Three hours I waited in the forest.

Three hours I waited alone- with the exception of occasionally being accompanied by a few annoying gnats, a persistent bunch of flies, and a mosquito intent on sucking me dry. They, unfortunately, were the only things keeping me occupied while I waited for the blue orb.

At first, I was nervous, paranoid as hell, and afraid for my life, but the more I waited the more I seemed to accept whatever fate I had in store. I started thinking about other things, like how my phone must have dropped out of my pocket on the way here and how there was no paper to draw on because my backpack was stuffed away in the gym locker room.

There was a lanky and diseased looking stick by my foot that I could have drawn on the dirt with, but I didn't have enough inspiration to get my hands dirty.

So instead, I continued sitting there in absolute silence, staring at the precise location I found the blue orb. More than anything I wanted to leave, but I was afraid that the moment I got up would be the moment I am struck with inexplicable pain and die. After every odd occurrence, I would seem to undergo a series of traumatizing pain, so I was not leaving until I felt something.

"Matthew, why the hell are you here?"

Settled into the silence and not used to another presence by my side, I made a frantic scuttle down the hill and through the littered debris of tree bark, broken pieces of wood, and young aspen saplings. Once I managed to gain a grip on some solid and flat ground, I spun on my heels and faced my sister with absolute bewilderment.

Somehow, deep and buried within the forest, Autumn managed to find me. Either she managed to plant a tracker on me or activated a mysterious twin ability that I had no knowledge of.

"What the hell? How did you find me?" I exclaimed in awe while I watched her trot her way down the hill with ease.

"No, first off, you have some major explaining to do." She continued with her eyes blazing in anger and frustration.

Then slinging her backpack down on the ground, pacing back and forth, and swaying her hands out to the sides as if she was talking with them, I braced myself for what was about to come. When Autumn was mad, you don't even bother talking back. You run for cover.

"I heard what happened in your P.E. class today. Seriously, Matthew. I asked you to stop back talking Julian, but not only do you back talk him you decide to freaking punt him? How the hell did you do that anyway?" Autumn yelled and glared at me, our French ancestry making her death glare twice as more frightening.

Thunder crackled across the sky as she continued her fiery rant.

"And to make it the perfect cherry on top, you decide to piss me off even further by stealing the computer from my room when it's my week to have it. You're my freaking brother, not a little sister that takes stuff from my room!"

A chilly gust from the pass swept by and tussled through her blonde hair, making it seem like a stream of fire blazing out from her hot-tempered head.

"That leads me to the other thing. What were you even trying to look up?" She asked as she stopped her wild pacing and reached for the laptop in her pink backpack.

My eyes shot open in alarm, and I leaped forward to stop her from pulling out the laptop, however Autumn managed to yank the computer back up. All I could do now was prepare myself by cringing in embarrassment; all my search results would sound odd if taken out of context.

And one by one she read them out loud, looking up at me after each one- examining my behavior to see if my body language would give way to anything I was secretly hiding.

"At least those searches sound slightly normal, but what the hell are these: 'alien encounters', 'Kalum', 'can I be high without knowing', 'what does a heart attack feel like', 'what does a stroke feel like', and 'how to know if my body chemistry changed'."

Autumn didn't give me a chance to explain. Instead, she kept reading on. "Painful whole body experiences after blue balls." After finishing, she lowered her head and curved her eyebrows, giving me the most judgemental look I have ever seen from her.

I choked on my own spit.

Furiously shaking my head and making an effort to snatch the laptop from her hands, I swallowed hard and did my best to keep the heat from rising to my face. "Blue balls of light! Of light!" I exclaimed loudly and frantically, "I can tell you that it is definitely not what you are thinking."

After putting away the laptop, she crossed her arms and stared me down with a cool and calculative eye. "Even that sounds weird, Matt. Please do the honors of filling me in because I am terribly confused."

I opened my mouth to begin filling her in on all that happened to me today and yesterday, but I closed my mouth and tilted my head. This time, it was my turn to analyze her. It was unlike her to peer through my search history and ask me what was going through my mind while looking these things up. My questions were my questions alone, and it was none of her business.

Crossing my arms and returning the same critical stare she gave me, I narrowed my eyes. "What is it to you?" I demanded.

My sudden change of attitude threw Autumn off her interrogational rampage and into a state of shock, but she quickly continued pursuing her agenda with a hardened persistence.

"Because they were weird, and I have the right to know what was so urgent that caused you to take the computer from me." She defended with her head raised higher like she made a valid point.

But bullshit of excuses was unlike Autumn. Something was extremely off with her, and she was hiding something important. Although her lips were set into a stern and rigid line and her face darkened with suspicion, her eyes told a different story. Buried behind a wall of tough and concentrated zeal was a crack of vulnerability and desperation.

I, at first, was irritated by her yelling and intrusive act of invading my privacy, but something deeper was happening here. Never have I seen Autumn look so unsure.

"Why are you really asking this, Autumn? It's not just about the computer, is it?"

Her frame seemed to shrink under the weight of my question. "Matt, please. Just answer my question first."

Autumn was bursting at the seams with secrets she wanted to tell me, but she looked so afraid. The way she delicately treaded across her words in a way she hoped I would understand made me believe, for a brief moment, that we were talking about the same thing- the blue orb.

And although I had seen the mystery that came swirling out from my fingertips with my very two eyes, I refused to believe it. I didn't want to believe it. No one else would believe me.

If I told Autumn what I had seen yesterday and today, she would have thought I had finally lost my mind. Then she would tell our mother, and before I could explain myself I would be signed off and stored away in some institution in the middle of nowhere. But as I looked at my sister one more time, I could see the same fear in her eyes.

Was she afraid that I was going to think she was insane too?

Everything in my head told me to shut up and keep quiet and to play it out like I had no idea of what she was talking about, but my mouth betrayed me.

I quickly went off on a frantic rampage, spitting out everything that I was hiding from her in hopes to get some answers. "I looked those things up because I have seen things in the forest yesterday that I can't explain, Autumn. Something odd. Something horrifying. I know all of this doesn't make sense but-"

Autumn quickly scoped the area to make sure we were completely alone before rushing over to me. A mix of emotions flashed wildly across her face: fear, relief, confusion, but mostly joy.

"You have seen it?" She exclaimed lightly under her breath as she wrung her fingers tightly around one another in nervous anticipation.

Relief swept over me once realized that I wasn't completely alone, and we both had to sit down before we could talk about the mysteries that we have both seen. I had so many questions to ask her like when did she see the blue orb, why hasn't she told me, and if she had any solutions?

But Autumn, who was glad to finally have someone to confide in, rattled on about her latest concerns. "Yeah, I have. I saw the blue orb two days ago, actually. But what happened yesterday was even more disturbing, you have no idea, Matt. You know those roses we got for mom yesterday when she was sick last week?"

I thought of the bright pink roses mom placed on the kitchen table and how I saw them missing this morning. At the time, it didn't strike me as odd because I thought that my mom had moved it somewhere else, like she does with most things. However, Autumn was talking like she had done something with them.

"Yeah, what about them?"

Autumn looked towards the forest and seemed to retreat back into her mind, dazed like she was reliving the memory. "I went to touch them, just to make sure that they had enough water."

She paused and shuddered as she recalled the moment.

"But the second I did, the petals shriveled up and fell into my palms. The stems shrunk and turned into a disgusting, soggy grey before they dissolved into a pile of black dust. It happened so quickly; it couldn't have been anything normal. And I freaked out and threw them away, hoping that no one would notice."

Roses deteriorated in my sister's hands. Blue mist spiraled out from my fingertips when I was about to punch Julian. This had to be supernatural.

I met my sister with an eager gaze. "Do you know why that happened?"

It was nice to know that someone else was going through this with me- that I was not alone, but I needed answers.

Autumn shook her head and stared at the ground with disappointment. "No, I don't."

Both of us let out a sigh in unison and fell back onto the hill, using our elbows to prop ourselves up. We ended up sitting in silence. We both had our own questions to mull over and there was only so much we could say about being afraid of the unknown. All that we could do was try to confront it on our own and muster enough courage to find some answers.

Eventually, I broke the silence by telling Autumn of what happened to me today, and she found it equally surprising. Both our experiences were identically horrifying and supernatural, but they were noticeably different.

"You know of anyone else who has seen or experienced the things we have?" I asked quietly.

Autumn shook her again while biting her lip. "Nope. No one."

"Do you think there is anyone out there that has experienced this?" I asked again.

"I don't know."

It was typical of me to pester my sister with questions, but I was always the sibling that tried to analyze the situation from every angle from the couch. Autumn was more of the 'act-now-and-think-later' type. For the most part, we made a great team, but it usually caused us to get on each other's nervous.

"Could this be some normal and untalked about experience that everyone goes through and we have finally reached it?"

The last straws of my sister's patience must have been reached because she quickly snapped her eyes in my direction and glared at me- fists pounded into the ground besides her. "Matthew, again, how would I know that? I'm just as clueless as you are. Can you just stop with all these questions? To be honest, they are getting ridiculous."

They were, but my nerves were preventing me from thinking straight. I was borderline crazy.

"Are you going to tackle me, like that one time when we were ten?" I chuckled and smirked when I faced her.

A wild grin danced on her lips. "You will never let me forget that."

I shook my head as I laughed along with her. "Hell no. Never. I have always known that you hated being asked questions, but, man, after receiving that black eye you gave me, I finally understood."

Autumn threw a playful punch at my shoulder- scoffing at the fact that I had brought up an embarrassing part of her childhood. But she played it off by hovering her fist over my face. "I can give you another one. You are asking too many right now."

Snickering, I brushed her hand aside. "I'm fine, thanks."

We both smiled at eachother- temporarily forgetting about the chaos standing right in front of us, but we soon gravitated our conversation towards the blue orb. There was no current known solution to our problem, but talking about it made us feel like we were going somewhere with it.

"Yeah, I should leave you un-wounded. The blue orb will probably mess you up for me anyway." Autumn bitterly chuckled in response.

I understood Autumn intended that as a joke, but there was something eerily haunting and too real about it.

Uncomfortably shifting in my spot and letting out a nervous and muffled chortle, I crossed my arms and gave my sister a concerned glance. "Autumn, I know I'm supposed to feel excited about these supposed 'gifts', but with what we had gone through so far, I'm afraid it's-"

"Terrible?" Autumn stated matter-of-factly to complete my thought.

I didn't even have to nod or say yes to confirm that was my suspicion- Autumn could see it in my eyes.

Getting up and brushing her pants clean, signalling that it was probably time to head back to school, Autumn sighed. "You never know. Just because it starts off bad doesn't mean that it will turn out bad. We just have to play it out and see how it goes. And plus, I think we should be excited."

My eyes widened at her poisonously ignorant, positive attitude. "What?" I gawked, "Why?" The shock in my voice shot up into a shrill squeak at the end.

Autumn widened her arms and held them up in that 'why not' manner. "Come on, Matt." She reassured with a grin growing on her face by the minute. "This is the coolest thing ever. It's like we have superpowers."

The word 'superpower' caused me to physically cringe.

"Don't say that." I snapped with my face curled into a scowl.

Her head cocked to the side. "Why not?"

"Because it sounds ridiculous. Superpowers don't exist. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation to this whole phenomenon. We just have to find out what. And besides, it's causing us pain. I want to rid my body of this as soon as possible."

My pessimistic attitude didn't faze Autumn, instead it only caused her to smirk like this whole thing was one massive joke. "For one, Spiderman went through this terrible cold before he transformed. Captain America had to go through some hell in that tube. And don't even get me started on Deadpool-"

Hearing her relate fictional characters to our personal experience was absolutely unbelievable. And what she had made was the most illogical argument I have heard in my life.

It irritated me how she wasn't taking any of this seriously. We could be in incredible danger for all we know. What if there were other people who knew of our abilities and were trying to hunt us down?

"Autumn!" I growled. "Please, take this more seriously."

"I am." She exclaimed in a chipper tone. "Think about it this way. All these superhero stories didn't come from nowhere. Perhaps they were written and came from people like us. They underwent some serious challenges, but at the end the overcame them. Maybe they were trying to tell people like us that we have to stop being afraid and embrace the change."

Autumn's unconventional and out-of-the-box reasoning was a stretch, but in the end it kind of made sense. I still hated how she compared us to superheros, but I couldn't help but wonder if that was what we had really become.

But I always grounded myself back down into reality and took my head out of the clouds. It was an entertaining thought.

"Whatever." I grumbled as I picked myself up off the ground. "Let's drop it. Are we leaving?"

"Yeah. I told your homeroom teacher and Principal Geoffery during lunch that you were sick, so we can just go home now."

My eyes wandered over to the patch of ground I found the blue orb hovering over yesterday and hoped that it would appear before we left. There was a part of me that really didn't want to leave. I couldn't shake off a lingering sense of dread if we left, so much so that I was seriously thinking about camping out in the woods tonight.

Autumn must have caught a glance at my furrowed eyebrows and somber grimace, understanding that I was still skeptical and worried. "Whatever may happen, we'll get through it together." She promised as she laid a comforting hand on my shoulder.

There wasn't much I could say.

I wanted to believe her, but it was hard. I knew that she felt afraid and dreadful of the future; she was only masking it because it wouldn't help if we both lost our minds.

"Remember what we did to chase off our nightmares when we were younger?"

The change of subject threw me off and caused me to snicker. "What?"

"You know, the nightmares we had when we were very young. Some nights you were plagued with terrible night terrors. Every night you would refuse to go to sleep because the shadow people would try to drag you out of bed, and you would throw a huge fuss if mom told you it was nothing. But even when she didn't listen, I stayed up with you. And whenever I heard you scream, I would pretend to chase them away with my stuffed rhino."

While she shared the story, I remembered how afraid I used to be of my night terrors. They were so realistic that just remembering them caused me to imagine a shadow drift behind the dark thicket of pine. I remember how my back would prickle up from the chills on my spine every time I felt them coming. I remember how I would see them stretch across my drawer, flit to the window, ruffle the drapery, and fly across the ceiling, and disappear behind the edge of my bed. And while one had disappeared, the silhouette of another figure would dance on the wall, despite the spotlight I had shed on it from my bed side lamp. It was terrible. Not even the light could save me from my dreams.

I remember feelings so helpless and afraid as I saw the figures slowly materialize and creep up from the sides of my bed, their frame growing larger against the walls as they rose.

But just when I thought it was all over, I would see my sister hop off her bed and let out the wildest battle cry a six year old could muster as she swatted at them with her rhino, holding it at it's tail and using the head like a battle axe.

Then as I wake up, I stare at my sister with her rhino glowing in awe. It was always a curse to have the fantasy from my dreams linger past the moment my eyes would open, but it was magical to see my sister save me in such a way. To me, she was a hero.

And eventually, we both became each other's heros. After handling so many of my nightmares, Autumn eventually suffered from the same night terrors, and when she would scream I would jump out from my bed and scare the imaginary shadows away with my blanket.

Autumn would then join me with her rhino, and we would fight an epic, fantasy battle at the middle of the night like our lives depended on it- hopping back and forth between beds, swinging wildly around with our toys, throwing pillows left and right, and screaming the demons away at the top of our lungs. Our mother would soon charge into our room reprimanding our behaviour and yelling at us to shut up, and we would then fall onto our own beds in a fit of giggles and smiles. We were once again victorious and defeated the evil shadows by throwing a blanket over the dresser mirror.

The events of our childhood filled me with nostalgia, and I smiled at the tale of Autumn and I's late night battles. "I remember. It was when we shared a room and you had your stuffed rhino, Davis."

The name of her old stuffed animal caused Autumn to smirk. "Yeah, that one. But no matter how terrifying those dreams seemed, we were there for one another and fought for our lives. At first we would be shaking in fear, but by the end of the night we were victorious."

Although it was a wonderful story, I failed to see the point of it. "Those were just dreams, Autumn. We were kids. That was all fake."

She shook her head, a smile still on her face. "Obviously, but that's not what I'm trying to say. It's that we have each other, and when we are together we are unstoppable."

Thinking back to the time where we valiantly fought those monsters like they were real, I knew she had a point. Although, as we have grown, we have been separated and found our own group of friends and our own paths in life, we will always be there to strengthen the other.

There was no other person in the world that I would trust my life with besides Autumn, and her little pep talk managed to subside my fear.

I was ready to leave and go back home. Not even looking back, I began to trek up the hill with Autumn and continue on with our ordinary, bleak, and insignificant lives.

Tonight, on the contrary, was very important. It was Taco Tuesday, and I could not miss that for the world.

* * * * *

As usual, Taco Tuesday did not disappoint.

Mom made sure we had a cache of taco shells, cheese, and meat so Autumn and I could binge out to our heart's desire, and like always she made us sit together at the dinner table and talk about our day.

Thankfully, Autumn, for once, had my back and covered for me, telling our mom that school let us our early because the freshman had to take standardized tests. Of course, that wasn't true, but it was enough for my mom believe it since it was coming from Autumn. She always trusted my sister with everything.

And after my mom shooed us away because she had to finish her work, I went up to my room, procrastinated on my homework, played some video games, drew, and got ready for bed- nothing too out of the ordinary.

It was a typical day in my life, and I gladly embraced the evening's normality. There were no blue orbs, crazy out-of-this-world happenings, and extreme agony.

Everything was fine, but I still could not shake off the creeping apprehension that haunted me in the forest. Everything was too normal, too still, too unsuspecting. It was as if something was watching and hiding, waiting to pounce on me at any minute.

My eyes wandered over to my dresser mirror, and, it was childish of me, for one second, to believe that the side of my body facing the mirror was overcome with a pricking cold. The longer I stayed in front of it, I could feel it seep deeper into my skin and cause my nerves to throb.

When I could finally grasp what was happening to me, I jumped away from the mirror in shock, staring at it appalled. What made me even more horrified was that the moment I stepped away from the mirror was the moment the tingling I felt under my skin disappear.

I immediately thought back to my childhood nightmares on my way to turning off the light and slipped uneasily in my bed.

As tired as I was, I couldn't go to sleep. Instead, I sat upright in my bed staring at my own reflection in the mirror. Again, everything around me looked perfectly normal, but I could almost swear I felt there was something in the mirror that was trying to stretch over to me, trying to grasp me with it's icy coils and pull me in.

It was like I was seven years old again, afraid to be preyed upon the shadow people of my imagination.

I tried turning over in my bed and ignore my irrational childhood fear, but I ended up restlessly tossing in my bed- not being able to catch a wink. So I finally decided to give in, grab a blanket, and fling it out into the air and carefully draped it over the mirror so that it could cover the glass completely.

And almost like magic, I passed out the moment my head hit the pillow.

The night was peaceful. There were no weird nightmares or voices speaking to me in my dreams. There were no shadow monsters crawling out from my mirror. There were no blue orbs bobbing the corner of my room or blue wisps flying out from my fingers.

My earlier suspicions of things going terribly wrong were proven to be irrational until I heard my sister's shrill screams pierce the dead of the night, my mother's frantic footsteps pounding against the stairs to rush to sister's side, frenzied flashes of red and blue blazing through my curtains as the ambulance screeched to a stop in front of our house to rush my sister to the hospital. 

A/N: 

A nice star for suspence, perhaps? ;) 

And yeah, I know. It's been forever since I updated, shame on me, I know. I have been editing the other two chapters- haven't been them up because I'm a lazy POS. 

Hope you enjoyed <3 

(That picture was taken by me. Anyone see the blue orb, or is it just me ;) )