Hokay! A random review prompted me to see if I could actually post my story off of this computer. Which is actually a laptop, but that is neither here nor there. And it turns out after a lot of tweaking (haha) that I can. So! I erased all of the chapters, revamped it all, and posted this first one. I will also keep the author’s notes to a line or so. I have learned that too much talking will disinterest a person and they’ll just go on and read the story. I do tend to ramble, though, author’s curse! So I apologise in advance.

Now without further adue, on with the madness!

It was dark, but there was definitely four people in the room. Two of them looked like young girls, and the other two looked like men. It was hard to tell though, a fog-like mist covered them all. The haze

lifted a few second later, like the curtain before a play. The scene immediately became clearer.

A girl with short, dark brown hair was kneeling on a couch, looking at another girl and two men in front of her. Her brown eyes showed just how truly horrified she was.

The other girl was standing in front of the two men, her face carefully blank. Despite her brave front, she was trembling very subtlety.

No one spoke. The two men in front of the standing girl were hidden in shadow, their features veiled. One of the men was leaning casually against the wall, his arms folded. The other man, who was slightly shorter than the other, was standing a little closer to the girl, his hands in his pockets.

As if it was the last thing she wanted to do, the girl sighed, reached up, and untied a ribbon that tied her hair in a loose knot on the top of her head. Brown hair tumbled down to her waist.

“No need to keep my hair up anymore,” she said casually, explaining her actions.

The men looked at each other, then back at her, silently. Their faces were hidden in shadow.

“Well?” one of the men finally said. If one listened closely, one could detect a slight British accent in some of his words.

“Well what?” the man who was leaning against the wall replied.

“Which one should we take?”

“Why not both?”

“Too much trouble.”

“Oh. Well then.”

The slightly taller man got off the wall and uncrossed his arms. He stepped up behind the other man, and casually wrapped his arms around the man’s shoulders. “Let’s see. Take her.”

He pointed at the short-haired girl on the couch. She didn’t move. Her expression of terror didn’t leave her face.

“Fine.”

The shorter man took his hands out of his pockets. In his right hand, he held a ivory gun with a black barrel. The girl with the long hair took a step backwards and jerked her hands up slightly.

A crack echoed in the room.

The standing girl spun around, her turquoise eyes wide with astonishment. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and she flung her head back, her long hair flying out around her.

The brown eyed girl screamed and threw herself over the back of the couch. She caught the shot girl just as she was about to hit the floor and clutched her to her chest, sobbing hysterically.

The two men looked at each other again, then went to the sobbing girl and hauled her up by her arms. She shrieked and thrashed around, but she might of been trying to get out of the grip of marble statues.

“Lets go,” the man with the gun said.

They hauled her out of the house by the back door, their faces still in shadow. The girl’s cries fading away.

The turquoise-eyed girl lay on the ground, a pool of blood spreading out from under her. Her light brown hair spread around her, darkening as it soaked up the blood. Her eyes were wide and unseeing and her body was sprawled on the floor as if she had been thrown there like a rag doll. Nothing could snap her out of the darkness in which she had been flung into. She didn’t wake. Not even the bright light that filled

the room woke her.

But it woke me.

“Fiona! Fiona! FIONA! Fiona Brigitte Semloh! Wake up before you wake everyone else up!”

I groggily heard screaming and my name being called. Many times. I opened my eyes and saw a pair of green eyes above me.

“Ana?” I mumbled. For once, my friend didn’t complain about her much hated nickname.

I scrambled up and rubbed my eyes and yawned. Then, the fact that the screaming that I had heard was coming from me, and what I had just dreamed came back at me like being hit with a baseball bat.

“Oh boy,” my friend Tatiana mumbled, sitting back on my bed as I started to cry. She pushed her brown hair out of her face and patted me on the head. “Please try to remember that Lynn is sleeping a few feet away from you, and how cranky you are when she wakes you up with her yelling, screaming, crying, or otherwise loud vocal noises.”

“Sorry,” I sniffed.

Tatiana nodded understandingly.

“Which one was it?”

“Which one was what?”

“What dream was it this time?” Tatiana clarified, exasperated.

I looked at her sideways out of narrowed eyes. “Ana, my dreams are just your run-of-the-mill bad dreams. Academic failure. Falling when flying. Suddenly realizing I'm wearing pleated skirts out of season.”

“Fiona we always wear pleated skirts, in or out of season. They’re our school uniform,” Tatiana said, glaring at me. “Was it the one about you getting shot?”

I was still for a second, but then nodded.

“Oh I hate that one,” Tatiana cringed. “Did the angel come this time?”

I shook my head.

“I only saw the beginning of the light. You woke me up to soon. First it’s the light, then it’s the angel.

“And you know what I hate?” I asked, gripping my hair. “I can never remember that it’s a dream and that I’ve had it over and over for THREE FREAKEN’ YEARS!”

Tatiana clamped a hand over my mouth as Lynn rolled over on the other bed and sighed.

“Shhhhh!” Tatiana hissed at me. “I don’t want to deal with you both right now! Now, why don’t you go back to sleep, hm?”

“Ok,” I nodded, sliding down under the covers. Tatiana patted me on the head. I glared at her. College freshmen do not need to be patted on the head.

“Night-night,” Tatiana whispered, slipping out of the room that Lynn and I shared and into her own across the hall.

I waited until I couldn’t hear her moving around anymore, then pushed the blankets away.

I slunk out of bed and checked on my best friend and bunkmate: Gwendolyn Isabelle Nostaw, but we call her Lynn for short. The girl in question was sleeping peacefully, her dark brown hair falling over her face.

I smiled, remembering how Lynn said that she would never grow her hair as long as mine because ‘it would be way to hard to maintain’, so she always kept it cut just above her shoulders, curled up. Ironically, that meant that it was forever getting in her mouth. Tatiana had more sense and kept her brown hair down to her shoulder blades.

I brushed the curls away from Lynn’s face and tiptoed out of the room.

I carefully opened the door next to Tatiana’s bedroom door and slipped inside. I softly walked to a desk and picked up a large, flat, black plastic square. I quickly glanced over at the bed and the person in it, but had to squint. The sleeper’s black hair nearly camouflaged him. I tiptoed to the side of the bed and looked down. Fortunately, Sam Alexander was sleeping soundly, unaware that I held his laptop in my hands.

I had to admit it, rooming with three teenage girls took some brains and bravery. Brains, because we needed a way to bend the rules of our weird foreign college to allow a boy to room with girls. Fortunately, my contacts at police force (and beyond) in America helped out, even though we were dealing with a totally different country.

And it also took bravery, on Sam’s part anyway. As far as I knew, there was no guy that would room with three teenage girls. college is stressful enough. And adding that the said college wasn’t in America,

well, you just had to admire the guy for his moxie.

I bent over the sleeping boy and lightly touched his black hair. Three years ago, Sam had to dye his normally red hair black for an extreme circumstance. After the fiasco was over, he liked the effect that the black hair produced when the red started to grow back, that he kept it up. Personally, I don’t know why, but hey, it really brings out his eyes.

His eyes. That made me laugh. Sam’s eyes are certainly very interesting. They’re such a dark blue, that they’re almost black. The poor boy’s eyes tend to be the topic conversation of most of the girls in

our classes. And that fact tends to be a topic of amusement for my friends and I. Adding the fact that Sam isn’t going out with anyone, well, all I can say is I pity Sam and his oblivious nature to some of the

girls intentions.

I quickly ran out of Sam’s room, before his laptop sense started tingling and he realized that his computer wasn’t around his immediate person. I found that working on the computer helped me get back to

sleep and made me forget about the nightmare, so I crept into Sam’s room whenever I needed it.

I jumped back on my bed and flipped up the crystal screen and clicked the computer on. It took a few minutes to load, which gave me time to think about my dream, defeating the purpose of getting the laptop in the first place.

I had been having that same hellish nightmare for about three years now. It started out simply like watching a movie: a girl gets murdered, and another girl gets taken away. The problem is that I never think to do anything. I just stand there... watching myself get shot.

If my screams don’t wake myself or anyone else up, I continue to dream that an angel comes and picks my corpse up and we disappear. Then I wake up.

The other thing that happens, is that after the two men (who I prefer not to think about often) take Lynn away, I see a white and silver streak fall to my right. I look down and see an angel clad in white

lying face down. It’s wings are broken off. The effect makes the angel look like a regular person wearing a tunic-like thing.

In the dream, I can suddenly move, so I run over and turn the angel over, face up. There is a flash of white light, and I wake up with a start. Upon waking, I can’t remember what color the angel’s hair was, much less what it’s face looked like. I must say, it is most discouraging.

Anyway, the origin of the dream doesn't do with much thinking about. I shuddered, just thinking about it. It was all I could stand to replay the way that it really happened: Lynn on a couch, unable to help me, who was up against two men. Fortunately, help burst in at the last moment, saving me and two others. But the memory of that particular case always makes my eyes prickle.

I blinked and moved the mouse around the computer screen, clicking on the internet icon. It booted up right away. I quickly clicked on the e-mail icon on Sam’s home page, and typed in my user name and

password.

Hmm, I had two messages in my inbox. I already knew what one of them was even before I clicked on the icon. I had a Garfield comic e-mailed to me everyday, but I wondered who the second e-mail was from.

I scrolled down and my face broke out in a smile. My brother Tforcym had e-mailed me with yet another question. Now that Ty was starting high school, he had a lot of questions. I was more than happy to help him. It took me back to the days of my high school career.

I clicked on his letter icon and started reading.

Fiona,

I have another problem (it ran). I like this girl and I don’t know if she likes me. If she does like me, how do I ask her out?

Say hi to the girls and Sam for me. Oh, and tell Sam that there is something I want him to draw. I will e-mail my idea to him later.

Love,

Ty

Girl trouble huh? I smiled and clicked ‘reply’. That I can handle. I’ll leave the puberty to dad, thank you very much.

Ty, (I typed)

Thank you for consulting me before you go out and do something rash and totally ruin your high school social life as you know it. This is what you do to find out if the girl in question is taken: 1) Ask her friends 2) If you have mutual friends, ask them 3) Ask her casually, wording it such as “I saw you hanging out with Joe yesterday. Are you two going out? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” or something

like that.

Then, once you’ve established that she is indeed free, and indeed likes you, ask her if she would like to accompany you to, say, a hamburger after school. If no dice, go by where she hangs out during lunch with a mutual friend, and strike up a casual conversation. Actually, that last one might be better if put into play first. Yes, I think that would do it!

Sure, e-mail your idea to Sam. Better than talking to him face-to-face. I think all the girlish activity around him is grating on his last nerve.

Now I have a question for you. I need your guy expertise. It’s about Sam. He’s been acting weirdly lately. I walked in on him in the kitchen to find him poring over the phonebook. When he saw me, he shrieked and slammed the phonebook shut. He then commenced to yell at me for sneaking up on people, even though I came into the kitchen in a perfectly normal, non-sneaking kinda’ way. I went back later and found the page that he was looking at. It wasn’t hard to find. It was creased down the middle and ripped from when he had slammed it shut. The page he was looking at was at the end of the R’s and the

beginning of the S’s in the white pages. I don’t expect you to know who he was looking up; we are in different countries for heaven sakes! But I just want to know if this is normal, teenage boy behavior, or what? I’m not going to observe the fact that whoever he was looking for had a last name of R or S because he could of been flipping by those pages to get to one past the S’s. So what do you make of it, dear brother?

I hope my girl advice comes in handy, and I hope you can help me out with my ‘boy trouble’. Give my love to mom and dad, and tell them that, as they probably already know, we are having our last week of school today, and in ‘celebration’, are going to Cairo.

Love,

Fiona

P.S. He still has it, and we still can’t figure it out.

I sat back and looked at my handiwork. Not bad, if I do say so myself. I read over the letter and noticed something. My letter started out professional, but when the subject turned to Sam, I became less... pompous, if you will. I had a feeling that my concern for Sam was making me laps back into normal speech. Not that it mattered. I shook my head and clicked ‘send’. I just hoped Ty could figure out the P.S. from something we had discussed earlier.

After that I had made sure that my letter had made it, I shut the computer down and snuck back to Sam’s room. I carefully put the laptop back on his desk. I was halfway to the door when I turned and walked to Sam’s bedside and looked down at the sleeping boy, brushing my unbound hair out of my eyes.

“Gotta’ dye that hair again,” I whispered softly, noticing some red streaks in his ebony hair. Though I must admit, it did give off an unusual effect of a fire burning in a shadow of darkness. For some

reason, I was put in mind of a man swathed in a dark shadow, holding a flaming sword.

I blinked and shook my head. My imagination is running away with me again. Must be from lack of sleep.

I was about to straighten up, when I noticed Sam’s left hand clutched on his pillow. Something gold was running out of it. I gently opened his fingers, and shook my head when I saw what was clutched in his hand.

I backed up and scurried back to my room. Fortunately, the moon had risen, and there was enough light to see by. I dodged around a desk and chair and climbed into bed.

I turned my face to the window and looked out. I could see lights of other buildings in our neighborhood and a tree or two. I quickly shut my eyes tight when I accidentally looked at the moon. I don’t know what it was, but the moon always made me think of the past, a thing that I didn’t want to dwell on much anymore. I put me in mind of hair as white as the moon itself and huge brown eyes. The problem with that picture was the less welcome picture of hair of a sand color, as light as the sun, like the color of the deserts that we pass to get to class.

I shot straight up in bed and clutched the sheets to my chest and slowly turned my head to the right.

“Oh no,” I whispered so softly, I could barely hear it myself.

There were two shadowy figures in the large space between me and Lynn’s bed. The moonlight fell slightly brighter on the spot and I could see what the two people were doing. They were dancing, as if they could hear some music that I could not. They were like spirits, moving slowly and gracefully like smoke figures, but dark, no detail on them at all. Yet, just the same, I could tell that they both were men

and one was taller than the other. The taller one took the other’s hand, and slowly spun him around and around. They then continued to dance, ballroom style.

I was dimly aware that I was holding the blankets so hard that my fingernails were digging into my palms. My lips slowly closed together; I hadn’t realized that it had dropped open. My mouth went dry as they

stopped their slow dancing and turned their faces to me. Their eyes burned in their faces, the only live thing in their faces. I gasped and groped behind me for the curtains.

The figures stared back at me, the taller one’s eyes glowing with a green light, the other’s eyes burning with a violet light. My hand finally connected with the curtain, and I jerked them shut. The moonlight

disappeared and I quickly flipped the lamp on. The figures were gone. I sighed and collapsed back in my bed.

“Fiona?” came a voice from the other bed. Lynn sat up, and her brown eyes glinted in the lamplight. She shaded her eyes from the light and I quickly clicked it off.

“What?”

“Why did you have the lamp on?”

“No reason. I was just looking for something.”

Lynn was quiet for so long, I thought that she had fallen back asleep.

“Did you see them again?”

I bit my lip.

“No.”

“I was going to close the curtains before I went to sleep, but I was too tired. I know they only come when the moonlight comes in....”

“It’s ok Lynn. I didn’t see them.”

“Oh. Ok then. Good night. See you tomorrow.”

“Night,” I said quietly. I laid back down and pulled the blankets up to my cheek. I glanced over to the right, but of course there was no one there. They only came when the moonlight was in the room.

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