It was after dinner and I had showered, but I wasn't going to let myself sleep until I saw that it was late enough for everyone to be asleep. I checked the analogue clock and my wrist and saw the hands pointing in a way that meant it was almost midnight. There was no way anyone was still up.

I crawled out of bed and snuck into the kitchen, formulating a plan. It was a curious thing; I had been able to heal myself in my sleep. There was no evidence of ever having scabs. It had never happened before. Why now? Why me? There were too many questions and too many impossible answers that didn't seem so impossible.

I looked through the draws until I found the sharpest knife in the kitchen. It was a large cooks knife, and I could remember Samara once hurting herself with it while making Christmas dinner. Mum had helped her, and Dad had gone to finish the dinner. The food had been burnt, but it was still edible. Only slightly though.

Mum seemed to have magic hands though. She could make anything better just by smiling it seemed. I thought so at least. Whenever I was sick or hurt, she seemed to make things all better just by being there to help. Scratches, cuts, bruises, and colds seemed to disappear quicker than normal when she was the one taking care of you. The same was true for when Samara cut herself with the exact knife I was holding.

I looked at the cool silver blade, shining in the moonlight that leaked in through the window. It looked almost blueish in the dark. It reminded me of the lightning indigo light I saw in my dream. The moonlight even dashing from place to place as I moved it in the luminescent glow of the moon.

I knew no one was awake, but even so, a hid the knife in my sleeve and went into my closet, closing the door behind me and turning the light on. I took out some tissues and sat on my heels, the tissues resting on my thighs.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and a wash of warm enveloped my body as I began to shake, and my breathing quickened slightly. This was something I never saw myself doing. I had heard of people doing this in Health class, in books and even on TV, but I never imagined that I would be in a position to do it myself.

I can do this, I told myself. I quickly took out a notebook and pen, jotting a list down on a random page in the middle so that it wouldn't be easily found. My heart was racing, and my writing was shaky. My usually neat cursive had squiggles all through each connecting letter. I took a deep breath and read through what I had written.

Test One – Cuts
Test Two – Bruising
Test Three – Burns
Test Four – Broken Bone
Test Five – Frost Burn
Test Six – Stab Wounds
Test Seven – Poison
Test Eight – Death

I knew full well that if anything went wrong, I could die, and that was the scary part. If it didn't protect against all of that, I could very well end up trapped in whatever came after death. Heaven, Hell, darkness, the other side, a good place, a bad place, reincarnated. Anywhere.

I took another deep, shaky breath and held it for a second as I considered what I was about to do. Was this actually, something I wanted? Did I really want to go as far as hurting myself for answers? The truth of it scared me, because it was what I wanted, and I was willing to go that far. And that thought was the most terrifying of all.

I took the cool metal in my warm hand, slick with sweat. I put the knife back down, afraid of dropping it and quickly wiped my hands on my shorts, the silence deafening, and my heart pounding. I picked the knife back up and lifted my shirt to reveal my bell and hips. There was no way that thing was going anywhere near my thighs or wrists.

I brought the blade to my hip and my heart hammered against my chest at a seemingly dangerous speed. I sucked in a breath as the sharp object lightly grazed my skin but caused no damage at all. I closed my eyes and squeezed them shut as I quickly slid the object against my skin. I opened my eyes and saw the clumsily created cut. It was wobbly, and a little deeper than needed. The beads of blood started to form, and I caught them on one of my tissues, wiping the cut and pressing it to stop the bleeding.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the bleeding subsided for the most part. The tissue was crimson and stained my hand, so I rolled it up and dropped it on a clean tissue I had moved to the floor. I sat there for a minute, finally working up the courage to do it again. This time however, the cut was just as jagged, but not nearly deep enough to cause the damage I wanted.

It took a few tries, but after some time I ultimately worked out how to get a decent cut that would stop bleeding fairly fast. I was left with six cuts, three on each hip and a pile of bloody tissues. My hands had been stained pink by the crimson fluid, and so I disposed of the tissues down the toilet and washed my hands in the bathroom.

My hips were sore, so I put a few tissues on each and wrapped a bandage around them messily just so that they would stay. If things went my way, I wouldn't need to properly take care of them anyway.

I climbed up and onto my bed, careful not to mess up the shotty job of bandaging myself. As I laid there, my heart raced, and my mind zoomed. I was alert and fully awake, there was no way I would be able to go to sleep in that condition. But eventually – after a few guided meditation videos – I fell into darkness. The world of dreams and rest taking over.

I woke up in the same overgrown alley as the night before, but my hips ached, and the injuries of my day were reflected on my actual body. This time, I was fully aware that I was asleep, and that none of what I saw was actually real.

The alley seemed to be more overgrown than the last dream, and I could see branches growing above the alley as though it were an arch way. The pink glitter still filtered through its leaves though, and the storm had dissipated to just a cloudy night sky. It was magnificent.

I once again followed the path of the alley, but this time there was no bright rainbow light beckoning me to come closer. The only light came from the ethereal glow of the moon.

Once again, nature seemed to make way for me as I made my way out. I got to the end and instead of seeing a field of dead grass, I saw the shopping centre I had frequented with Triston and Addison. But it seemed to be, more alive. Like the absence of interference had caused the plants to blossom, and even a few animals were populating the shops. The place was definitely abandoned, but it was nowhere near eerie or haunted.

I walked past a few shops and saw the familiar cars of neighbours and friends alike. I jumped up onto the bins like I had when running home after receiving the phone call that started all of this. The vines on the bins bloomed with tiny red amaryllis.' Prosperity and wealth beyond beauty. I wasn't even entirely sure these flowers were meant to grow on vines, but they did.

When I reached the edge of the bins, rather than tumbling right off and being forced to leave some skin behind, I managed to instead land on my feet. I glanced around at my surroundings until I spotted it. La Fleur stood there, looking roughly the same even if there were vines coiling around it. The plants had somehow managed to keep the door mostly untouched, making it one of the only buildings I could actually entre.

I looked at the cedar walls, the cracked windows, and lively flowers. I looked up at the sign to see four letters gone. The L from La, the E from Fleur and the A and F from Café. Leaf. I suppose I shouldn't have been that surprised. Although I don't understand why leaves were relevant.

I pushed the door open and scanned the room. It was empty of humans other than me, but it was most certainly not empty of life. Flowers and vines covered the place, there was even a small tree growing out of the ground in the centre of the room. There was a birds nest on one of the shelves behind the counter, and I could make out the shape of a sleeping koala in the tree.

I walked around it carefully, as to not disturb the sleeping creature and took a seat at the table that used to be Triston's, Addison's, and my spot. The plant pot remained in tacked, and I watched as a new flower curled out of the soil at an exceedingly fast rate.

I could remember spending many lovely evenings and mornings at this table. Complaining about teachers, making jokes, mocking the eshay's and mocking wannabe popular people that thought high school was what they showed on TV.

Truth be told, there were two groups of popular people. The ones that thought they were those people like in TV and those that people genuinely liked. The only difference is that the ones people liked weren't trying to be like what you see on unrealistic American TV shows. Honestly, I was genuinely terrified when I was in year seven. Years sevens always think high school is going to be like what's on TV. It's why they're so annoying.

I came back from my thoughts and watched as the black petals of a rose opened up. It was quite beautiful in an almost dark and mysterious way. And black roses weren't actually black, but just really dark red.

I heard a voice in my head that sounded more like my own than anything else whispered to me. Death. That's what black roses typically symbolised. And it sent a shiver down my spine.

I heard a cracking sound and turned to see the tree in the centre of the room twisting on itself. The bark snapped and the wood cracked and started to teeter. The koala remained asleep, and I quickly jumped from my seat to scoop it into my arms. The koala began to stir as the tree crashed onto the chair, I had just been sitting in. I was surprised when the koala didn't attack me, they were known to be quite vicious if they felt as though they were in danger. I dropped it to the floor, and it left.

I stared in shock as I saw my hands. On the backs there was an intricate design with a dark green jewel in the centre that I thought might be malachite. The design looked deep green in the darkness of the café, but I could make out the outline of a four petalled flower with the outline of branches growing from where they met, the whole thing surrounded by the outline of a grass like design. This was new, and definitely wasn't there before I fell asleep.

I was snapped from my thoughts when a chair flew over my head. I managed to quickly duck, and I watched as tables, chairs, and everything else started rattling on the ground and flew or fell towards me. I stumbled backwards as I tried to make some sort of escape. I ducked my head as a small baby stool flew towards me, smashing through the window and landing outside in the parking lot.

I crawled under a table and slid into the open doorway of the girls bathroom and slammed it shut just in time to hear a table break against it. I used my foot to keep the door shut as I reached for a mop and used it to keep the door closed as I stepped back.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and scanned the room until I met my own eyes in the mirror. I looked up a fraction in shock. There, on my forehead, was a large gemstone that I knew for certain was not there before. Swirling around and away from it like vines was the same colour I saw on my hands. It almost looked like a crown that had permanently imprinted itself into my forehead. This can't be happening, I thought. Why the Hell do I have to have such weird dreams?

Eventually I heard a crack and saw the mop I had used to keep the door closed was slowly breaking at each impact. I needed a new plan, and fast.

I thought about it, and the furniture had to be moving towards the middle of the door at a scary speed. Crack! I watched a splinter fall to the ground and began to panic. If the objects were going fast, they'd fly through the doorway once it opened. Crack! I took a few steps forward, getting enough distance to not get hit when the door opened. Crack! If I timed this right, I would get out of this unscathed. SNAP!!

I dropped to the ground and the chair flew right over me. I sprinted out of the room and dived over the counter to hide from the table that came towards me. I crawled out from under the actual way behind the counter and ran right out of the building.

I stopped and started panting, feeling the fast winds push against me. My blond hair whipped behind me, and my pyjamas tried to pull me back. I heard a strike of lightning and looked up at a cloudy grey sky. A cloudy grey sky that had been clear only moments before. I sighed and looked down at my bare feet, feeling the sting of my escape in my belly and hips. A stitch had most likely formed, and I felt hot and sticky.

I heard something equivalent to a rock breaking and turned to see red light radiating from a crack in the ground, in front of La Fleur. I watched in horror as the crack grew, heading right for me.

Ignoring the painful stitch in my belly, I ran in the complete opposite direction. I grabbed the nearest trolley running with it behind me before jumping up and landing in it. It crashed into an island, and I jumped onto the light up menu outside of Hungry Jack's and climbed onto the top of the fast-food restaurant. Who would have thought a fatty foods restaurant would save anyone.

I leant over the edge of the roof enough to see the glowing cracks in the ground. I let out a sigh, thinking of how this place had seemingly gone from utopian to chaotic in just a few seconds. But the chaos wasn't over yet. The red light peaked through cracks that formed a circle around Hangry Jack's. The plants encasing the building began to shrivel up and die.

My breathing quickened to an alarming rate and my heart hammered in my chest. My mind was racing, and the building began to shift underneath me. But not in a normal way. The concrete warped and jiggled in a way only jelly did. But I could still feel that it had the same texture and density of concrete. It was surreal.

I rolled away from the edge as to not fall off and scratched my arm against the thorn of a dead vine. The crimson light slithered higher into the sky as the building tossed me around violently and I could tell I was battered and bruised. My hips sung out in agony every time I landed on them. Maybe the knife was a bad idea.

The concrete folded, warped, and stretched repeatedly and at a random pace, not giving me enough time to regain balance before the next motion. I was nearly thrown off the edge but managed to hang on and swing myself back onto the building just in time. More specifically, just in time to be thrown to the other side of the roof. The worst part was, it was getting faster, and the impacts were getting more brutal.

I groaned out and eventually everything became too much, and I was flung from the roof, flying through the air, and slowly plummeting to my almost certain death. I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the impact, but it never came. It never came. I opened my eyes to see the stormy sky and turned my head to see dark green light, with a lighter green light coiling around it as though it were a vine. As the light shrunk, a slowly floated to the ground.

I lay still for a moment, trying to comprehend how the same light that had caused complete agony in the last dream was now my salvation. I watched the sky clear, and the pink glitter sprinkle down, as though to lightly kiss my injuries and make them all better like parents do when you're young.

I let out a long, shaky breath and moved my hand to my forehead, only to feel the gemstone I had completely forgotten about in all of the chaos. I didn't know how it got there, I didn't know what it meant, I didn't even know if it would be there when I woke up. My mind was racing with all sorts of tangents I didn't have time to follow.

Everything had gone to shit. I lost my friends, I lost my parents – although, we never really did get along, I was having these strange dreams. Everything seemed to just go wrong all at once. I figured the universe or whatever higher beings there were must hate me. And maybe I deserved their hatred, maybe I didn't, but either way it was happening.

I sat up and rested my head in my hands, silently crying. After a minute or two I wiped my eyes and looked at the sight of my room. I could see that the sun was only now beginning to rise, and I'd still have a half hour before anyone woke up.

I tiptoed into the bathroom and looked at my reflection, just to make sure. No gemstone. I let out a breath before deciding to check my hips. They were completely fine. Not a single trace of ever having been cut.

I snuck back into my bedroom and pulled my book and pen out, turning to the page I had written on and added to it.

Test One – Cuts – Successfully Healed

I closed the book and put it away before realising I had never put the knife back. So, I quickly did that, and climbed back into bed to just lay there for a while. There was an orange hue coming in through the window, but I wasn't on schedule to be awake just yet. No matter how terrifying life had gotten. And after a while, my alarm went, signalling that it was time to be awake.