I can hold it ... I can stand it. This ... this darkness ... this existence ... deep ... hollow ... meaningful ... empty.

This force is almost tangible ... feel it right at my finger tips, but only within reach behind my closed eyelids.

I see ... I feel ... I know not ... I sense ... but no touch.

The images pasted to my eyes ... the screams in my ears ... I understand not what I see ... all I am is an instrument with which to view.

I open my eyes slowly, blink the blurriness away, and lie still for a moment, only a moment, and close my eyes as the memory comes again, memory of the dream. I force my eyes open, pull the sheets off of me, and sit up in bed, and massage my throbbing temples as the words relay in my head, relay as I try to make sense of it all.

I dress, I eat, I brush, I pack, I go. I leave my dreams and sleep for the world, into the real life as they call it. I catch the bus, sit on the leather seat, uniforms crumpled, but I don’t care. Hop off at my stop and enter the school grounds, another day of school. I walk to my table, where my acquaintances sit, they bid me a friendly but uncaring hello, as is my schedule each morning. The morning bell goes, I go to class, I sit and write in my work book with neat black ink pen, writing looping and curling, although rather messy. That day was a regular day, nothing out of sorts.

But in period two for the day, it came, I saw, a mirror image, a dream come to life.

She was in my dream ... I remember. Long curling red hair ... right down to the end of her shoulder blades. She wore a grey woman’s suite ... with black high heeled shoes. And piercing green eyes ... good god ... it is her!

She turned to me and smiled, but I couldn’t help shivering. She was the first ... the first that I dreamt, a dream that was true. And some how she knew! She knew I had seen her in my dreams, for she came up to me during class and whispered to me, “I do believe we have met, but either of us do not know each others names.” and she told me her name was Miss Scarlet, and reading off my book cover she found my name to be Skara Lamtin. I was in class so she was brief, she said she was sent to find me, to watch me, but that was all she said, and left me bewildered, sitting at my desk, black ink pen in hand, shivering in my shoes. When bell went I was the first to leave class.

I didn’t understand ... Why me? Why was she sent? By who? What have I done? Why did I have a dream about her? I don’t even know her! ... But my answer to my questions came fast enough.

I was in my third period, sitting at my desk. It had been a week sense the red haired woman Miss Scarlet approached me and I hadn’t seen her sense. It had been a week sense I had my first freaky dream, and I was starting to get over it, to relax back into my schedule, thinking it all was just nerves. I opened my book, picked up my pen, and suddenly there it was. This strange force, a feeling, buzzing in my mind, my finger tips tingling.

What? ... I pause, pen hovering over paper, completely oblivious to the out side world, all centred in my mind. This feeling ... so familiar ... I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t reason. My senses tingled, but I felt separated from them. All most as if I were dreaming ... It was then that someone brushed past me. With that brief contact with the male teachers grey sleave a wave of images, noises, feelings, words spilled over me, taking me completely by surprise. It roared through my brain, shaking my nerve systems, but my body was paralysed.

In a daze, in a dream, I saw this persons memories. I saw him as a child running through the hot desert sand, but the memory passed before I could get more then a glance. I saw his teenage years, I saw his loves, his wants, his needs, I saw his whole life so far fly past my eyes. It was the most wonderful yet frightening thing I had ever experienced! I have no control ... I can’t stop ... but the wonders I saw, the life!

Then suddenly the rush stopped, the tingling gone, and I started as if woken from a dream, gasping for breath, as if I had not been breathing, my hands shook. I dropped my pen, and put my head in my hands, a head ache ringing through my head like wild fire, my senses reeling.

What ... what was that? What .. what’s going on! I glance up in my distress, the class oblivious, but there in the corner of the room stood Miss Scarlet, looking at me with knowing smile. Seeing her just makes me feel worse!

I gotta get out of here! I stumble to my feet, the whole class turning to look at me, and I request to be taken to the school sick bay! The teacher writes out the slip, I pack up my stuff, and he passes it to me, and it suddenly happens again! From the paper images and sounds rush from my fingers, burning all the way to my mind, such confusion! Fighting to ignore the raging visions I stumble out of the class, and tried to walk up right to the sick bay but the memories wouldn’t go away, I couldn’t focus, my vision was blurry, my blood was burning! My muscles were cramped, temples throbbing, ghostly voices ringing in my ears, Stop! Please stop!

Then Miss Scarlet was there, grasping my shoulders, holding me up from hitting the pavement, I was going to faint, her touch is so cold!

She was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her over the whispering voices, I couldn’t make sense, I couldn’t see through the haze, I panicked. I fought against her, fought to get free, to run and never stop running, Please let this stop!

Then I was restrained, I felt the prick, the cool chemical slip into my hot blood stream, and I suddenly knew and saw no more.