We thought this world is boring, mundane even normal. We created gods, demons, magical creatures, even the rules of magic itself, just so that we don't die of boredom. I am here to tell you that the world is everything but normal. Gods, demons and magic, they all exist. I am the living proof of their existence. Hellish Chapter 1 A Half-Lilin Rewrite By Shinieris

I looked down at the bed, watching the man gurgle and drown in his own blood. His throat, was slashed open and blood pooled in the hole where his heart should have been.

I closed the door, walking with trepidation to the mirror, wondering how much and how long would I need to take to make myself look halfway normal. As I looked into the mirror, I screamed in fear at my own reflection.

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I awoke with a series of gasps. It took me a few minutes to regain awareness, to realize that it was just a nightmare. I took several deep breaths to calm myself

That damned dream again, I cursed. It had been plaguing my dreams for days now. It was always the same dream. It was always the same man, same bed, same bathroom, and same face in the mirror.

Try as I might though, I could not recall the face. I recall that it was terrifying, but as for details, it was all a blur, except for the eyes. Yes, the eyes. It was yellow and the pupils were slits, similar to the ones on a cat. I supposed it was rather mesmerizing, if one didn't mind the splashes of blood that covered the face. Inside the pupils though, it was filled with fire and cruelty.

That was as much detail as I could recall. Maybe it was time to change prescriptions. This particular one seemed to trade one kind of nightmare for another. Maybe another visit to my shrink will do me good. He did help get rid of my previous nightmares.
But for now, my most immediate concern was a bath. I must have smelled ripe from the sweat. I looked at the wall clock and realized that I was about to be late for work. Mental check: get rid of the alarm clock and buy one with real bells, instead of the one that sounded 'tittit, tittit'.

"Hey Pat. Mr Punctual's almost late again today. What's up?"

I turned around at the annoyingly mocking face of my high school nemesis. That wasn't really accurate though, we must have been enemies since grade school. To say that I hated him was an understatement, I loathed him with a passion. It was something like Tom and Jerry, though I wasn’t sure which of us was angry Tom and which of us was the devious Jerry.

"Rick, my name is Rick. Besides Chris, what do you care if I'm late?" I countered, though I wasn’t expecting a response. The less contact I had with him, the better it was.

He acted hurt, which would've convinced me, if I hadn't known him since elementary school, "I only wanted to know how my best friend's been doing. We are childhood friends after all".

Yeas, of course. We were ‘childhood friends’. Somebody obviously neglected to tell Chris that childhood friends don’t steal their friend’s girlfriends, nor do they break their childhood friend’s leg just because their friend happened to get a prom date with one of the most popular girls in school. Chris’s idea of a ‘childhood friend’ was the kind of friends who would not surpass him in any way. As his primary ‘childhood friend’, he became especially disturbed when I was not always following behind him.

"Besides, your mom asked me to take care of you," Chris said, saying the one thing that he knew would cool me down.

I groaned at the memory. My mom passed away six months ago due to brain tumor from what I was told. She only lived long enough to see me graduate and get a job. My little sister Stella cried a river during her funeral, and she mourned for weeks after. My mom, she wasn't perfect, but she tried her best to take care of us and listened to us, when no one else would. So when she left, we felt as if we had no one else to turn to. My dad handled it the worst. He buggered off for a long, unscheduled and unanticipated solo voyage across the world in his yatch a week after she died. We had no idea to tell if he was still alive or dead, as we haven't heard from him since and he hadn’t leave us any way of contacting him.

I walked straight to my cubicle, not bothering to reply Chris. Besides, he probably just wanted attention, and I was not going to be the one to give it to him. Apparently getting the hint, he moved to the cubicle in front of mine and sat on his chair. I've been trying to avoid him for my entire school life and here he got the same job, in the same company, in the same office and given the seat right in front of mine after we graduate. Go figure. One might call it a funny irony. I assure you, it definitely wasn’t funny to me.

I called my shrink and tried to get an appointment for this Saturday. My father always taught me to make an appointment a week in advance, because of the unspoken rule of ‘You can never get an appointment on that one day you’re actually free’. So it wasn’t surprising that instead of the Saturday that I asked for, I got an appointment on Monday instead. Guess I'd have to take a day off anyhow. One thing that my boss particularly liked about me was that I never arrive late and I never used office time to do other things. The ‘never arrive late’ thing may have been broken, I’ve been coming to work late for two consecutive days and I arrived late last week too.

A message popped up on my screen. "hey, girls want 2 go to the bar across d street aftr work. U comin? sue".

Sue was the girl in accounting whom I met and instantly liked during last year’s company Christmas party. All the girls had to wear Santa’s Little Helper costumes while all the guys had to wear reindeer costumes. She stood out among others because she also wore a reindeer horn instead of a hat. I wondered back then if she knew that Santa’s Little Helpers were elves and not reindeers. She claimed that she was only a year older, but everyone knew you can't really trust women and their claims when it came to age.

I opened the program and typed a message. "Only the girls? Sue, you know how awkward it is to be the only guy in an all girls group". I wasn't joking, it really was awkward. I would talk about global warming and the fuel hike and they'd talk about bras, negligees and cute guys, as well as discount sales. Definitely not my point of interest.

Another message popped up almost instantly, "chick~en. cluck cluck cluck. don't tell me you're afraid of cute little lambs?"
Cute little lambs? Sue always had a way of making me laugh.

"No, maybe another time, Sue,” I typed back.

It took awhile before the next message arrived, "come on, patty, it'll be fun. i promise we won't talk about bras again. please?"

Again with that name. Why was it that everyone insisted on calling me Pat? I hated it. It sounded like short for Patricia. Patty's even worse.

"OK, I'll go. But no bras". Sent.

I received a, "oh you naughty boy".

I was confused at that response. What did she mean, ‘naughty boy’?. It was only a few minutes later that I realized that I had worded my response wrong, but by the time I corrected it, she didn’t respond.

We did go to the bar that night. I ended up acting as their personal waiter fetching drinks from the bar to our table, again. One of the girls, Liz, left with a cute guy (according to the girls). The rest of us stayed there for another hour, drinking, talking about work and of Marisa’s latest crush who was one of the new guys in Marketing.

Somewhere along the line, Marisa said something to me about Stephanie Mills, whose face graced the commercials a couple of times while we were there. I couldn’t quite catch what she said, but it sounded like she was telling me to get over my crush on Stephanie Mills. I then told her to fuck herself, which made everyone laugh. It wasn’t like my crush would lead to anything. Stephanie Mills was a very big name in Hollywood.

They delivered their promise of not talking about bras. Though the entire conversation was about topics that I was comfortable of giving my two cents of, they also slipped in something about make ups and cute guys. I was pretty sure I groaned a lot. I think they actually did it to see me squirm.

I got home rather late that night. After ordering chinese, I sat on the sofa and watched Oprah. My dad always said that I was a dreamer because I watched too much Oprah. Normally I just kept quiet and avoided replying since he was well-known for his temper and his 'I'm right, you're wrong' attitude. Personally, I liked watching Oprah. It restored my belief in the human race.
After having dinner in front of the TV (a habit my late mom used to try to stomp out of me, without much success), I washed up and went to bed, not without worry. I was pretty sure that I would be having that nightmare again. After making sure that all the lights were turned off, I drifted off to sleep.

*Alright, here's the next chapter of the Half-Lilin Rewrite. Please leave me your comments and feedbacks. Praises helps me write faster while constructive criticism helps me write better. If you have no strong feelings either way, being polite is more than enough. Thank you for supporting me.