Vision.

The bus ride went without incident of the supernatural caste, and most of the day until after lunch was the same. Class was, as ever, boring. Mark sat in his uncomfortable, hard desk/chair contraption that was designed to look refined and high tech when it really was just an extended armrest that swooped around in front of him, so that he could put books and other school related materials on top of it. His elbow was propped up on the armrest, and his chin was resting in his upraised hand. He only payed half of his attention to the lecture that his teacher was giving. The class was freshmen English, and the discussion was about Langston Hughes. Exciting only to those who reveled in literature, and Mark was not one of those people. He was only excited because this was the last period of the day.

The other half of his attention went to the strange happenings of the day. What had happened at the bus stop that morning? Was he hallucinating? Was someone doing shrooms in the general vicinity, and he fell under some kind of contact high? He felt fine sitting in the class room, so that probably wasn't it. Lazy, half-lidded eyes meandered across the room. Mark had found that he was a very analytical person, because he noticed the small details in daily objects where other kids his age would disregard them, and move on with their merry lives. In this instance, Mark noticed that the white board had been recently cleaned, and so he could see the vague reflection of the class, and the back of his teacher. A few people had assumed the same position as him, in that they cupped their chins in their hands.

Mark's arm fell to the desk, however, as he straightened his posture. Everyone disregarded the expression of alarm on his face. They weren't very analytical. The half-lidded eyes grew to bulging as Mark's eyes widened. What he saw in the reflection of the class was not one, but two standing figures. One of them was his teacher, and the other was looming over him from behind. That was impossible, because there was a desk directly behind him. No space for there to be anyone standing, and yet some one was.

The figure's arm lifted forward, reaching for Mark, and at that moment, he twisted around. His abrupt movement had caught the attention of the class and his teacher, and the classmate sitting behind him stared at Mark with a "what the hell?" kind of look.

"Turn around, Mark" said the teacher.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" was Mark's reply.

The teacher complied, and Mark took his leave of the classroom, walking towards the restrooms. Sweat beaded on his forehead, partly from what he saw in the classroom, but also from embarrassment. He walked quickly, and promptly entered the bathroom, the door held open by a wooden doorstop behind him. He went to the sink to wash his face of the sweat that was now rolling down the sides of his face. He had always had sweating problems on his face. Nowhere else on his body, though, just his face. He didn't know if that was a strange occurrence or not, and seeing as he could live with it, he didn't care to look it up.

As he was wiping his face, he heard the door to the bathroom slam shut behind him. It was too loud to have been the wind, and the doorstop would have held it open in any case, so someone must have come in. When he heard no voices or footsteps, a chill ran up and down Mark's body, freezing his spine like liquid nitrogen. His eyes slowly traveled upward from the sink to the mirror. He knew what was coming, because he had seen it a hundred times in the movies, but he couldn't contain the horror he felt when he actually experienced it himself.

There, in the mirror, he saw, standing behind him, the ragged corpse of a dead person. The head was bald, but for a few strings of long gray hair that fell down over the face. The skin was pale, pale, pale, almost white. It had no color due to the lack of blood running through the veins. Skin on the face was rotting in certain places, and hanging off, exposing the rancid flesh beneath it. The rest of the body was covered in thick rags, torn and worn out from weather, as if the creature had been standing in the rain for days and days after escaping its underground prison. Or that's the image that went through Mark's mind. He had the innate ability to think even in the most horrifying situations, though he couldn't move his body at all. Shear terror enveloped him, and held him stiff. Mark looked over the corpse as it stared at him through the mirror, and was surprised by the sharp emotion radiating from its eyes. Its eyes were blue, and hard, but for some reason, Mark could see a sense of pride within those eyes, he could see anguish, suffering, experience. Not the glazed over look of a zombie, which was what the rest of the corpse looked like.

It lifted its hand, and this time, Mark wasn't fast enough to dodge it, unlike in the classroom. As soon as the rotting hand touched him, strange and jumbled images began to pour into his mind. He could see a great Colosseum, not in disrepair like the history textbooks had shown him, but in its prime, with people cheering on the gladiators that fought within the center of the magnificent structure. One stood out among the others, as he battled alone against five opponents, slaying each one with his leaf-shaped gladius. The weapon was so familiar, Mark knew it from some distant memory, and the eyes of the lone warrior showed a bright blue as he inserted the blade into another victim.

None of the happenings surprised Mark, though, because he knew what was going to happen next. He knew the name and the story of the single gladiator. It was just that now, he was watching what was happening, and not listening or reading the story. The gladiator would kill two more, and become wounded by the last one before he slew him. His wound would become infected, and his dying wish would be for the freedom that he had never tasted. He would be buried by the following of fans that he had gathered from fighting in the arena for so long. On his grave wrote "Quintus Arcanus, Champion and Free Man."

The janitor eventually found Mark laying on the floor in the bathroom an hour or so after he had left his classroom, and the teacher finally remembered him. School was over by then. The police brought him home after the ambulance people checked him for any damage. They deemed him perfectly healthy, if a little exhausted. Mark didn't pay attention to any of that. He didn't pay attention to his mom's worried voice, or his brother's jokes about how Mark should have been named Marie, since he was feinting everywhere like a girl. All he could focus on were those piercing blue eyes, staring at him through the mirror.