Edge of Dreams

6✯

Edge of Dreams

I sit on the carpeted stairs, slowly sliding down to sneak into the chocolate drawer. The lights on the tv are reflect in the living room. I hear their voices, and keep sliding down.

"I don't know if she knows what's real and what isn't," I hear my mother say. "Yesterday she tried to dig up that bird we buried. She said that she saw it come back to life and that she had to help it."

"Did you tell her it was just a dream?" My father replies.

"Yes, but she didn't believe me. She was convinced it was real. She dug it up and I found her there later crying."

"We just have to explain to her that her dreams aren't real. That when she wakes up it's real."

I stop sliding down when they stop speaking, afraid they'll hear me move.

"That's not the terrifying part. I told her that too, and do you know what she said?" I'm at the bottom of the stairs and sneak past the door. "She said 'What if this is a dream too?'"

✭✭✭

Getting up and ready for 7am is simple enough since I had already been awake since 5am. Even walking to breakfast is simple, without any conflict. I line up for my breakfast when someone bumps into me.

I twist around and instinctively apologise even though it isn't my fault. What I see makes me perplexed. The rainbow colour hair makes me pause. It's a girl, that's for sure. She doesn't apologise to me, in fact, she completely avoids eye contact with me.

Considering the fact that nobody else is lining up behind her, it has to be pure clumsiness to bump into me.

"Did you see it?" She asks me with frantic excitement. I assume she is asking me since I'm the only one close enough to hear her.

"See what?"

"The butterfly. It flew past you and disappeared. Didn't you see it?" The rainbow haired girl says more anxiously.

I blink. "No..." There's no butterfly. If one passed me I would be sure to notice. I stare at her whilst she acts jittery. There is something unsettling about her.

"Alice!" A voice sounding suspiciously like Aaron shouts, walking towards us.

Luckily Alice turns her attention to Aaron. "Did you see it?" She asks him.

He gives her an easy, calming smile and lightly places his hand on her shoulder. "The butterfly?"

Surely there isn't a butterfly that passed by me without me knowing. Right? Am I just oblivious to everything?

Alice relaxes visibly when he confirms her beliefs. "Yes. Butterfly. It went passed her." She turns back towards me but dodges eye contact. "Did you see it?"

"I-" I start to deny it until I see Aaron shaking his head at me. I take it as a sign and nod at Alice. "Yes I saw it."

"Butterfly. Butterfly. Butterfly." Alice murmurs to herself walking away in a hunched form. Her head twitches around the room as though following something with her eyes.

I turn to Aaron with an expression of pure confusion. "Don't mind Crazy Alice, she's just a little.... crazy." He settles with saying.

"Crazy Alice?" I breathe out.

"Well, her names really Alicia, but everyone calls her Alice. Like Alice in Wonderland, because she's always in her own world."

"So the butterfly thing?"