She felt the darkness creeping up behind her and made herself run harder. She heard his voice in her head. It was familiar by now. Calling her to come. But to where? Bits of past conversation came back to her as she ran.

            "But I don't want to marry him!"

            "Elena, do not argue with your father, you will marry him, and that's the end off it."

            She kept running, and could feel the heat of his breath. Running harder, until her legs gave out. She dropped to her knees and breathed heavily. She gasped for air and heard the footsteps stop right behind her. She kept her back to him, not yet ready to face the phantom of her dreams.

****

Elena woke up breathing hard and sweating. She tried to lie perfectly still, as if that would help her remember that strange dream. She remembered fighting with her father. But that wasn't her father. Her father would never force her to marry anyone.

            But most of all, she remembered the darkness that had almost captured her. She shuttered as she relived the dream. She had had dreams like this since she was little, but none nearly as real. This dream had an urgent air to it. She could sense the vital demand the dream gave to her. She sat there in her bed pondering the dream as the darkness gave way to rising sun. What does this mean? she wondered, Why are these dreams becoming so hauntingly real?

            When there was enough light to see by, she took out her journal and recorded the current dream. This was something she's always done since she could write. Writing the dream down helped her analyze her thoughts/ Elena was always a firm believer that dreams had secret meanings, meanings that didn't make sense to anyone but the dreamer. There was always something that seemed just beneath the surface of the dream that begged to found out.

            Elena breathed in the fresh morning air as she wrote silently. Before she had a chance to finish writing she heard the other occupants of the house stir. Since it was the first day of school everyone was sure to be up early. She listened as her younger sister, Ashton, turned her shower on full blast and waited for the water to get hot. Elena was the experienced senior this year, her sister the little freshman. Ashton would be in her room soon enough looking for the perfect outfit to wear on her first day of high school.

            Elena finished her entry in her journal and hid it under the loose wooden board in her closet. She took a quick shower and blow-dried her ebony hair. Her mother had always told her she had the perfect figure. She looked at her nude body in the mirror. She admired her own creamy skin, the heart-shaped face, and the way her long dark hair framed her eyes. She figured that her own uncommon beautiful complexion accounted for her being "popular." That and the fact the people seemed mesmerized by her green eyes. Whenever people looked her in the eye they appeared to be in a trance. She was secretly fascinated at the way people gawked at her.

            She locked her door, and then carefully picked out an emerald sundress that complimented her eyes. She applied a light dusting of make-up, not wanting to take away from her natural beauty. She checked her watch when she was finished dressing and decided she had enough time to write more about her dream before she left for school. Using her nail file to lift the edge of the floorboard, she slid out her tiny journal. She had purposely bought it small so she could hide it. The journal was nothing special, just a notebook that she'd bought from the drugstore, but inside contained her most private thoughts. Things she could never describe to another human. Sometimes she scared herself when she thought of her own dreams. The dreams were visions of another world, another life.

            As she was writing all these thoughts, she heard someone trying to walk into her room. When the individual discovered that the door was locked, she immediately started pounding on it.

            "What do you want?" Elena shouted.

            "It's me, can I borrow your blue top?" Ashton called back. Instead of answering, Elena grabbed the top and yanked open the door.

            "Here, take it and go away." Elena hated being bothered when she was trying to write. Ashton always seemed to interrupt her right in the middle of an important thought.

            "Boy, somebody's PMSing," Ashton remarked, while trying to push herself into the room.

            "What are you doing?!" Elena almost shrieked. Her journal was sitting open on her bed. She ran over and sat on top of it. Ashton just gave her a weird look and went over to her dressed. "I thought you just wanted the blue top."

            "Yeah, now I need the matching capris," Ashton replied with out looking up. Elena was getting annoyed. It wasn't enough that Ashton was interrupting her own thought, but now she was messing up her neatly folded clothes. She felt the need to be violent with her little sister. She surprised herself with her own thoughts. When had she started thing like this?

            "Yeah, okay, just get out and I'll take them to your room cause I gotta find them," Elena replied, trying to hide her thoughts from coming out in her voice. Ashton didn't seem to notice the change in her voice. Did she really hide it that well? Luckily Aston left after that.

            Elena examined herself in the mirror to ensure herself that her thoughts didn't show up on her face. Nothing seemed amiss, maybe her eyes were a bit deeper, but that had to be it. She gave up trying to find the secret difference in her aura and slipped into her sandals. She obviously had no more time to write in her journal so she slipped it back under its hiding place, grabbed the matching capris that Ashton wanted and glided down the hall to Ashton's room.

            She listened to her high heel sandals tap a rhythm as old as time on the floor. An ancient song she should know the words to. Stop it! She thought to herself, You're just imagining things.

            "No you're not."

            Her first thought was that surely she didn't say that out loud, her second was that that was the same voice of her dreams. She whipped her head around the hallway to find whom the mysterious voice belonged to, but there was no one there. Just the dust falling as if someone had just vanished from the spot right behind her. She dismissed it quickly, not wanting to dwell on it.