Blink

This has been going on for weeks, little things at first. A lamp was on the other side of my room, the spots on my dog seemed to be slightly off. But now it's increasingly getting worse like when I'm looking in the mirror, My hair is lighter than it used to be, or Mom’s ford is now a toyota and when I asked her if she had got a loner vehicle and what happened to her van. She said she's had this van for years. I figured I must have gotten the makes of the van mixed up. I have never been much of a car person. So I let it go and went on with my life as if nothing was wrong.

However last night I had a dream of me sitting with my two best friends at lunch, talking about boys we thought were cute and how we can't wait for school to be over because we wanted to go to the beach. The people in my dream were different from my real friends. For example Angi’s hair was now pink instead of blonde. My friend of 5 years Jess, I now called Jessica; a name she had always hated. I woke from my dream and got ready for school. Suffering through a boring morning, I was ready for lunch. Getting to see my friends had always been the highlight of my day. The bell rang to signal the end of the 5th period. I got up and left the classroom practically running to the cafeteria, elated to see my friends. Once they came into view I noticed Angi’s hair right away. Jess was sitting beside her as I approached and I casually commented ‘Hey Ang nice hair!’

Angi gave me a very confused glance, ‘What do you mean? My hair has been like this for years.’

‘Jess back me up! Just yesterday her hair was blonde right?’ I stared at Jess hoping for her reassurance.

Jess glared at me before rolling her eyes in an exaggerated manner, ‘No! Her hair has been pink for years now. Why did you call me Jess? You know I like to be called Jessica.’

They both started laughing at me, like I had suddenly become the punchline in the world’s greatest joke. “Come on you two the joke is over, this is not funny anymore. I know you had blonde hair just yesterday Angi! Also, Jess I know for a fact that you hate being called Jessica. You tell me all the time that you hate it when your mom calls you Jessica because it sounds too formal and you hate formal! For crying out loud I have never even seen you wear a dress!” I was slowly getting both frustrated and distressed, were they just messing with me?

My friends then looked at me with concern clear on their faces. They stood up putting their hands on my shoulders. Angi spoke up. ‘Hey you feeling okay girl? Why don't we get you to the nurse? We don't know what's wrong with you, if you're sick and have a fever, but you're not acting like yourself at all.’

Not wanting to argue, I let my friends escort me to the nurse’s office. After getting there I told the nurse I was feeling sick and would like to go home.

‘What seems to be the matter sweetie?’ the nurse asked me while feigning concern.

‘I just don't feel well. Not acting like myself today. I think I may be coming down with something.’ I really didn’t think explaining that my entire world was changing around me was going to do me any favors in this situation.

The nurse checked my temperature. ‘Oh my you seem to have a small fever, let me call your mother and have her come pick you up.’

‘Thank you, may I go lie down until she gets here.’

‘Of course sweetie the beds are just over there.’ as she nodded her head towards the cement hard bed, that I was sure was older than I was.

I headed over to the bed and laid down. I was thinking of how strange the day turned out to be. Just yesterday I knew that my friends were different. But just like all the other stuff that had changed it occurred after I had dreamt it. AM I seeing the future? No that's not it, that wouldn't make sense, that would not account for how Jess and Angi claimed that her hair had been pink for years. So what is actually going on with me and why me? I was so lost in thought that I didn't hear my mom come into the office.

‘Where is she at?’ I could hear my mom rushing in the room, she had never handled me even getting a paper cut well, let alone when I was actually sick.

The nurse sighed, she was far too used to dealing with parents like mine. ‘She is in the room just over there. She wanted to lay down until you got here.’

Mom came in to check on me and with a concerned expression asked ‘What’s wrong, Pythia?’ Are you ok? Pythia tell me what's wrong.

‘I don't know mom. I just started to feel sick. I started to get very confused, probably due to the fever. I just want to go home and rest, mom.’ I knew there was no way I could tell my mom what I was actually thinking.

‘Ok sweetie let's get you home and in bed.’ My mom draped my arm over her shoulder and carried me to her car, almost like she was sure I was dying. It didn’t seem to matter to her that it was just a ‘fever’, and that I was perfectly capable of walking on my own two feet. On top of the fact that being carried out of my school in front of my friends like I was a baby was super embarrassing, and I knew I would never live that shit down.

Getting home I went up to my room and laid down. Falling asleep quickly I was plagued with horrible nightmares. In this nightmare I was looking down as my two best friends were being hunted by a creature with glowing red eyes. It looked like it had no physical body. Almost if it was a manifestation of pure hate and the only thing visible was its glowing red eyes that shined in the darkness. My friends ran through the house screaming in terror and as they entered the living room I could see that Angi’s parents lay dead on the floor; ripped apart by something. I assumed this entity was responsible for that carnage. Angi stopped to look at her parents for a brief second. Her father was disemboweled, his organs strewn across their once pristine carpeting. Her once beautiful mother was mutilated beyond recognition, her body was shredded and even more shocking was that her mother seemed to be missing her head. Angi screamed in anguish at the sight of her parents, her screams deepened with panic as four slashes formed on her back and her blood began to flow freely. Jessica came rushing over and helped her up off the floor, they staggered together, trying to escape their living nightmare. They kept running but it was absolutely pointless. The entity caught up to them in the blink of an eye. Had Jessica just left Angi there she may have gotten away, but she could not leave her friend behind to die alone. Now they stood corned by this monstrosity and had nowhere to run. The creature lunged, ripping and hacking at them; tearing off limbs. The entire time the girls never stopped screaming. I jolted upright in bed screaming, thankful that it was just a dream, I looked over to the door and I saw a pair of glowing red eyes boring into me. With a thud I hit the floor, falling out of bed I realized that the eyes in my doorway were just another bad dream.

I ran into my mom’s room. ‘I need to go to Angi’s. She's in trouble, I just know it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mom asked me.

I screamed, ‘ANGI IS IN TROUBLE I NEED TO SAVE HER!’

Mom got up out of bed, ‘Fine, if you think she's in trouble and it will calm you down then we will go to her house.’ We got into the car, and raced to her house. I ran into her house, just to witness the bloodiest thing I would ever see in my life. Just like in my dream Angi parents lay dead on the floor, body parts littered the entire living room and a pool of blood sat in the exact spot where Angi had been attacked. I rushed into the next room and I wailed as I saw my two best friends mutilated beyond recognition. My mother must have heard my screams because she came running into the house only to cry out in shock. She pulled me off my two dead friends and called the cops. I fought with her not wanting to be separated from them. Soon I was outside sobbing on my mom's shoulders as she spoke to the police. I was so upset the police didn’t even bother trying to talk to me. I wasn’t injured, and my mom told them we had only come over because I had forgotten some school project, so the police let us go home after a few hours of questioning at the scene.

Mom took me home to rest after the shock of finding that massacre. What was happening?!? Everything I dreamt, had happened. It's like I am the reason this is all happening. The world would be better if I never existed,my friends would still be alive. How much better would the world be if my dreams were actually just dreams. At this moment an idea came to me. If I caused the change to my friends appearance, and if I was responsible for my friend’s gory death; then why couldn’t I dream that I was never born, or that I died before this all happened? Yes, that would be perfect! Then none of my friends or their family's lives would have been ruined because of me. A plan took shape in my mind. If I could lucid dream or even control my nightmares then I could go back to before I was born and stop all of this from ever happening.

So I looked up how to lucid dream and what came up was a checklist of things to do before bed and throughout the night. I started off small. I set an alarm for anywhere between 3-5 hours after I fell asleep. I started keeping track of my dreams in a journal and when I would fall back asleep I would try to do what they call a reality check. Looking into a mirror to see if my reflection was normal. Pressing my hands against solid objects to see if they would pass through. The most common one I used was pushing my palms together. Slowly I could tell the difference in when I was dreaming and when I was awake. It took me months and I still did not have a very good handle on it. However I did manage to not have any dreams where I killed anyone else. Little things kept changing like my teachers were different and such but I learned to live with it. Knowing that once I got this down and I carried out my plan none of it would matter anyways.

The night finally came. I decided I had the control to choose where my dreams went and that I had the ability to choose what I would do in them. So that night I laid down in my bed for what I thought would be the last time and focused on my mother, before she met my father and had me. It worked, but not in the way I had expected. Last night I dreamt that my mother was about 18 years old, and had died in a car accident. When I woke up this morning everything was different; the house I live in, my bedroom, my mom nowhere to be found and only pictures of my dad and his side of the family hung on the walls. No where could I find a single picture of me with him. Even now as I sit here typing this on my father's laptop, I am slowly fading away.. So if you ever find yourself questioning reality. Like maybe your room changed slightly, your dog looks different, maybe you should find a way to control your dreams or better yet stop dreaming all together. Before you end up hurting people you love or blinking yourself out of this reality.

Pythia's father got home and opened his laptop to a document he did not write, his brows furrowed as he skimmed through the pages. After reading it he commented to himself, ‘Damn; another oracal that did not work out. I can’t seem to figure out why this keeps happening. Next time maybe I should warn them about the dreams when they are young; this always seems to start after puberty hits. The original oracle of delphi seems to have been the only one who could handle the weight of these abilities. Oh well, on to the next one.’ His eyes started to glow a vibrant blue as he sighed, almost as though he was disappointed in himself. He slouched as a tear ran down his face and slowly every trace of him and his former life vanished from the house. Thunder clapped outside as the last photon of him disappeared. Some people swore they could see a bearded man's face form in the storm clouds that night. But just as quickly as the storm started, with a blinding white light it was gone.