The dye streamed like blood down the drain. I watched it with a kind of dazed fascination. The world swam a little, moving from exhaustion and the grotesque smell of ammonia and chemicals. My hair was a flashy, trembling strawberry red, or so said the box. The woman on the cover smiled with her colored hair filtering through her long thin fingernails.

My fingers closed around the box in cold rage, tearing the perfect, white smile in half. I couldn’t stand to see her smile. I’m sure the smiling model lost sleep over very little, except maybe the occasional pimple or boy trouble.

The box fluttered in pieces to the bottom of the shower, soaking into a puddle of slimy paper over the drain. I left it, stepping out of the shower. My clothes stuck to my body, clinging with the humidity of the bathroom. I ran my fingers through my hair, leaving thick pink streaks across the skin of my hands. I cleared off a small spot of mirror before washing my hands; my face look pale in its cloud of wet, red curls. My eyes looked like drowning pools of blue, a startled cornflower. I looked shocked, surreal. ‘A ghost. I look like a ghost.’ I touched the sides of my face, but there was no emotion driving my actions or my thoughts. They were mere observations, exciting nothing in the depths of my eyes.

It felt like my soul was dead, replaced by a cavern, empty and gaping.

I dried off, tossing the red tinted towels onto the floor. I pulled on the little black dress from the night before then pushed out of the door, leaving the yellowy light from the bathroom running in rivulets into the dorm room. I looked around, trying to remember if I’d brought anything with me. Some college boy was passed out on the tiny bed. I’d shared that bed with him the night before; sex was the price of his unwitting protection. The more I stayed out of view, the better off I was. He wouldn’t remember much from last night. He may not even remember me.

So much the better. The less he remembered, the safer he was. I wish I could erase his memory completely. Wipe the memory of me out of him.

Strange; why so eager to protect the stranger? All the sudden too. They wouldn’t do much of anything but scare him a little if they found out he’d been with me. Wouldn’t want to let the humans in on what was going on.

I slipped into the cool morning air, watching as the sun brushed the tops of the trees. It was too early for the campus to be awake on a Saturday morning. It was never too early for me. The sky was a canvas for the early morning; peach and lavender splashed across the gray of pre-dawn. It was pretty enough, even I noticed in my almost comatose state.

There was a flicker of something black to my left. It hadn’t been my imagination. I know it hadn’t. Even after all this time, I hadn’t gotten used to them. I watched as the black convulsed and collapsed in on itself. It was only a tiny hole, a minuscule break in the fabric of space and time.

It was where this world brushed up against the next.

People can and did travel through those holes occasionally. The human race doesn’t seem to notice they existed. Funny thing, that.

Funny how I was the only one who could see them.

The streets downtown were littered with early risers, shopping in little stores and street carts. These roads were much more active than the campus, people streaming across the sidewalks without overcrowding themselves. The sun shimmered pink across the bright colors of the market, glowing on the tall, still lit streetlights and the wide glass windows. I took a deep breath, sighing into the chilly air; I felt much safer during the daylight, somehow, as if the sun could save me. It may have been foolish, but I reveled in the feeling of safely, opening my arms to the wild breeze and drinking in the sunshine.

Another portal opened in front of a store in front of me. Two older woman who had been heading for the door turned away from it, suddenly deciding not to enter the store. I glanced around, noticing how everyone around was looking anywhere but at the gate. It looked like a shimmering black shadow, like a piece of night sky had gotten stuck in the daylight.

The gate was big enough for a person to cross over. I pointedly didn’t look directly at it as a tall woman in her forties crossed over. She was brilliantly blonde, her eyes covered in thick black sunglasses. Everything from the leather of her heels, the chic cut of her dress suit, to the shiny lacquer on her nails was a vibrant, fire engine red. The gate closed behind her, and time seemed to shudder before grinding forward.

How could they not feel it?

I walked by the red woman, like all the other humans on the street. I pretended not to notice that someone had appeared in the middle of the street like magic. She looked human, but what the hell was she?

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to keep my steps slow, even. The red curls made me look different enough that the woman probably wouldn’t recognize me. Probably.

My heels made a gentle, rhythmic click on the pavement as I continued my way down Main Street, watching as sleepy cars made their way down the tiny, one-way roads. The sun was starting to bake the asphalt; I could feel the heat curling up from under my pumps. Today would be hot, very hot, and it was barely June.

I slipped on a pair of sunglasses that had been dangling from the low neckline of my dress, protection against the brilliant sunlight. I wondered just what would happen if the Others ever caught me, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to find out.

Five, lithe, red-tipped nails closed over the exposed skin of my shoulder. I gasped in surprise, the sound loud and startled from my throat. I turned just in time to see the red woman slip off her glasses, exposing the spiraling yellow-green of her eyes.

“Hello, Marina. We’ve been looking for you.”

The pupils of her wild eyes were slit like a cat’s, swirling into the neon colors of her irises. As her nails burrowed into my shoulder, blood ran in thin red lines down my arm. I stared up at her horrible eyes and knew, with horrible certainty, that I had to get away. I was no longer pretty sure I didn’t want to find out what they wanted, I was certain.

I wrote this over the space of the days I've been in Indiana, in this horrid hotel room. I got this idea when I saw something dark move in the corner of my eye and i turned ot look and nothing was there. And I thought, wouldn't it be crazy if it was some kind of portal or something? This was written very quickly, and I'm very tired. But gentle with it.

I'll be back in town this weekend, and maybe will have some time to write something for real.

::mina::