Ryan felt terrible.

Her head was pounding like crazy, her palms were clammy, and her vision was blurring whenever she so much as blinked. Even though she had downed an aspirin and several glasses of water, she was in a terrible condition. Her mind felt like it had been thrown into a blender and tossed around several times, and she couldn't think straight.

Theo had already gone to bed, claiming that he needed to go to work the next day. Ryan felt slightly guilty about him, because she knew as a fact that they hadn't contacted each other since he had graduated college a few years back, and she could just imagine how he was feeling after attending her funeral, and then finding her on his doorstep a few months later.

Even if he feigned nonchalance, she could tell from the forced way he laughed that he was still struggling to come to terms about her being alive.

Curling up into a ball, she clutched her head as another wave of pain ran through her body. At this point, Ryan would have willingly sawed off one of her arms if it meant she wouldn't feel like she was slowly dying.

The last time she had felt this bad, it had been when she had chugged a whole jar of salsa [and a pint of beer] while being hung over on a dare.

 As she tried to quell the pain, she suddenly found herself standing in Theo's room. He was lying on the bed, muttering something in his sleep, a habit that had pissed off his roommate back in college. She stared down at him, his face highlighted by the moonlight streaming through the window, and tilted her head.

She had to admit, for being such an immature and insensitive idiot most of the time, he was quite handsome for his age. Ryan gently brushed aside a strand of his hair, and allowed a tiny smile to appear on her face as he snuggled deeper into his sheets.

Ryan was struck with curiosity, and gently traced his lips with her fingers. As she suspected, they were extremely soft. Her face flushed at her actions, and she withdrew her hand.

He looked so peaceful.

So he needed to die.

Her hands tightly clamped around his throat, and she squeezed as hard as she could. Theo awoke with a start, gasping for air, but Ryan forced his face into the mattress, and pinned down his body as he struggled to get free.

He needed to die.

She needed to kill him.

She needed to...

What was she doing?

Ryan jerked with horror when she realized what she had just done, but for some reason, her hands wouldn't move. They stayed where they were, pressing the air from his neck. Her mind screamed at her to let go, to get help, to do something, anything but she couldn't even twitch.

It was as if somebody else was controlling her body.

As she continued to try to force movement back into her muscles, her fingertips flickered again. The same energy that had destroyed the beer bottle a few hours earlier spread from her hands, and into Theo's body. Ryan was practically screaming in her mind, fighting, thrashing to wrench herself away from her friend, but it was too late.

His body crumbled away, turning into a fine powder in her hands.

- - -

woot a chapter

also, did you really think that she was completely fine?

even after killing the grave robbers?

*cue evil laughter*

-lyssa

(next update will be around october 14th!)