Another chapter's up and ready for you guys! I'm going to try to update this one as frequently as I update "Half Past Now" but I can't make any promises. Anyway, here's a bit more of the story for you!

Many thanks to those of you who took the time to review the last chapter! It really made me excited to get this chapter up and ready for you. I hope you enjoy it!

Please be kind and reveiw.

Realm of the Bizarre

Chapter 1

--

Catherine looked down at the clock that sat on her desk and glared at it. Ecklie had given her and Grissom two hours to finish staffing profiles for the team and an evaluation of Riley's first case with the LVPD the previous day. In the middle of it there'd been another death across town and she and Grissom had both decided that she'd be faster working on the paperwork and that he'd be more effective at the scene, so she'd been abandoned. So, she'd been left to finish the mountain of work by herself.

She'd done fairly well and had accomplished more than she'd ever expected to but the problem was that she still had another profile to do and she hadn't even started on the evaluation of Riley's first day. Frankly, she'd been so occupied the day before she was worried she wouldn't know what to say or do in the report. The matter was aside from the point though, she only had two minutes left to finish up. It was impossible.

She stared at the hands of the clock willing them to turn backwards in the same way she frequently willed them to turn forwards so so she could go home. The difference this time was that they seemed to have obeyed. She shook her head, squinted her eyes, and focused on the clock again. It read one hour earlier than it had only moments before.

Disbelief made her grab her cell phone and check the time on there—it also told her that it was an hour earlier than it had been. So did the clock on her computer, the clock in the hall, and the one she saw sitting on Hodges' desk two rooms away. She felt foolish and laughed at herself, it was the first time she'd even cracked a smile since she heard the news about Warrick. Of course she hadn't turned back time... that was ridiculous.

--

Greg had the privilege of mentoring Riley that day. A situation that, according to Catherine, would probably become an arrangement he shared with Nick on a permanent basis. It was exciting to be given the responsibility, but also a bit bothersome at the time. He had a lot going on at the moment and a lot on his mind. Now, on top of that he had to both teach and get to know a new CSI as well as deal with the pounding headache he had.

He'd been having a tingling sensation at the top of his neck all day, right where it connected with his head and it had been leading to the worst headaches he'd had in a long time. Not to mention that, every time he tried to think about something it'd segue in his mind to another thought about the same object doing something odd. He glanced up at the red print powder in Riley's hand as she crouched for a print and had the sudden thought that it was going to spill all over her new, and he knew it was new because she told him, white shirt.

A fly buzzed past Riley in effect causing her to lose concentration, jerk her hand back, and pour the pink-red powder all over her shirt. The motions happened exactly how Greg had envisioned them only moments before.

A second later he had a flash of Riley sneezing because she'd inhaled some of the powder and pitching herself backwards, landing hard on her back. She started to sneeze and he had time to move behind her and catch her. "Wow, thanks," she said.

"Uh-huh," Greg responded quietly, in disbelief. He was having a serious case of De Ja Vu.

--

"It's a shame about this one," the junior officer said as Nick approached the body. "She was a total fox!"

"That's inapropriate," Nick reminded the rookie, sternly. Sometimes he couldn't believe the things that came out of people's mouths!

"Excuse me?" The younger officer asked. "I didn't say anything."

"Don't play dumb with me!" Nick insisted. "I heard you loud and clear."

The younger man just shook his head to the negative and gestured to the body before fleeing his company. Nick had been having the same thing happen to him all day. It seemed like everywhere he went people were making comments and denying that they'd said anything. It was as though there was some sort of stupidity pandemic going around. The couldn't honestly believe that he hadn't heard them.... still... everyone had seemed pretty convinced they hadn't actually said anything. Nick shook his head and thought the moon must be full that night.

--

The victim wasn't completely dead when Grissom had arrived on the scene. He'd gotten there only moments after the coroner who had informed him that the first officer on the scene had misinformed the dispatcher. Having the second most extensive medical training there, next to David's, (though it wasn't much to speak of) Grissom set to work trying to help the younger man save the victim's life.

Frustration came quickly for him though as he realized the two of them weren't communicating as well as they should have been. It seemed that each laceration, wound, or other form of physical trauma that David had described to him when he was examining the victim had vanished.

"Are we talking about the same person here?" he asked at one point. "I don't see any open lacerations here at all. Everything you explained to me is scar tissue."

David showed him his digital camera, "that's impossible," he said, pointing to a few of the marks he'd pointed out. "They're right here in the photographs."

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," Grissom commented. "It's not like this guy's wounds are going away just because I touched him, David! I'm not a miracle worker. It's not even my job to help the living... dead and I go together like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern."

--

Riley felt as though she was starting to make a connection with the newly turned level three CSI that she'd been working with that day. Obviously he was still deeply impacted by the loss his team had suffered only a matter of days before but it seemed to her that she was managing to cheer him up a bit here and there. All she'd had to do several times that day was just look up at him and think about how much she'd wanted to make things better and before long he seemed to have a contented smile on his face.

She knew, logically, that there was probably very little correlation to her wanting Greg to be happy and his actual happiness that day, but the idea still brought a smile to her own lips. Even if it was the sheer fact that she was giving the older CSI a distraction from the pain, guilt, and total fury that she somehow knew he was feeling, she was helping him.

She made it her goal for that day to keep a smile on his face. Somehow she was seeing an invisible correlation between Greg's expression and the degree to which she'd been willing him to be happy. A childish part of her felt as though she was truly controlling it as she watched the pain in his face slowly spread into a mild contentment.

--

Sara's day had been frustrating in every sense of the word imaginable. She couldn't remember walking, running, dancing, prancing, or even crawling anywhere she'd been all day and she was starting to feel unnerved. Had Warrick's death been the final trauma in her life that caused her to have situational amnesia? And why was it that her mind had chosen to block out her means of transportation and nothing else.

She was standing in the kitchen when she decided that perhaps she should lay down in the living room and really focus on her day. Perhaps if she put enough thought into she'd remember how she'd gotten to all the places she'd been that night. A moment later she found herself standing in front of the couch with no recollection at all as to how she came to be there.

The television was on as she settled onto the couch and after a few moments she decided that perhaps she should shut it off and focus on solving her infuriatingly bizarre case of selective memory loss. She looked around the room briefly and spotted the remote on the far chair. A moment later she found herself standing beside the chair, completely unable to remember getting up let alone walking over to it.

"That does it!" she exclaimed aloud. "I'm officially certifiably insane."