The Psychic Within

Chater 27: Morning

The pavement was cold beneath my bare feet. I was standing in the road, on the yellow line and a thick, cold fog snaked around me. Pressing in from all angles, it quickly seeped through my tank top and thin leggings, chilling me to the bone.

All I saw was grey. The fog was too thick to see anything beyond. A cold that had nothing to do with weather spread through me.

Where was I?

Last I remembered I was in my apartment, alone...

As if to answer my question, the fog pulled back to reveal a sliver of night sky and a triad of lights dangling over my head. A traffic light. Each bulb flashed wildly, a frantic dance of red, yellow, and green. The lamp swayed violently on its mount, as if being tossed by a wind that I couldn't feel.

I was in an intersection. And though the fog was still too thick to know for sure, something stirred in my mind. I just knew. It was the same intersection where Ethan and I had nearly run someone down. But now it was me that was in the middle of the road. Only, this time, the road seemed abandoned.

As soon as I thought it, I heard the rev of an engine. Two headlights materialized in the distance, their long beams catching on the thick mist, as the car they belonged to barrelled down on me.

Panic seized my brain and, like an idiotic deer, I froze.

A small, rusted-out compact shot out of the cloud. It flew past me, missing me by inches. I was spun around—propelled by the force of the passing car—and came face to face with a bloated corpse.

I choked on my scream and toppled over, the grit of the pavement gouging into the palms of my hands. I ignored the pain and scrambled back, eager to get away.

But waterlogged body didn't chase after me, like I expected it to; it hung limp in the air, hovering a few inches above the ground. Its hair drifted around its rotten head like it was still floating in the water from which it was dragged.

I staggered back to my feet, readying myself to run in any direction... But something caught my eye. Something about the body...

It—she? The state of her body made it hard to tell—was wearing pajamas. Wet pajamas. They clung to the grey, swollen body. The same pajamas the girl from my latest dream had been wearing

Dream...

I understood then.

This... This was another dream.

A switch flipped in my head. Of course it was another dream. It was so obvious. The unnatural fog, the reenactment of the almost-accident, the floating girl. Of course...

The tension eased from my shoulders. This world—no matter how terrifying—wasn't real. Despite the terror of my previous dream, I had come out unscathed. None of this meant anything.

Right?

I studied the horrific figure. Could it really be the same girl from my other dream? I hadn't gotten a good look at her face, not that it would matter now. The corpse's face was so bloated and rotted that it was far beyond any recognition.

But there were other similarities: the long, tangled hair; the dampness of her clothes; and, of course, the pajamas.

The front of her pajama shirt was torn open and there were deep cuts patterning her skin. Chunks were missing. A few of her ribs peeked out from the discoloured, rotting flesh. But there was no blood; her gruesome wounds had been washed clean by her watery grave.

What had happened to her?

Did it matter? This was just another invention of a sick mind. My sick mind. A ghostly girl inside my head.