Kinetics: In Search of Willow Read Online Free Page A

lifted his arms in an arc and the water slammed
upwards and over the sleepwalkers.
    The rushing water pushed them away
from us, but the water parted around us, not getting a drop of it
on Willow, Harry or myself.
    The kid, hoodie pulled tight around
his head, didn't give us a second glance before jumping back
through the window, taking the majority of the sleepwalkers with
him.
    The slime monsters were unaffected by
the water, though, and continued to close in.
    "Who was that?" I asked.
    "Not sure. But I'm not looking a gift
horse in the mouth," Willow replied, pushing forward.
    The slime monsters didn't move out of
her way, but reacted like oil to water as she passed through
them.
    I glanced at Harry, who merely
shrugged and followed after her.
    "C'mon, Eugene. They can't hurt you,
they're just illusions," she said.
    "So you keep saying," I muttered
before running through the clutch of nightmare monsters.
    I looked over my shoulder and saw the
monsters re-form to continue following us. I tried to ignore the
fact that they were beginning to light up like candles around
me.
    "Eugene!" Willow was now down the
hall. I jumped, not realizing that they had gotten so far ahead of
me already. I turned on a heel and ran after them.
    But I was too late. They were gone.
The hallway stretched out in front of me, empty and dark. Behind me
the nightmare monsters came closer with their heatless flame. I
shuddered to look at them.
    "Willow!" I shouted down the hall, but
Willow and the nerdy football player were gone. I was
alone.
    Alone.
    Alone with monsters on
fire.
    I ran down the hall, repeatedly
screaming Willow's name.
    They can't have gotten
far. They wouldn't leave me, would they?
    The hallway seemed to stretch on and
on. Finally I burst through a set of double-doors only to see a
strange vision of myself bursting through another set of doors in
front of me and disappearing.
    "What's happening?" I asked out loud.
My voice was small and muffled.
    I ran through the double-doors again,
and again I saw myself burst through and disappear.
    I gasped, suddenly realizing I had
been holding my breath. This was impossible. I tried again, but
with the same results. I was stuck.
    "No, no, no," I whispered. I opened
the door behind me and went through and watched myself do the same
on the other side. I was in some kind of loop.
    The monsters oozed through the cracks
in the door and began filling the small space. I stepped into the
center of the hallway, where I was furthest from the walls. But at
my feet, fire was growing. I sucked in a breath.
    The fire was eating through my shoes.
It spread up my legs and over my stomach. It was taking over my
whole body. The monsters now fully on fire leapt from the walls and
joined the fire already taking over on my body. It was turning me
into fire itself.
    I screamed as it reached my
face.
    It's an
illusion…  An echo of something Willow
had said resonated through my mind.
    Oh…
    Oh.
    Oh!
    It's not real, it's an
illusion!
    I was losing myself. What had happened
to the teachers and students had begun to happen to me. I was
losing my grasp on reality. I looked around at the monsters
circling me and at my limbs on fire. How do you escape an
illusion?
    I closed my eyes tightly.
    "It's not real. It's not
real. It's not real." I made it a mantra and walked toward the
double-doors. I opened my eyes and pushed through, half expecting
to come out on the other side seeing another illusion of myself.
But instead I was in a bedroom.
    It was a room I could only remember
from pictures. My bedroom from when I was a baby.
    I turned around to try opening the
door, but it was locked.
    Everything was weird in this illusion.
I could see my hands moving before I moved them. It was like I was
seeing a ghost of myself moving before I did. And unlike before,
there was no sound. I couldn't even hear my own breath.
    I turned back toward the room and
looked around.
    It was nighttime in this illusion.
Through the window I could see a