Prescient

Chapter 7

I woke up with a killer headache.

Nothing new there. Just a typical Starla morning for a day that ends in 'day.'

After establishing from my wall clock it was quarter past seven, I tried to close my eyes again, but all I could see was her.

Just her and nothing else floating in the darkness of my mind.

There was something wrapped around her head, covering her eyes and her mouth. It looked like a bandage. Her head was partially mummified, with just her nose poking out, allowing her to breathe.

She was crying.

The shadow had taken her somewhere dark, and only the smallest amount of light accompanied her there in a space I knew was small. Only enough light to just make out her bandaged face.

I could feel her fear—her utter terror—as if it were a part of me. As if it was my own. I think on some level, it was.

Two days had passed since I saw the apparition of her abduction, and last night I'd known for certain when I saw the report on the local news.

I don't tend to watch the news much. I know a lot of the time I'll just see things I've already seen in my dreams, and that's pretty depressing.

The self-deluding part of me would rather just try to convince myself the dreams were just that. Dreams. Harmless, meaningless images forming within my sleeping mind, created from the fictitious realm of my imagination, and as long as I don't have the news to confirm the realness of my dreams, I never know for sure.

That kind of helps but in reality, my curse is too far embedded in me I can't even lie to myself in the slightest about them anymore.

I spent the day at work using every ounce my strength to mentally avoid Kaylah whilst physically avoiding Cheryl. The day dragged out as all workdays do and the sweet relief of knock off time couldn't come sooner. Well, it could have. I considered piking out and leaving work early a few times but I stuck it out.

That night, something told me to turn the television on. Something wanted me to see the local news.

7:23 PM

I was in the kitchen watching my usual frozen-styled meal rotate slowly in the microwave. It's the only type of meal I eat—apart from take-out and occasionally a packet of noodles or a tin of spaghetti on toast.

I don't cook.

Never have.

I've delineated how little my parents cared about me. My mother could hardly bear to be around me, let alone teach me to cook and no one else in my life had bothered either. I've never experienced the urge to teach myself. I'm happy to just press a button and let the microwave do all the work for me. Frozen meals taste like crap but so does everything else when your taste buds are perpetually soaked in liquor and you have a constant funny taste in your mouth anyway.

Standing there in front of that humming radiation box, I was suddenly overcome with the most powerful urge to go straight over to the lounge-room and turn on the television.

Channel nine. Channel nine. Channel nine.

It was as if an invisible force had ensnared me and driven me there immediately.

I turned on the television—surprise, surprise, it was already on channel nine—and at that exact moment, the news report on Kaylah's disappearance was starting. I was looking her right in her pretty face; the capitalized word 'MISSING' plastered across the bottom of a photo of her in her school uniform.