“Hey, you!” someone yelled. I was confused and pointed at my black t-shirt.

“Yes, you!” the voice replied. I started to walk towards the voice, but couldn’t tell where I was going because all I could see was dark, empty trees. The further I went towards the voice, the more trees I found. I walked and walked, hearing the crunching of leaves under my feet until my legs and feet couldn’t carry me any further. Suddenly I saw a big white dog running towards me. I started to run, faster and faster. The next few seconds was all a blur to me, I tripped over a branch and landed on the yellow, orange and red leaves under me. Landed on my back, started to roll down a small hill, till I crashed into a bolder that lay before me. I got up, hurt but startled, as I frantically looked around to find the dog attacking me, but I didn’t. I began to limp back to where it seemed I had started, but only became even more lost. As I walked I could taste the blood in my mouth from hitting the bolder. I looked down, and saw that my jeans were torn, but didn’t want to look at the cut that lay under the torn fabric. Soon fog surrounded me and I couldn’t see where it was that I was limping to. Then I knelt down, exhausted when I felt something wet under me. I stared to sink slowly down into what I think was mud. When suddenly I sit up, glance around and find myself in my room, I see my posters and all of my drawings and pictures I have posted along the walls. “Oh good that was just a dream,” I think as I put my feet on the fuzzy blue carpet, I stand up and walk towards my mirror when I fall, hit my head on my dresser and am knocked out. My leg hurts, and I realize that my leg was cut, and it had dried mud on it, getting infected, as I lay next to my dresser unconscious. My mom walks into my room I can hear her asking questions as she opens the door as I slowly become conscious again

“Why didn’t you come to breakfast this morning?” I can barely make out.She sees me laying on the floor and shrieks

“What happened to you, my child?!?!”I don’t respond, for some reason my mouth won’t open. She drags me out form the dresser, rolls me over onto my back; all I can do is groan the pain is too much. She mumbles something; I can’t make it out and leaves. About what I think is a minute or so later she returns with ice packs and a wet cloth. She starts with my head, cleaning off the wound with the warm wet cloth, and then she sets the ice cold ice pack on it, its freezing and doesn’t help the pain. Next, she sees my torn jeans, and starts tearing at the torn place, I think she is looking for a cut, and finally finds it, under all of the mud. She cleans it, then helps me up and into the bath that she had running the entire time. I get in and look in the mirror as I do so. I look awful. I think the mirror is lying, then think better of it because of all of the pain. I have a black eye, a torn lip, and leaves and mud in my hair; that looks worse than if I had just woken up. This figure squinting back at me frightens me and I look away. The hot water feels nice under all of the pain, it seems to soak up some of it. The steam rolling onto my face, moisturizing it and I feel like a new person. All until I climb out. This time I don’t put any weight on my left leg as I get out, I grab one of the white towels my mom has hung out for me. Look back at the bathtub and find the water black with mud, but also has a tint of red in it. As I open the brown bathroom door the icy cold air hits my lungs instantly. I clutch my lungs as I walk into my room. I figure the bolder messed up my lungs. I hear the sound of a vacuum coming from my room and stumble in to find my mom sobbing while vacuuming up all the dried mud. I unplug the vacuum and limp to my mom. She hugs me and continues to cry. I ask her,

“What’s the matter, mom?”

“What happened to you, Al?”She calls me Al, my family nickname. All of a response I am able to give her is

“Mom, I-I don’t know what happened. I had a very particular dream.”

She lets me go, and I can sense that she doesn’t believe me. I don’t really believe myself either maybe it really did happen and I just went to bed without taking a shower or anything. I tell myself as I walk downstairs to get something to eat. I eat my plate of food my mom has in the refrigerator for me and go lay on the couch to think. Once I hit the couch, I fall into a deep sleep; I didn’t realize how tired I was until then. I hit the warm water and hear the voice again.

“Hey you!” it says.I once again point to my shirt; this time a blue t-shirt.

“Yes you!” it replies.This time, I’m not going after it; though I am curious who, what and why this person it bothering me by talking to me. I realize I am in a lake or some sort of water. I can’t see much; the water is too murky. Instead I try to swim up to find the surface. My head pops out of the water, gasping for air I look around. I’m in the same forest, I scramble out of the water. Under me is wet sand and I start shaking; freezing from being soaked. I walk around and finally find a sunny spot, where the sun isn’t covered by the trees. As I sit down, I look at myself, for some reason, I’m not all torn up as I was when I fell asleep. I let the sun completely dry me form my hair to my shoes. I stand up and try to find my way out. I am successful. I find an opening that becomes a meadow. No one is here besides myself. My gut is telling me I should leave but I ignore the feeling. I think it might just be telling me that I am starving, which I am. The meadow is so beautiful, and peaceful. It looks as though it could be unreal; like a painting. The tall green grass surrounds me as I walk through the meadow, enjoying all of the surroundings. The trees are filled with the colors of fall, the sky is a crystal clear blue with no clouds to be seen. This place makes me feel at home, I’m so happy and over joyed I run through the meadow, up and down. Round and round I run as I circle the trees; the leaves falling in my luscious brown hair flowing behind me. Coming to and abrupt stop I hit something. I look up and find a man standing above me looking down at me with is big brown curious eyes. He startles me and I turn to run.

“Hey, you!” he says as I am about to run away.I find myself looking at him with my blue eyes and pointing at my blue t-shirt, once again.

“Yes, you.” he says, the voice the exact same as I remember before.
He looks friendly, but I don’t think I can trust him as I see the big white dog sitting behind him. As he sees I am about to bolt, his strong grip grabs my arm, I struggle trying to flee. The more I struggle the stronger his grip gets. I feel a strong tugging on my right leg the opposite side that the man is holding. I look down, but not all that far down I see the white dog. I notice he has a gray spot on his back as well as one on his front paws; his back almost reaches my hip. My gut starts giving me the feeling of “I told you so!” as I am being drug up a hill and to a black, shiny car. The shaggy spotted dog takes a better grip of my pants, and this time grabs my leg as well. I don’t struggle any more; I want all of the pain to stop. My arm is going numb and my leg, is basically being eaten off as the dog tears at my leg. I am in more of a shock than anything else as I am throne into the shiny black car. The man starts laughing as he locks the doors and says in that creepy voice you hear on TV,

“I’ve been waiting for you!” Frantically, I glance around trying to find a hiding place or some way to free myself. All I see it the dog growling at me as he sits next to me, never taking his eyes off of me and nothing besides a black bag hidden in the corner of the trunk. Slowly I inch towards it trying not to startle the dog into attacking me. The man mumbles something to himself. I can’t make it out but freeze so he won’t see that I am reaching for the bag. I can see that we are on the highway from the back tinted window. I continue reaching for the bag. Finally my fingers graze the top of the bag. At the same time I hear the dog bark I look up to the front of the car. I find the man staring back at me. He moves towards me and I see a car coming right at us and scream

“Hey watch the road! Look there’s a car!" When I screamed I grab at the black bag. It is heavy but I throw it onto my lap. Inside of it was a huge butcher knife; the blade shining like it had just been cleaned. There was brown rope and duck tape. I wasn’t able to look any further. I knew there wasn’t much time left so I began to slap my face. As I was slapping myself to wake myself up, a sliver car hit us. When the man turned around his elbow hit the steering wheel and made the car turn into the other lane. He was unable to retrieve the car from the other side of the highway. Instead of waking up I am looking down at myself laying on the couch. My body looks cold; I could see where the dog had bitten me; the blood dried under my torn dark blue jeans. My left arm was bruised from the brown haired creepy man grabbing my arm. My face was red and I had blood in my hair as well as glass. In my chest lays the knife; halfway in. I still have all of the older cuts and bruises from last time.

Later my mom comes in to check on me; when she finds me like this. She rests her head on my cold body; she doesn’t even check for my breathing and knows I’m not. She then, looks up at my face. First she sees the knife in my chest, followed by the bruise followed by the red hand print on my face then she sees the glass in my hair. She then closes my eyes that were staring back at her. She can’t take it and continues to rest her head on my stomach and cries. Hours and hours pass by and she still lays there and cries. I look out the window and the warm fall day starts fading into a dark cool night. Soon the crying stops and she falls asleep. I stay with her all night long. During the night I find a piece of paper and a pen and try to write a note to my mom. When I grasp the blue pen it falls through my ghostly figure. I try typing on my mom’s black laptop; putting a note on my and my mom’s cell phones, everything I try doesn’t work. Eventually I give up.
Around 9:00 am my mom wakes up. In a rush of questions she begins to ask my body

“What happened? I left you alone for about 30 minutes and this is what I come to find? You never left, the door is still locked. Allison! You are exactly the same as I left, except for all of the cuts, bruises and this red mark!?!? What happened?!?!” I come right up to her and hug her. I think she knows I am there because she puts her arms around where my ghostly figure stands in front of her. I whisper in her ear

“Mom it was all a dream but somehow also real as well.” She doesn’t respond. I think that she can’t hear me. It was my time to go. I couldn’t stay on earth any longer. When I got to heaven I find a note in my room on it, it says- Write your mom a note, only she will be able to read it. Here is a pen to write with. I’ll send it to her when you finish.- I begin writing the note. I tell my mom everything that happened, how I never left the house, I think, but I still had all of the damage from the dreams. I write to her that I will always be watching over her; keeping her as safe as I can. I end the note by telling her not to worry; I think no one will ever find out how it all happened and that I love her and am safe. I reread the note and realize that I ended up using the entire front and back page. Then I leave the piece of paper and pen exactly how I found it.

Later I watch my mom read the note; she finds it laying on her bed after work; when she is about to lay down to sleep. She seems satisfied. I watch her smile and also cry as she reads it. She sets the the note on her dresser, and crawls into bed with a smile on her face. Seeing her smile makes me feel better. In the morning when my dad finally returns from Utah he asks about me. My mom tells him everything and shows him the note. He isn’t able to see what I wrote to mom; instead he sees another message I wrote underneath of my mom’s letter. All his says is -Take care of mom for me-Love Allison- Mom reads her part of the note to dad, and dad reads his part to mom. With them knowing what happened to me their life seems to get better.

Every day I watch over them keeping them as safe as I possibly can. Even though I am gone they don’t change anything major on how they live. A couple weeks later in the newspaper my dad reads about how a brown haired, brown eyed man and his grey spotted, shaggy dog got in a car crash and how it looked as though someone else was in the car as well. My dad then reads the article to my mom and they both look at one another puzzled.