Premonition
Preface
Choosing Forks, Washington was both an inevitably horrible decision and a horribly inevitable decision. I knew it in every cell of my body. It was a decision that I’d been sinking into like quicksand - stuck long before I ever noticed the ground gone beneath me. Maybe it was a decision made before I was even born, handed to me like the parents I was born to, the brown hair I grew into, the quirks I was made into.
Maybe I was always doomed to come back.
Still, despite the inevitability of my move, I couldn’t bring myself to like it. Every thought of starting over there filled me with heebie jeebies, as if I was standing in the cold spot of someone’s grave. So I did my best to avoid thoughts of Forks, staving off the sense of foreboding by keeping busy - in Phoenix, staying up late gossiping with Renee, and, in Forks, stuffing my face with pizza and watching baseball with Charlie.
(I liked his reactions to my guesses more than I liked the sport itself.)
On the night before my first day at Forks High, Charlie’s overstated reactions to my surprising hit rate kept me amused and kept my mind busy. I fell asleep that night with a smile on my face.
It was a (fairly) ordinary night up until I fell asleep.
. . .
I shot out of bed, drenched in a cold sweat that stung. Shivering madly, I slid out of bed. Not again, I thought, my knees slamming on the floor. Mumbling to myself, I slid to the lamp by the door, waving my hand around until I found the switch. Pale bodies floated in the air around me, burned into the back of my eyes. I fumbled with sweaty fingers until - click - the room filled with light.
I fell back - a deep release as my breath (which I didn’t know I’d been holding) whooshed out of my lungs. The relief was immediate, but incomplete - I still saw the slumped figures every time I blinked.
What was that?
I’ve had nightmares before, plenty of them, but they’ve never been this bad… I think. Well, truthfully, I never really remember my dreams, but I really don’t think I’ve ever had one this… jarring.
I don’t usually remember my dreams, but I do get deja vu quite often. And by quite often, I mean several times a day. And while I can’t say for sure, I often get the feeling that the deja vus I’m experiencing I have experienced before - not in a previous life, but in the previous night.
In my dream.
Every time I’ve awoken with a jolt, I didn’t just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I would wake up on the wrong side of fate. Bad dreams really did mean a bad day for me.
But what was really so bad about my dream? Already it was slipping from me like a sieve. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to remember at all… The thoughts weaved out of me and I lost consciousness once again.
