"Darra, what do you think you're doing
You can't escape me, not fit yet
Come join me, drown in my waters
And you won't be able to smell her sweet, sweet flowers."

It was around three am when Darra woke up to a deep melodic voice coming from his window. He rose from his bed, not being able to understand who could be up late at such a time? He looked out his window, which he had opened that very night to get some fresh air as he slept, and saw a lake. 

It was very familiar, it looked a lot like Nava, the lake in Dillow, except it was wider, and covered the entire city. He could no longer see the small twinkling lights that emerged at night, instead, the entire area was just water. Then, he recognized it, it was the exact same lake where Lilly and Darra got lost, that very same, strange lake, that wasn't even frozen under the temperatures that were below zero. 

His eyes widened, trying to take in the scenery as he couldn't believe his eyes. Feeling like his sight betrayed him, he rubbed his eyes and looked back again, and for a moment, he saw magma, molting lava itself, right outside his window in a city he thought was the most normal. The lava turned back into the water body it once was, and he could hear the whispers that woke him up, once deep and melodic, now sinister and psychopathic. 

"Pretty little flowers, pretty little flowers, feed her to me!" The voice tried to sing, but his horse voice just made his eardrums hurt. "Your heart is not pure, for your blood is mine. You will see, once you come. Come to me."

Darra shut his window, too scared to even look back, once he saw what looked like a dragon wing. Bright red was its scales, as it shone under the, once pale, now bright light of the full moon that stood outside his window. 

The wind kept singing and singing and he could feel it getting hotter and hotter, his blood rising its temperature in sync with the heat, as his body seemed to glow red, just as red as the wing he saw outside. He observed his arm and realized that it wasn't his body getting redder. It looked to him that his veins began to expand, the blood being pumped from his heart at a very fast rate, though he couldn't feel his heartbeat accelerate at all.

At that moment, he felt he could beat the time if they both raced, he couldn't tell what he was feeling in detail, all he could think of it, was that he felt alive. He wanted to jump out his window and run until he wasn't even on the roads of this world anymore, soon realizing that the song was getting to him. "My blood is yours..." 

He whispered to himself, his heart skipping beats as his brain began to process his words. He felt more scared, partly because he didn't know why a lake would suddenly appear out of nowhere, partly because he didn't know what was happening to him, and partly because...he liked it. He tried long and hard to go to bed. 

But that song, that song kept playing and playing like a nightmare haunting you every time you put your head to sleep. He got out of bed, finally accepting defeat. He grabbed his phone from the desk on which he always kept it, and exited his room.

He came across the fridge in the kitchen area, which covered the whole floor, seeing as there were many dishes to make in a single day. He opened the freezer in which he spotted dozens of ice cream, each tub a different flavor. 

There was mint, chocolate chip, chocolate itself, strawberry, cherry, blueberry, vanilla, coffee, napoleon—basically all the ice-cream flavors you could think of. He loved the strawberry flavor most. He didn't care if all the boys his age thought of it as a girly flavor, or you're less of a man if you eat anything that had to do with strawberries (That's what all the boys in Dillow thought), he just couldn't help himself. 

"Sorry, Laura..." He silently said to himself as he grabbed the tub from the fridge, preparing to devour it all. He wasn't the only one who liked strawberry ice cream. Laura took ice-cream time, very seriously. 

And she always booked the last tub, when all the strawberry ice cream was over, and no one would touch it, knowing what they would deal with once they did. They, being Darra, dared once but couldn't make it halfway through to the freezer when Laura appeared out of thin air and looked him dead in the eye. 

"Not this time, little man. Now go back to bed mister! Hup two three four. Hup two three four. Hup two three four..." She repeated over and over again like a military conductor, shouting at his troops to get through the obstacle course at a faster pace than they were moving. He didn't waste any time and dashed off to his room, closing the door and drifting fast to sleep, afraid she would come and watch him for any rookie mistake he made.

This time, it was different, he was going to peel thin slices of the ice cream so that it would be totally unrecognizable once she checked the freezer in the morning. Though, he was determined to take ice cream as well, so even if they were thin, they were many slices of ice cream. 

He gently closed the cover, placing it perfectly as he found it in the freezer, if anything, Darra had a sharp memory. Almost photographic. He could even remember the first time he saw his mother holding a toy out for him to pay, back when he was three years old. 

But that's as far as it goes, if he tries to remember further into his childhood, the memories get blurry until he can't see a thing. It always bothered him, like as if his mind didn't want him to see any further, or like some of the gates in his head were being restrained from opening. He felt like he held so many secrets even himself didn't know. 

He grabbed a spoon from one of the many drawers in the kitchen. What could someone possibly keep in there? How many kitchen tools could someone need? To him, all you need is a pan, a spoon, a fork, a knife, a baking tray some kitchen gloves, a blender, and a mixer, (It's that thing you use to mix ingredients when you make cakes and all those pastries.) that's all you need. 

He sat on the barstool at the counter and began to eat the ice cream. He put a spoon full of ice-cream shreds into his mouth and frowned. It tasted like drinking hot tea and eating ice cubes at the same time, for his body was acting as the hot tea, and the ice cream as the ice cubes. And that was one of the feelings you wouldn't want in your mouth. 

He rushed to the sink, vomiting what looked to be red liquid and the ice cream of course. For a second, he thought it was his blood, then tasting his lips reluctantly, finding that the liquid didn't taste anything like iron. Instead, it tasted like smoke, the same he tasted yesterday on his way back home, and it was burning hot, much hotter than it was that day. 

He looked back at the sink to find a small hole, in which the red liquid seeped out and into the plastic pipes. He wondered, if it could burn metal, what would happen to the plastic? His own skin though, even if stung at the heat of the blood, nothing fatal was to happen. In fact, not even the slightest burn, like as if his skin was some sort of shield. But then, how come he was able to sustain cuts and bruises the time he got beat up?

"Oh well, lots ofthings have happened in my life. I might as well count it as one of the strangethings." He muttered, shrugging and moving back to the counter. He tried hardto ignore it, so hard you could say it was erased from his memory, only that itwas buried under the hips of events and memories in his head. 

Because at theback of his mind, he knew he couldn't just forget about all that's happened andwalk away. Something was going on. And he knew no matter what, he would try hishardest to find out. Little did he know, this world had many surprises and hewas going to have this repeating nightmare come after him like it traveled allthe way from the land of the unseen just for this one encounter.