Beyond

Chapter 1 - Year 9576

Zoe was a normal girl.

She wore normal clothes had normal friends but she did not have a normal life.

The thing that made Zoe a normal girl was that she was nothing more but normal on the outside. She talked like her friends. Laughed like her friends. But on the inside, her life was more jumbled up than anyone else's.

The only thing that made Zoe odd was that she saw things. Things no one else saw or seemed to notice. She would see things that were impossible.

Things that were green and lively. Once, she saw a tall thing. It had a brown body (it seemed) and at the top was a head of green shapes that drifted to the ground from time to time. A tree with leaves.

Zoe wished she could ask somebody about it, but was scared to. If no one else saw these visions, then they might call her weird.

But Zoe also saw other visions. Clear scenes of death and suffering. It was as if they had sucked her into the moment. Her heart twisted just watching the places. Beautiful buildings smoldering and houses burning in hot flames. Strong tendrils of fire, whipping around in the wind.

She had never seen someone die or seen fire, but whenever Zoe saw this images, the words popped into her mind. Zoe had never heard of a tree or what it felt like, but these images felt so real. They had to be.

Zoe pushed that out of her mind. She didn't have time to worry about that.

She turned away from the window she had been looking out of, and turned to walk down the long hallway of the space ship.

Then suddenly, there was a small sound. It was barely loud enough to be heard. Wait, it wasn't loud enough to be heard. It was more like a presence.

Zoe looked around, trying to listen, but it slowly seemed to get fainter and fainter as if something was moving or something was dying. She just shrugged it off. Zoe didn't have time to worry about noises, presences, or visions. As far as she was concerned, Zoe was a normal girl with a normal life and no one would tell her otherwise.

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Annette had spent all afternoon rewriting her history report. She had turned it in, but the essay was instantly turned down for being too messy. Sure. Ms. Hannah could think that if she wanted to.

She pressed her pencil against the paper and proceeded to write:

The first rule of The Space Fleet was created in order to stop all cruelty and evil that existed in any ship. This rule was created by Justin Blankenship, writer of all of the rules and inventor of many electronics. Anyway, the first rule is that "all mention of death is completely prohibited and anyone who mentions it will be severely punished." The original punishment was death for any person, but then, David Kenny said that fighting death with death would lead to only more violence. Thus, the punishment is eternal imprisonment in the Cellar Ship.

Annette released a long sigh as she stared at the words. They just didn't seem good enough. She grabbed the paper and crumpled it, smashing it with a hard palm against her desk. Annette grabbed the wadded paper and threw it in the trash can. She got a new piece of lined paper and sat there for a moment. Staring at the lines.

The red vertical line suddenly turned into a dark shade of crimson and everything else in the room faded away into nothingness. The line slowly thinned out, and Annette's vision seemed to drift upward just as a shriek split through the air.