My nightmare started like this. I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned. Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.

A man came swiftly up behind me and grabbed me roughly by my right upper arm, dragging me forward as I stumbled on the wet road. “What are you doing out here? Didn’t you know a hurricane was coming?”

I yanked my arm out of his grip and fell forward into a teeming puddle which was running in crooked channels down the sidewalk, skinning my knees in the process. I looked up and saw the man standing over me threateningly. I was horrified when I noticed he had a knife in his right hand as he gestured for me to get to my feet.

I looked around to see if anyone was around but the idyllic little beach town was empty and forlorn. Anyone with any sense had scurried to shelter. There weren’t even any rocks on the ground for me to defend myself, just windblown sand plastered to my body.

“Who am I?” I wondered, as I saw my wavy reflection in the puddle. I was running from someone but as hard as I struggled to remember, no awareness came to me. I just knew the man was malevolent and I had to escape this uncertainty.

All of a sudden, I felt like a lightning bolt had hit me as the past came flooding back. This was my husband who had followed me from Maine to Florida in order to kill me for the large insurance policy he had taken out on me. I was so frightened that I forced myself to wake up from my nightmare and opened my eyes wide to the realization that this was no nightmare.

I kicked him as hard as I could in the crotch, causing him to double over and fall on the knife. I watched in horror as his blood mingled with the driving rain in crimson splashes.

I jumped to my feet and ran as swiftly as I could down the little empty street, trying to escape my past. Feeling powerful as my pounding footsteps mixed with the roar of the seething ocean, I could never have known that he was not dead as I kept sprinting, trying to outrun his anger and boiling venom. The struggle would last for many years as more bodies would be left in my wake. I have to admit that I was no angel and there was a lot more to my story which will gradually insinuate itself into my narrative in little staining drops of pure evil.

My nightmare started like this. I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned. Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.

      My breath was coming quicker and my heart was beating faster. I knew that I was running from something--no, someone. Once again, I wasn't sure how I knew that.

     What is going on? My brain was working with startling clarity, and I started to doubt it was a dream. 

     Something clicked in my brain, and I tried to change directions. But my body was not my own, and I kept heading right towards the shadowy shape in front of me.

     "No, no, no!" I screamed, trying to dig my heels in to no avail.

     "Help me," the shadowy figure whispered in agony, turning around to face me.

      There was a knife stuck in the figure's gut, blood flowing in rivulets down to the ground. The ice blue eyes locked onto mine in a silent scream, and I would have screamed too...except I was too startled. I knew that face like the back of my hand.

      Because it was my own face.

"Abigail, wake up!" Reaper hissed beside me, shaking me awake. "You were screaming and thrashing around like...like Khan was after you or something!"

     I couldn't speak for a moment or two, so Reaper just sat there and watched me quietly from the shadows.

     "You want to talk about it?" he asked gently, focusing his alarmingly dark eyes on my own.

     I swallowed hard, struggling to make sense of what I'd dreamed. "Dreams don't mean anything," I muttered.

     "They do to Gabriella," he kidded. Reaper was right--Gabriella had some unusual abilities on top of the telepathic ones we all had. Like, being able to tell the future, or walk into a room and know exactly what happened there, even up to an hour or more ago.

     "I'm not Gabriella," I managed to joke. But my stomach was still churning, and when I shut my eyes briefly I saw the blood, and the face. My face.

     "It's okay if you don't walk to talk about it," he soothed me. "We could take a walk or..."

     "No, I'd prefer talking about it, I guess," I said at last. The last thing I wanted was to be outside.

     Reaper nodded. "Okay. Why were you so scared?"

     "It started out innocently enough, I guess," I began, and then smiled slightly at my choice of words. Reaper grinned in reply. "I was on a beach, and it was storming; and there was the ocean. And I knew it was Florida--I don't know how. And it was storming. I was running down a road, houses on either side...and I saw this shadowed figure. I tried to run away, but my body just kept hurtling forward. A-and then it asked for help. The figure turned around a-and...she had a knife in her gut."

     "She? Did you recognize her? Is that why you were scared?" Reaper questioned gently. His eyes never left mine as I struggled to take a deep breath and calm myself.

     "Yes," I whispered hoarsely.

     "Who was she?"

     I shook my head. "No, it's stupid of me to be scared. The whole thing's stupid."

     Reaper didn't move. "You don't know that. It might be telepathic imagery."

     "It's not. It was nothing but a silly dream," I replied, brushing him off. "I'm okay now, Thanks for talking with me."

     "Sure, no problem," Reaper responded. He hesitated, but finally rose to his feet and left the room, leaving me alone.

     "It was just a dream, Abigail," I whispered to myself. 

     At last, I sighed, and turned to look in the mirror. The moonlight reflected onto the mirror, and I studied my gut. No blood, no knife...Slowly my gaze lifted to my own eyes.

     They were blue.