i've got it going.

It had been 6 months since I had left home and moved across the country. I found myself in a frozen lake for 2 months, my legs never still and my mind still in California. The sweet warmth of the sun leaving my skin as grey clouds stuck to me, I had never looked paler. Perhaps 4 years ago when the world had stopped as tales of sick bats and zombies kept us looking down onto the streets in fear of the air. 

Now it had been 4 months since I left that suffocating frozen lake. Here I was standing on the edge of the land I called home, but home was 1,994 miles away. I wasn't even looking at the same water. It was calm, clear. The angry, cold waves I was used to were gone. I thought I hated the cold? I do. Chicago hell frozen over. So why did I find myself as heated as the humid air when I touched this ocean water. 

Doesn't matter. Something had opened up when I left Chicago, something unshackled. I had nightmares then, of work, of the thin ice sucking me in and below. I woke up constantly rushing to prepare myself for a day that had already happened. I had a constant fever in those two months, but I ran hot, it wasn't abnormal. Right?

Down here in Florida something was different. I slept through the night, I woke up right before my alarm and my mind was on track with my body. SO why was I more tired than ever before? Days gone in a flash from how many naps I took. My bed always messy when I was in my room and my dark circles coming straight from the skull below my skin. A heat so hot I had to shower twice a day, personal fans at every station of rest, and nails growing faster than ever before. Was this puberty again? I mean I always heard it happened twice, but was it so... demanding?

My new friends didn't know what I was like before, they couldn't see how different I looked. How different I acted. I was so aggressive. Why? When did my teeth get so sharp? When had I ever liked a rare steak? Why did I refuse to return to my room the fuller the moon got? It was so hot. The south was hot -- I mean it was barely june-- I had always heard how humid and hot it was. But this was different. Even in AC blasted cars, rooms, cold shower water, I found my skin burning. 

On especially stressful nights or especially long days of rest, I had once slept for 17 hours straight, I found myself staring into the lush forests that surrounded my new home. I always found myself staring at them whenever I went anywhere. The urge to run in and never come back, a scratching dog in my chest. Speaking of dogs, there was this mutt would appear to in the forest looking back at me. I couldn't tell how big she was, or what breed she was. Her eyes glowed in the way most dogs did when you took pictures of them in the dark. I should be scared, but I wasn't. She felt so familiar.

I tried to stick my hand out for her to sniff, to come into the light. I did it all the time to strange dogs I'd find. They were common back in California, stray dogs used to the harsh livings of pavements and cement mountains. They never bit me, never growled at me, never bared their teeth that they did for everyone else. I liked dogs. They liked me. It was easy. But she wasn't. She was so stubborn. She would just stare as if I had suggested the most idiotic thing in the world. I feel like I could hear her thoughts. 

I think I might be going mad.