[center][h3]Nick Waller[/h3]
[sub]November 29th- Morning[/sub]
[hr]
[/center]

[b]"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!"[/b] Jolted upright from his sleep, drenched in a cold sweat and panting for breath, Nick let out a shaky sigh as his hand grabbed his chest. His fist balled over his heart as he fought to regain control of his breathing, taking in the scene around him. His dorm room. Not that fucked-up plane he kept dreaming about, not the war-torn ground he had just collided into at what had to be terminal velocity. 

[i]Just that fucking nightmare again.[/i] Frankly, this was better than the fire one. And hey, something different this time happened. He had no idea what that guy meant by what he said, or more accurately what he was trying to tell himself. Such a verbose way of getting a message across, couldn't his subconscious hit him with the cliff notes or something? Scoffing, Nick sat up and shook his head, trying to rid himself of the last vestiges of that nightmare that clung to him. He certainly wasn't about to get back to sleep, not with that shot of adrenaline waking him up...

Thirty minutes before his alarm. Oh joy, because he wasn't already pushing it with how little sleep he got anyway. Well, he wasn't going [i]back[/i] to sleep, that was for sure. Grabbing his phone and turning off the alarm, he grabbed his clothes and made his way to the shower. 

As he showered, Nick couldn't keep his mind wandering back to that man. The 'Velvet Room', he called the cockpit. And was he making a [i]pun[/i] when he called it a plane that existed between realities? What a hack, his own subconscious resorting to puns to get his attention on...some problem. Probably something to do with all the unresolved trauma, but what? The constant feelings of inadequacy? The -

Shaking his head before he went down that fucking rabbit hole this early in the morning, Nick tried to get back on track as the water flowed over him. Yeah, no shit his situation wasn't enviable, no shit he was thrown to the wolves. Though to be fair, he threw himself to the wolves by basically running away from home and taking what savings his parents had so generously kept for him. And then not answering any of their phone calls for three years. Two and a half, really, since the last time either of them even bothered was back around Memorial Day. Damn, not even a phone call for Thanksgiving, they really [i]did[/i] give up on convincing him to talk to them, huh? 

Well, that was what Nick wanted, so why was he complaining? Oh, right, that whole "Mommy and Daddy never loved you" complex. Eh, who cares?

So yeah, life is Hell, nobody is gonna coddle you, you're not a kid, you have responsibilities, blah blah blah. All shit he already knew. What pissed him off though, was the notion that there was something to win beyond survival. "Bullshit. There is no winning this crap. You just fucking get through the days." 

And 'Whether you face reality is up to you' Oh fuck off, he was facing reality for years. He'd seen [i]reality.[/i] He'd seen how fucked up this world really was, the shit it would do if it could get away with it. So, no, mister subconscious, he didn't need to awaken. If anything, he needed to go back to sleep. 

But just like that freaky game with the eyes, there was no going back to sleep once you awoke to the Nightmare. There was no blue pill to take to forget the horrors of the Matrix, because this wasn't the god damned Matrix. 

This was life. And every. Single. Day. Was a new hell. 

[hr]

Forcing on a more neutral face as he stepped out of the dorm, Nick mentally catalogued which classes he needed to go to again, just to be sure he remembered and didn't walk into the wrong room again. It wasn't that embarrassing in the grand scheme of things, sure, but it was a pain in the ass to run halfway across campus in like five minutes to not be late. 

Convinced that he'd gotten it all down, Nick made his way over to his first class of the day. 

And then he tripped over his own damn foot. 

Pushing his arms out on the way down, Nick landed hard on his elbows and forearms, but managed to keep himself from landing face-first on the ground. Sighing, he was about to push himself up when he felt a hand on his shoulder. 

"Hey man, you alright?"

[i][b]NO I'M NOT ALRIGHT YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT GET YOUR GOD DAMN HAND OFF ME BEFORE I RIP IT OFF AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROAT YOU MOTHERFUCKING-[/b][/i]

Pushing up, [i]abruptly[/i], and quickly standing, Nick brushed his arm off and gave a friendly smile to the stranger who'd tried to help him. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks man"

"Ah, no problem dude." The other boy said, raising a hand as a goodbye as he walked off. Nick watched him go, his neck twitching for a moment, before sighing. [i]God dammit, didn't need that today.[/i] As the usual sense of [i]wrongness and filth and DIRTINESS[/i] that came with being touched like that flowed across his skin like the sweat he'd woken up covered in, Nick shook his head and started walking to his classroom again. 

Today was gonna be a [i]long[/i] fucking day.