My alarm clock suddenly decided it didn't like me and started screaming causing me to sit up in alarm, stifling the urge to scream.

I'd had the same dream again.

I'm running, running till I could hear my feet pounding on the wet dirt. My breath ragged as I desperately tried to fill my lungs with air. My lung ached, I could barely breath, but I didn't care. As long as I put enough space between that, that, that thing and me, I was fine. I heard an unearthly growl from behind me as the earth shook from the running of the beast. Fear surged through me as I sprinted forward. Dodging trees and gnarled up roots. My lungs ached for air, I gasped and gulped but my vision was getting blurry. A branch snagged on my face, I felt warm red blood ooze from my scratch. Gotta get away, I thought need to find a clearing. My lungs were screaming for air, my heart was hammering, my legs pounding against the soft earth. The growling was even closer now. Suddenly I burst into a clearing no, not a clearing, a cliff. My heart sunk, no way out I thought, and so close to freedom I could almost taste it. Only to have my hopes dashed.

A big black mass of fur appeared from the trees and jumped at me.

"No!" I screamed as I put my arms around my self in self-defense.

Darkness engulfed me, but sooner or later, I always wake up. In my own bed, sweating like a sinner in church, perfectly fine.

Yet still I always have to comfort myself, it was just a dream. You're fine nothing happened to you. I've had this dream ever since I was five, I'm fourteen now, and yet I still have no idea what the heck it means.

I groan and stagger towards the window across from my bed. The sun is peeking from the horizon, sending splashes of yellow, orange, red, purple and blue, dawn. I woke up with the sun, again. Which means that I got about four hours of sleep. Unlike any other fourteen year old, I fall asleep really late, and wake up really, really early. Not regretfully again, like most teenagers. Waking up early makes me feel energized and zaps my sleepy brain. It's basically like drinking about five gallons of red bull, only better.

I stagger towards my mirror.

My room, reminds me of the forest, in a good way. My bed has green sheets, with little plants embroidered with a silver thread; it always smells earthy, like it just rained. My dresser is made out of black oak with a mirror attached to it. I have a whole shelf of my adventure books, drawings of animals and used sketchbooks. My desk is full of scattered papers, pencils, and my Mac. Sure it was messy, but in an organized way, like a forest.

I take one look at myself in the mirror and groaned inwardly so I don't wake the other people in this apartment building.

With long, curly black ringlets, I'd say it's almost impossible to keep it in some kind of semi-organized ponytail. I never leave my hair down; it makes me feel all twitchy and girly, so, I don't know, vulnerable. But I brushed it, while shedding about twenty million tears and cursing like a sailor that drank way to much ale.

I rubbed the sleep out of my purple eyes and yawned. And no dear readers, I don't wear contacts, I was born with it. I get picked on because my eyes are more of a purple than a brown. It's kind of a sensitive topic.

I got dressed as quickly as I could, putting on "a homework kills trees" t-shirt and some jeans and walked downstairs.

I saw a guy in the kitchen cooking eggs. He had short dull brown hair and lazy brown eyes, but to add on to that he had abnormally pale skin that made him look… well, dead.

"Hello Elva," he said tonelessly without even looking up from the eggs. Great, so now his foster kid is even less than eggs to him.

Yes, in case you haven't noticed, Mark, a.k.a. the man that cooks eggs and drinks all day, is my foster parent. Mark adopted me when I was ten, probably so he could get child support money and waste it on beer and cigarettes. He is a dead beat that could care less about me or any thing else in our apartment that always had a stench of cigarettes.

So I'm the one that has to cook (unless he happens to be sober) clean, and go shopping for food or furniture that he happened to break on one of his "episodes"

Sometimes, he comes home drunk, angry at no one, he decides to take it out on me. I have bruises to prove it.

I hate him.

Mark dumped a plate of eggs in front of me as I sat at the cigarette burned table. Without another word, he left and went upstairs.

I sighed and ate my eggs in silence, no one to talk to about what its like to be at home alone all day. Only my best friends knew what happened at home, and they were just a handful of people.

I silently picked up my backpack and flew out the door. As I was walking to the bus stop, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I shivered and turned around, but saw nothing. Still, I felt like someone was following me.