It smells like it is going to rain.

She loves that smell. It’s earthy and metallic in a weird mix which should never naturally happen.

The fluorescent strips of light overhead make her eyes hurt. They distract from the smell.

She is sitting in class. They are talking about something…

“…and so the business has…”

Business. That makes sense, since it is a business class.

There is one window in the room. It is small, high up, and can’t be looked out of. She likes looking out windows so much more than staring at her notebook. She begins to draw idly. She thinks of what it’s like outside. On her page clouds appear, low and dark.

It will rain sometime soon.

She likes the rain. Almost as much as she likes the smell of imminent rain.

She glances at the clock. An eternity of time is left, it seems. She swears the time hasn’t changed.

For some reason the word ‘eternity’ sticks in her mind.

She looks at the small window. All she can see is the bottom of the rotting corrugated roof. She doesn’t know what corrugated roofs have to offer. They are just ugly metal.

Beyond that, red. Red.

She feels her mind slip onto another thought, as if it is impossible to ever stay on one topic.

She wonders vaguely what the teacher is talking about.

“…and so the business has…”

Business. It is a business class.

She doesn’t know why she chose business.

The smell of the rain is strong, almost biting in her nostrils. She can practically hear the first droplets falling.

“…AND SO THE BUSINESS HAS…”

Her eyes go to the front of the classroom in a surprise that is quite different from her previous thoughts and feelings; it is new and sharp. Clear, almost, in the midst of watercolour. For a moment the teacher’s eyes melt and drip down his face, mixing with his skin which is a raw and bloody red. His cheeks dissolve, bubbling as they go, so that his white-

So white it is almost blood red.

-skeleton leers at her. Then nothing. The same way her thoughts slip from her, his face slips back into its natural state. The evanescence of her thoughts cannot rid her of the feeling that something is wrong.

She looks down and sees that her hands are bloody, broken, beyond repair. Her pen which was previously tracing along the paper, is now digging into her forearm. Blood seeps from the wound and she is aware that if she removes the pen then the dam will break and it will begin to pour out of her. The pen ink appears to filter into her, the black spreading up her arm and racing its way to her neck where it will…

Her vision slips for a moment and her pen is back in her hand and her hands are unmarked, perfect, and drawing.

She has to get out. She has to go. She tries to stand but her legs refuse to move. She looks down and only sees raw stumps. Her jeans (expensive jeans, she bought them from a boutique) are torn at her mid thigh and stained dark red, so dark they are almost black. A few inches below the end of her jeans, her legs just stop. What bothers her the most is that they are uneven. This time her vision blurs in and out, fighting to retain the image.

‘The reality’ her mind whispers.

Then they slip into their normal state. Her boutique-jean-clad legs reach down over the chair to the floor. Perfect, long, thin, shapely.

The wrong feeling; the feeling that settled into the back of her throat and her stomach and her lungs and her nose and her head and the base of her spine; the wrong feeling is beginning to slip too.

She looks towards the front of the classroom.

“…and so the business has…”

Something…something is…

She wants to press her face against the glass of the window. She wants to make the tip of her nose touch her upper lip. She wants to feel the cool glass as she watches the clouds bleed into the air.

It smells like it is going to rain.