*A/N* I've been working on this for a bit and am actually fairly proud :). Please give me feedback!!! You people are too nice on here <3
P.S. Check it out! It's a whole four pages long. So much pride.

“Open your eyes, Charlotte.”
My eyelids flew open, but when I frantically looked for the voice, all I saw was blackness. Sweat tickled my face when it went dripping down from my hairline. I tried to brush it away, but my wrists were bound to the sides of a bed. What is this? I yanked with my arms, but the straps only felt tighter. I attempted to move my legs, but more straps held my ankles down. I stretched and pulled, my limbs burning. There was no noise except for my labored breathing.

I don’t scream when I’m scared, but I had never wanted to do it so badly. It was boiling in my throat, it was tumbling over my tongue, but I couldn’t get my mouth to open so I could let it out. I tried to slow down my breaths so I could figure out where I might be.

So much sweat. I decided it must be a confined space, to be so humid. Maybe I was in a shack? But a shack should have windows. Maybe a shed? It didn’t smell like lawn equipment. I sniffed the air. Actually, it didn’t smell like anything.

I felt that scream creeping up on me again. I wanted my mom, I wanted Emi, I wanted Uncle Drake, I wanted Elaina and for inexplicable reasons I wanted Luke. All of them were caged up inside of me and I had never felt so petrified and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and vanish until everything was over and then a scream tore through my lips. I screamed and screamed until my lungs were burning. There was sweat or tears or something dripping down my face and into my mouth and for some reason it reminded me of drowning.

“You can stop now,” I felt his breath by my ear. I jumped and the straps tightened. I screamed again.

“Oh, good Lord, stop it,” he clapped a hand over my mouth and I swore I was about to puke.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” his voice felt like a knife; smooth but sharp.
That meant he was going to hurt me, I knew it. “Please, I didn’t do anything wrong. What did I do wrong?” I was actually crying now, my breaths coming out in sobs.

“Everybody does something wrong, dear,” he replied. He clapped his hands and the lights turned on. I couldn’t see anything, with the dots flashing before my eyes. I felt his fingers on my wrists, unbuckling the straps, and then moving down to my ankles and unbuckling those.

I stumbled off of the bed and threw myself against the wall on the other side of the room. I was starting to see what was around me. There were no windows, only slate gray concrete walls. There wasn’t even a door that I could distinguish. I pushed my hair, dampened from the sweat, off of my forehead.

He was tall, lean, probably mid-twenties to early thirties, I would guess. His hair was dirty blond and on the long side. He had a hint of a beard growing in. He looked unsettlingly normal.

I opened my mouth to say something sassy and brave, like they do in the movies, but I felt like jelly. My limbs felt like I had run across the whole state of Texas, and my throat was dry and burning from my screams.

“You look thirsty.” he said. He clasped his hands behind his back, calmly standing on the other side of the bed.

I looked around frantically for a weapon I could use, but saw nothing.
He chuckled and withdrew his hands from behind his back, showing me his palms. “I don’t mean any harm, Miss Pierce,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you.” He took a slow step towards me.

I said nothing, but scooted farther down the wall.
His eyes softened a little. In one stride, a stride that should have been four, he was across the room and knelt in front of me, gripping my wrists, his face inches from mine.

“Charlotte, I didn’t kidnap you,” he said in a low whisper. “Something has happened, and I need to show you what it is.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. He released his hands from my wrists and backed away, slowly.

“I know you’re scared, but this is your path,” he said. “You’ll understand soon.”

I was shaking all over. He grasped my hand surprisingly gently, or at least less forcefully than I had imagined, and helped me to my feet. I felt like puking again.

“Come with me,” he said, and he started walking towards a wall with me stumbling along behind him. I was about to pass out. My ears were ringing and my stomach was sick and I was bathed in sweat. I was going to follow him, be cooperative so that maybe he would let me go. But he was walking with so much purpose straight towards a concrete wall that didn’t have a visible door. I tensed up and pulled to slow him down, but he just glanced back at me, looking irritated, and kept walking.

I was seeing the strangest thing happen in front of me. Was this a dream? Because this man was melting into the gray of the wall, starting with his arm that had swung out in front of him, and then his shoulder, and then his face and head and his whole body, and I was going with him.
Panic rose in my throat as I watched my hand, clasped in his, going inside the wall. Everything was moving in slow motion. He was still pulling on me, so I couldn’t stop it. I was inside concrete. Its grit scratched my face as I passed through, moving slower than people should be moving, feeling my lungs suffocate, and then it was over.

He had let go of my hand. I was on my knees, panting, in a bed of warm, green grass. I dared to look up, and he was watching me.

“You get used to it,” he said.

“What in the world is this?” I murmured, more to myself than anyone else.

He smiled. “You tell me. Look around.”

To my right, I saw my house, looking like it did about seven years ago, with its peeling white paint and collapsing porch. My mom always told me and Emily that she liked it that way, that it made it feel older, until Uncle Drake’s then-father-in-law donated some money since it was such an eyesore.

That was seven years ago. Now it would be a crisp white, with the porch no longer sagging and leaking. This didn’t make any sense. Then, it dawned on me.

“This is a dream,” I stated. My grin felt unnaturally huge on my face. Elation was filling my bones. None of this was real. I stood up, still shaky.
“You’re a dream,” I said, pointing a finger at him.

“Let’s go inside,” he said, not even paying attention to me.

Why wasn’t I waking up? Weren’t you supposed to wake up when you realized you were dreaming? I followed him. If I consented, maybe I could wake myself up.

The porch creaked familiarly as we stepped on. He opened the door, thank goodness, because I really didn’t want to walk through any more walls.

I heard dishes clanking together and the sink running. The floor was old and creaky. There were portraits of me as a baby, and then Emily and I together, and then the portrait of the Bronte sisters. He led me through to the living room, which still had my favorite old, hole-filled couch and deerskin rug. He kept me moving through to the kitchen, where my mom was standing, washing dishes, quietly singing poetry to herself and pushing her thin blond hair out of her face with soapy hands.

My stomach was tingling. This felt too real. I shut my eyes. “Wakeupwakeupwakeup!” I hissed to my sleeping self.

I glanced over at him. He looked completely at ease, his hands clasped together behind his back. You would think he was watching a movie.

Emi came bursting in from the back door and into the kitchen, saying mom’s name too loudly like she said everything too loudly. She looked exactly like she did seven years ago—8 years old, skinny, bleach blond and dressed entirely in pink.

“Mom, Luke threw a rock at Charlotte and it hit her in the face,” she announced, her blue eyes wide. She looked worried but excited, like she always did about anything. Life was a giant happy bubble for her. My stomach was tingling even more fiercely.

Mom sighed and rinsed her hands, following Emi to where I was. He started to lead me, but I already knew where to go. I walked quickly ahead, all of my shakiness gone, my heart pounding, to see if this could be what I thought it was. When I burst through the back door, I was right.

My 11 year old self was sitting on the ground, crying, with my face in my hands. Luke, the new neighbor who was a year younger than me, was standing awkwardly to the side, shifting from foot to foot.

I stared in awe as Mom knelt down in front of me and gently moved my hands away from my face, smiling and shushing me while tears streamed down my face. She tilted my head up a little bit and pushed my dark locks, the opposite of hers, away from my forehead, where there was a gash coated in blood.

I lifted my own fingers, not those of my 11 year old self, to my forehead, just underneath my bangs. I still felt the puckered scar where they had to give me stitches. I looked back at the man who brought me in confusion. He stood behind me, still completely relaxed, now with a slight smile on his face.

Mom was scooping my kid self up and walking me to the car, Emily trailing behind her and asking a million questions (she was out of earshot but I still remembered. “Mom, is Charlotte okay? Eeeeewww, Mom, I think that’s Charlotte’s brain coming out of her head. Mom, does this mean that Luke’s gonna get arrested by the police? I’ll become a police officer and arrest bad guys too.) Luke was asking if I was all right, and that he was really sorry, and that he swore it was a dirt clod and to please not call the police.

I watched as we backed out of the driveway. I walked slowly over to the man that brought me.

“What’s going on?” I whispered hoarsely, my throat dry. The fatigue that I was feeling before was returning.

His smile widened. “You’ll find out.”