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The first time he saw her in his dreams, he was just shy of his twenty-first birthday. Seth had been in prison for about a year—and he was unbearably lonely.

So when Richie sees her, scantily clad in a bathing suit, her dark chestnut curls shining in the hot sun, the chlorine filled cheap motel pool water shimmering around her as the blood slowly began to pour out of her body… terrifyingly, like blood seeping out of an open wound in waves and waves of wet, fresh blood pooling around her… Well, he wasn't entirely surprised.

He first believes her to be a figment of his troubled mind, a vision of his own pain wrapped up in a beautifully young package. She can't be more than seventeen and he feels older himself… more predatory. A mixture of emotions swirls within him as he watches the young girl literally floating in a pool of her own blood… A familiar sense of apprehension and fear he always seems to feel whenever he encounters a pretty girl begins to pull at him, making him restless… But there's something even deeper scratching, clawing under the surface… like a sense of completion, a strong feeling of understanding and belonging to someone… to something bigger than himself.

He can feel his soul going out to her despite the underlining tension rolling around in his stomach and shoulders, making him feel like he could vomit at any moment, and an urgent need to get somewhere – to be somewhere… a place… a Gecko brother's form of paradise – is calling to him, yelling at him.

We just need to get across the border, he can hear his brother chanting softly in his mind's eye. Once we get across everything will be okay and none of this shit is gonna matter. He shakes the thought away, refocusing his attention back on her.

Richie tilts his head slightly, his eyes racking across her barely covered body. He begins to feel another emotion creeping up on him… one more primal and instinctive than all the others he's felt so far. It's a feeling that his dream filled mind has no control over, not that he'd control it if he could. He feels a mad jolt of lust pulse through his body… pure and unadulterated… alongside, that is, a deep sense of yearning that burns his chest, constricting his breathing. The heat that's been building in his chest slowly moves towards his groin. He's half-hard and he can feel himself moving uncomfortably in his dress pants.

"Are you okay, Miss?" he hears himself say from a million miles away. His voice is distant, dull… like he's speaking into the future. His youthful voice sounds hollow and unfamiliar in such an old and damaged body.

She opens her eyes slowly, looking in his direction… but she's not quite seeing him. He feels a sudden rush of fear piled onto all of his other emotions… as though he is invisible under her gaze. He doesn't feel real as her vacant and glossy eyes roam over him, not seeing him—but right through him.

The smile she sends him is world-weary, sad and hollow. Like the girl that had once been there was long gone and what he was seeing now was the ghost of a girl that had taken the place of who she once was.

There is no light in her eyes as she whispers the words… "Save me, Richie… Save me." His ears ring with her solemn words, her voice youthful and beautiful…. and deathly. More blood pours from her body, making the whole pool look like Elizabeth Bathory's bathroom tub.

"What?" He manages, terror and concern coursing through his veins, making his body hum and jump with fear.

"You have to save me, Richie," She says softly, an apologetic glint in her deep green eyes.

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. Why is she sorry for scaring him?

"Save me, Richie," she repeats. "Please save me." She pleads… and he feels foolish. He wants to save her… but he can't. He can't even save himself.

"I can't…" He says it plainly, hoping she'll understand. Surely she can see the blood of his own pain flowing through him and out. "I can't save anybody." He says honestly.

She tskes, as though she's reprimanding him as she lifts her head slightly out of the water. He is only being honest … and he feels a sharp ping of anger rise within him.

"You can save anybody you want, Richie," she says slowly, her body beginning to disappear underneath the blood of the water. "You just choose not to." Those are her final words as she sinks deeply into the pool, disappearing forever.

He yells for her, screaming for her to tell him her name and demanding answers to her message as he breaks through into the limelight of consciousness, still screaming for her. He feels tightly wound up, his muscles aching like he was jolted back into his body from another realm… a place in the future… from a memory that has not yet happened.

Tired, he lies back down on his sweat covered cot and lifts up his hand to the end table next to his cot, reaching for the Coke bottles he calls glasses and slips them on the bridge of his nose, pushing them up slightly. He briefly scratches his ever growing beard and begins to wonder. Who is she and what does she need saving from? Is it a man abusing her?

Or is it his own demons manifesting themselves into something he can understand and listen to? Is he trying to tell himself that he needs saving… or is it something more, something bigger?

He continues to think about it as he gets up and begins folding the blankets up neatly before getting dressed for the day. He thinks about it when Vanessa bursts through the front door of his shack, raging on and on about the fact that he hasn't used the visitation pass she shoved out money for so he could go see Seth in prison and about what a horrible brother he is.

And he still thinks about it three whole months later as the dream slowly begins to fade into the back of his mind and as more important things like hunger and money begin to its place… But late at night… when nothing but sorrow and loneliness fills up his brain… he thinks about her. Her image is jumbled up in his brain like a jigsaw puzzle he needs to figure out.

Is she lonely like him? He wonders as his mind becomes foggy. Or is it something else? Something bigger?

It's another year before he dreams about her again… and another three before he meets her face to face.

TBC...