So… I was just brainstorming ideas, and suddenly I was like "What happened to Alice?" So this is her story.

Oh yeah, and bear with me, I don't really know how mental asylums were like.

FYI, I'm not the all-powerful Stephenie Meyer.

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It was a beautiful summer morning, and I was six. My family and I were having a picnic in our garden, my father in his trousers and neat shirt, my mother in her garden dress. My sister, Cynthia, who was still four, was gently stroking the cat. It was a picture you expected to see on postcards, the perfect Brandon family picnicking.

I was laughing, running around when it hit me. I fell to the ground, clutching my head. My father, much older, shouting at a girl that looked remarkably like me. Blackness. More blackness.

"Alice?" My mother cried, and rushed to me, with my sister and father following behind. "Alice?"

The little six-year-old me opened her eyes to find my family frozen in stages of fear and panic. "I'm fine." I said, with a weak smile.

"What happened?" My father asked, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. My mother said nothing, but I could see the same question, waiting to be asked, on her face. Mother, it must be said, was quite inquisitive and loved gossip of all matter. But something told me she wouldn't make this particular episode be public.

My young, naïve self decided to confide in my family. After all, I reasoned, they were grown-ups. Grown-ups always knew what to do.

"First I saw you, Daddy." I said seriously. "You were much older. And you were yelling at a girl that looked like an older me. And then it all went black."

My parents faces went white. My mother pulled out her handkerchief and started mopping her brow with as much fevered enthusiasm as my father. They mopped for a moment, then my mother said "Alice, dear, are you joking?"

I looked from my mother to my father. They were both wearing similar expressions, as if someone had told them that it was National Toilet Day and then peed on their shoes. It was an expression of such shock and disgust that I felt small. I wanted, more than anything, for them to stop looking at me like that. "Yes, Mother." I said, feeling my stomach twist at telling a lie to my parents.

Two years later.

I was lying down in my bed, staring at the ceiling. It was just an hour after another one of those strange things. It was perhaps my seventeenth blur, as I had come to call them. They had started coming faster and faster, more and more of them.

I have realized that I can't talk about them with my parents. I don't want to talk about it with my sister, either. This is my problem and I don't want to bring anyone into it.

All the same, I worry. What is happening to me? I don't want to analyze those blurs too much- I had already made it real enough with giving it a name- but now it frequently just shows blackness and people dressed terribly, with such terrible expressions on their faces that it nearly scares me half to death.

I can't think about it now. Maybe when I'm not merely eight I'll be able to do something about it, do something to stop it. But for now I am eight and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.

Go to sleep, Alice.

***

Now, they come almost every week. I don't talk about it with my family- with anyone- but they're not stupid. They can see the empty look in my eyes. They know what's happening.

Well, they know that I am seeing those blurs. They don't know what they are. And even I still don't.

I remember that when I was eight I said that maybe when I'm older I'll figure it out. I am eleven now and I still don't understand it. It frustrates me so. Why is it coming? And why to me?

Now all it shows are the same scenes. Stick-thin people with different, but equally terrifying expressions watching me pass. And darkness. The darkness has scared me so much that I refuse to stay in the dark. Before I go to sleep I light a candle and take it to my bedroom.

I need some water.

I began walking to the kitchen, but as I passed the living room I heard my name. Stopping, I put my ear against the key hole and began to eavesdrop.

"-and Harry, it's getting worse!" I heard my mother exclaim.

"Don't worry, Margaret. It might pass." My father comforted my mother.

"Harry, but what do we do if it doesn't? We can't leave her like this. What if it happens in a public place, or, god forbid, a quiet place where everyone knows us? The questions, Harry, the questions!"

My father exhaled. "I've been thinking about that too, dearest."

I could hear my mothers panic levels rise. "Then do you have a solution? Or are we going to wait until it happens? She won't get married to anyone respectable, with the rate this is going! Do you want your daughter to be alone for the rest of her life?"

"Look, Margaret, I've been thinking…"

I was so intent on my eavesdropping on their conversation about me- and I was certain it was me- that I forgot we had a cat. And so, when said cat rubbed its back on me, I jumped and screamed. It was a quick scream, but it was quite loud.

"What was that?" I heard my mother ask before I ran to the kitchen.

I got myself a glass of water, then slumped onto the floor. What just happened? And what was going to happen?

Flashes of black. What does it mean? Will I ever figure it out?

And what were my parents going to do with me, the loose end?