lockers with all the speed he could muster with the non-existent physics that were affecting him in this High School Hell, squeezing his eyes shut. But there was no impact, only cold air and dark behind his eyelids and when Kyle opened his eyes he was back in his room, drenched in a cold sweat, his fists clamped tightly at his sides. Trying to steady his breath, he glanced sidelong and the clock, reading 3:37 in bright red numbers.

"Motherfucker," he grumbled to himself, wiping the very real tears of his face before turning on the lamp and inspecting his hands for any signs of blood or split knuckles. The only thing there were the scars from when he actually did split his knuckles on things in the past, but when he ran his fingers over them, he could still feel a dull throbbing deep in his bones. He didn't want to go back to sleep, but it was too early for him to get up and do anything. He resorted to pulling his legs up close to him and sitting on his bed with the lamp on, staring at a nonspecific spot on the wall as he tried to process the nightmare he had just suffered through. Andi seemed to get realer and realer each time she appeared to him, whether in a dream or in the waking world, and Kyle was starting to lose his mind.

When he decided he was tired of thinking about it, he got up and dropped down to the floor, starting a set of push-ups, sit-ups, and lunges. He had been doing this for a while, starting to work up a sweat, when he heard clattering coming from the kitchen, like someone dropped a bowl into the sink carelessly. Definitely Skye. He looked over at the clock, which now read 4:25 AM. He decided to investigate, opening the door to his room to peek across the open living room into the kitchen. He could see Skye milling around, only the light above the sink turned on, not offering much visibility in the dim kitchen. His hair was a mess, he had obviously taken it out of the braids and slept with it down because it was sticking out in all directions. The TV in the living room was on, casting a low glow on the couch.

Kyle decided to investigate, and he walked out of his room, through the living room, and into the kitchen, where Skye was now rinsing his bowl. He startled when he turned and saw Kyle standing only a few feet from him.

"Christ," he whisper-screamed, setting the bowl down and pulling his robe tighter around himself. Skye usually slept either naked or in underwear, so the fact that he was wearing a robe and unconsciously making sure it was closed told Kyle that he was definitely naked underneath it. It almost made Kyle laugh.

"What are you doing?" He asked instead.

"Oh, I was just cleaning out my bowl. I had some ice cream."

"Ah. Okay."

"What are you doing up?" Skye asked, putting his hands in his robe pockets.

"I was just doing a few sets of push ups," Kyle said lamely.

"Why? It's like four in the morning."

"I had a nightmare," Kyle admitted, looking away from Skye and focusing instead on his neglected bowl in the sink, now full of water.

Skye's face softened. The three of them were close, but they didn't talk about things like this, almost ever. Kyle had no idea Skye was kicked out of his parents' house until just recently, and Max was still an enigma to him. Neither of them knew that Kyle was on antidepressants, or that he had hallucinations of Andi. But they did know about his nightmares, and they did know that he took Andi's disappearance pretty hard. The redhead put a hand on Kyle's shoulder but didn't say anything, offering silent comfort instead. It was not very often that Skye was quiet, and Kyle appreciated that he was, instead of trying to say something sappy and make Kyle feel pitiful and sad.

"Have you even gone to bed yet?" Kyle asked, trying to change the subject.

Skye's hand fell from his shoulder. "Yeah, for a little. I woke up at like, two, and I couldn't fall back asleep so now I'm binge-watching New Girl and I also got some ice cream, so," he said, trailing off with a small smile. "You're welcome to come watch with me. I can catch you up."

Kyle appreciated the offer, he really did, but he wasn't in the mood for watching some stupid show while Skye cackled next to him. He declined, grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge, and made his way back to his room. When he turned around and closed the door, he could see Skye standing where he had been in the kitchen, watching Kyle with an unreadable expression, his face bathed in the soft light from the TV. Kyle looked away and sat down in bed, leaving the door open just a crack. Eventually he could hear Skye make his way back to the couch, and then cracked open the water bottle and took a sip. He stared at the wall again until he finished it and laid back down in bed, turning his lamp off but not making an active effort to sleep.

It was probably a good idea to refill his antidepressants. Or maybe go to a therapist. As soon as he had that thought, he cringed to himself. Kyle had never liked therapy. He didn't think it did that much good. But he was able to admit that seeing hallucinations of his missing girlfriend were not normal. The fact that he could touch her most times as well made it worse in his mind. There was probably something seriously wrong with him.

Kyle didn't even dream when he finally fell back asleep. It was like he blinked and the sun had come out. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, checking around his room to make sure that Andi wasn't there. He took a deep breath and pulled his phone off of the charger, booting it up. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he scrolled through Facebook. Kyle wasn't one for social media. He never posted anything on his profiles, but rather used them to keep up with things he was interested in. Out of habit, he looked at Andi's profiles on Facebook and Instagram as well. Neither of them had been active since she had disappeared, as usual. He checked at least once every couple days. Maybe she would come back. He had tried texting and calling her a few times every now and then but after a while her number wouldn't even dial anymore, a chirpy female voice taunting him by telling him the number you have dialed is not in service at this time. It had been a while since he had deleted his text conversation with her. It hurt to much to read back into.

There was always the thought in the back of his mind that she left because of him. Even though they were happy together, or at least to Kyle they were, he had the notion that she didn't love him anymore and felt like she had to get out. For the first few days he thought that she had been kidnapped, but the fact that a suitcase, clothes, and her car was missing seemed to prove otherwise, and Kyle wasn't sure who would have kidnapped her with the exception of their boss, who had screamed at Kyle for what felt like hours trying to get Kyle to tell him "where he was hiding his girlfriend" and "why she would leave when he needed her so much". To this day, Kyle felt like that man still didn't quite trust him like he used to.

The longer he went without seeing her, hearing from her, the crazier Kyle felt. He had no idea where she was, what she was doing, or if she was okay. He just wished she would text him, or call him, or something. Anything to let him know that she was still okay. It had only been a few months but Kyle felt like he was going to get an ulcer with how stressed out he was about this. Of course, Skye and Max didn't know how bad it was getting, but they missed her as well. It was almost like the other two boys tiptoed around Kyle ever since Andi went missing. He didn't like it. He just wanted her back. He wanted everything back to normal.

His thoughts were interrupted by a text.

Boss: I have a target for you boys.