I tried not to think about the dream that had plagued my mind for two weeks straight as I packed my suitcase, trying to stay in one place because walking too much hurt my leg. I finished quickly, though, and frowned when it didn't take as long as I'd hoped. My mind wandered to a dark place, but this time I let it, if only to pass the time.

Huh. What a strange dream. It wasn't at all possible, and yet....

And yet....

"M, come on, we're going to be late!"

I shook the thoughts away as I grabbed my suitcase and headed for the staircase. I took my time going down seeing as how I fell the last time I rushed. The giant boot on my leg was proof of the day I couldn't remember.

Strange. All I remembered was the weird dream I had....

I felt eyes on me as I stepped out of the house. I looked around, saw nothing, and shrugged it off as nerves.

==================

I was finally getting out of that house.

I had told the doctors what happened, that I had fallen down the stairs in my rush to get downstairs, and they told me I was lucky to wake up. They also told me I shouldn't use stairs for a long time, so it was arranged that I would go and live with my batty (Benji's words, not mine) grandmother, Abigail, and my homeschooled cousin, Mary. I didn't even know I had a cousin named Mary, but I just shrugged it off and agreed to go.

It was a three-hour drive to her house, and Uncle Benji agreed that it should just be the two of us, so we drove alone and in complete silence. I listened to my music and took a few naps the whole way, and Benji didn't try to speak to me. He wanted to say something, I could tell, but I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to talk to anyone.

We pulled up in front of my grandmother's dilapidated one-story house and I stopped my music, pulling out my headphones as I did so. Uncle Benji got out of the car and got my suitcase out of the trunk as I, ever the misanthropist, moved slowly so that I could study all of my surroundings. The house, its position, how dense the woods behind it were. Instinct screamed at me to buckle right back up and drive away.

Stop being an idiot, I thought to myself as I climbed out and followed Benji to the porch. You don't want to go back to living with them, do you?

No, I didn't, and that was that. But I couldn't help thinking of Brian, how he would feel at my sudden leave without telling him. And Audrey, the girl who kept trying to steal him away, how easy it would've been for her to take him now that I had abandoned him....

I shook my head. I needed to stop thinking about things like that for now. I needed to wait until I was safe in a bed, safe to cry and think. Benji knocked sharply, startling me out of my thoughts. It took ten seconds for the door to open, and a wiry-haired woman in her late sixties or possibly even early seventies opened the door and looked at us through narrowed eyes.

"Hello, Mom," Benji sighed. The word sounded like a bad taste on his tongue. "I've brought Mira." He gestured to me and the woman's eyes fell upon me, narrowing farther. She studied me for a long time, long enough that I started getting uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do, my gaze flicking between her and Benji. Benji wouldn't look at me.

"Okay, Mira," she said finally, and my gaze snapped back to her. She suddenly looked pleasant, making me trust her even less. Again, I got the feeling I should just leave. "Come on in," she said, flashing a smile too bright to be genuine. Maybe dentures?

I took my suitcase from Benji, avoided an awkward hug, and ducked inside, standing just beyond the door - just out of Benji's sight. The two spoke for what seemed like hours but was probably only seconds before the door clicked shut and the old woman wheeled around to face me. Her smile was still oddly fake, though she acted pleasant enough as she gave me a tour.

"This will be your room, just put your suitcase on the bed," my grandmother said with a flick of her wrist, and I did as she instructed. She closed the door behind me as I came back out and motioned to the door across the hall.

"That's Mary's room," she said in a whisper, as if we were sharing a secret. "We can take a small peek, but we can't be in there long because she should be back any minute." The woman opened the door amd I bit back a gasp as I walked in, mouth agape.

It had a certain order to it. It was messy, but it was orderly enough that you could find whatever you looked for quickly. Almost as if she was ready to leave at a moment's notice....

I backed out and turned away from the room, trying not to let the color drain from my face. My grandmother didn't notice as she closed the door to my cousin's room and continued down the hall. After a brief tour of the house, she noticed how sick I appeared and told me to go lie down, get used to the house, calling to me just before I went inside my room.

"You can refer to me as Grandma if you want, that's what Mary calls me. Or you could call me Grandma Abigail. Whichever you prefer, of course."

I didn't intend to call her anything, but I wasn't about to tell her that. Or anything. I closed the door behind me as I went in and went to the bed. I set my suitcase next to the bed and curled up on top of it, sleep calling to me. It took almost no time for me to fall asleep.

========================

A flash of light, and then a planet covered in storm clouds. Wreckage, as if many a great battles took place there, in the space around the planet itself, maybe even on it.

Another flash, and I was in a large room, men in uniform running around in a panic. A man ran in front of me, but something, something that looked an awful lot lot like claws, dug into his stomach, lifting him into the air. And then it appeared - a horrid black creature shaped almost like a man, if not for the head, which was shaped like a helmet of some sort. There was yellow arcs of electricity coming off the thing, and it dropped the dead man, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Then I was standing in front of a huge set of double doors. An elderly man busted through, flanked left and right by some of the same men I had just seen. His eyes were gray with cataracts, from what I could only guess. There were burns across his eyes, and they looked extremely painful. Despite being blind, he met the enemies in front him, a bunch of men in plastic white armor, and fought like an expert. His sword was....

Flash. It was raining. I was on a platform, and I could feel the rain, as if I was actually there, in the soaked place. The man was... shooting lightning out of his hands. I'd seen weirder.

Flash. A pale pink ceiling. A warm bed, but an uncomfortable and painful position. I was back in my new room. I sat up, breathing heavily and drenched in so much sweat that I thought, for a moment, that it was from that rainy planet, surrounded by debris and war - memories.

But I wasn't alone. Blue eyes, as blue as crystals, stared into mine through the dark.

I screamed at the mirror-image copy of myself.