The Dreams

I had been in my room the majority of the morning, not cleaning, not sleeping, and not really doing anything important. Just making sure I had everything on the mental list I had made the night previous. Food, check, presents, check, movies, check, music, check, drinks, check, made sure everyone was coming, check. It was all done, now was the hardest part, waiting. I was anxious, what else would I be? The only thing I found distracting until my first guest showed up, was dancing around in my room, listening to my cds.

I loved my room, well, my new room I should say. Due to the problems that we had when we didn't have the addition, we now had good, almost completely sound proof rooms, something that we didn't have before. So I could play my music as loud as I wanted and scream the lyrics without getting into trouble for annoying my two younger sisters. My room was already clean, dusted, swept, bed made, and everything was organized. I kept glancing out the window that looked over the original garage that we had, in hopes to be able to see someone coming, but it was pointless. The garage's roof was at such an angle that it was near impossible to see anything unless I opened my window and stuck my head out as far as it would go, and I wasn't willing to do that in this weather.

"Does it run in your blood to betray the one's that you love? Yes it runs in your blood to betray the one's that you love!!"

I had the cd on shuffle and was singing along, standing on my bed, hairbrush in hand, eyes closed and absorbed by trying to feel the music. In fact, I was so wrapped up in just singing that I wasn't paying attention to the clock, or the door anymore. Normally people call before the come to someone's house, but not my friends. They've grown so accustom to my house that they know just to let themselves in and come on up. My parents love them, and trust them around our stuff, not to mention my friends actually talk to my parents and don't try to act all superior to them.

"You know, if you sing any louder you're going to break the glass!" The music had stopped suddenly and the new voice scared me out of my own skin.

I screamed and feel instantly off my bed, landing hard on my butt, blonde hair, flying in my face.

"Laura Anne Carroll!" I screamed at my friend, who was standing next to my CD player, holding her sides from laughing at me. "That's not funny! I could have died or something."

"Let me guess, from a heart attack?" She asked, tossing her stuff in the floor next to my bed and searching for a new cd to put in. I was by far the jumpiest person everyone knew and was in constant danger from dieing of an unpredicted heart attack from being scared out of my mind so many times.

"No one believes me, but you guys scare me so much, some day it will happen."

"You keep telling yourself that Nikki. Aha! I knew you had the new Simple Plan cd!"

"I told you I did, but you weren't listening J-Lo." I said, putting in the cd, pressing play, turning it down slightly so we wouldn't have to yell over it, and taking a seat in the rolling chair at my desk. I referred to her as J-Lo due to the fact her rear end was her most predominant feature.

"Is no one else here yet?" She asked, lying down on my bed while I logged onto the internet.

"Nope, they said they wouldn't be here until at least 4. They have work and everything."

"Sure they do. Who all is coming again?"

"Laura M, Carl, Robert, Little Nikki, Trevor, Sheena, Laura W, Breanna, and I think that's it. What the heck." I mumbled the last part to myself when my computer kept saying there was no signal for it to log onto.

"That's more than last year."

"Yeah I know, but more and more people want to come, something about feeling left out."

"So is everyone staying the night?"

"I think so. Not that we're going to sleep though with what Trevor and I have planned, a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon." I tried again to log online, but this time it just shut itself down.

"Laura, or miss must watch romantic comedies only, isn't going to like that very much." It sometimes got confusing have three friends with the same name, which is another reason why I started calling my best friend J-Lo, and Laura Wilson Pothead, even though she had never smoked weed a day in her life.

"Oh yes she will. Majority vote, we're in a democracy aren't we?"

"She's going to kill us."

"Then we'd be able to finally get some decent sleep."

"Are you still having those weird dreams?"

I nodded, trying so hard to block out the images of blood and the smell of dead bodies from returning to me during my waking hours. "They're getting worse, and I don't know what they mean or anything."

"Have you been watching any Zombie movies lately?"

I shook my head, getting up from my seat at my laptop and taking a seat on the bed, bringing my stuffed rabbit into my lap. "Nope, haven't watched one in weeks, but every night I get chills and can't ever remember the details. All I can remember is the biting, the death and thee blood."

"I wouldn't tell the rest of them," meaning the rest of our friends, "They might seriously want to commit you."

I didn't laugh, it wasn't a joke, everyone thought I took my movies and dreams far too seriously, and sometimes I thought so too. But it was all just too real to me. Like I knew when something bad was going to happen. It had happened to me too many times to count for me to dismiss it at just night terrors. It wasn't always about Zombies, sometimes it was about car crashes, or insane asylums, and others it was just about death. All those happened right before my friend got into a near fatal car crash, and my uncle got locked away for showing signs of Dementia, a very bad form of Alzheimer's disease, and he was becoming violent and would swear like a sailor that he was back in World War II.

Those were just a few examples; there was a list at least as long as my leg about incidents such as those. I always thought that I was strange, and J-Lo was the only one that I shared this information with. It wasn't that I didn't trust my other friends, because I did, I would trust them with my life. It was just that they always thought I was a bit on the weird side, from the way I dressed, from the variety of music that I listened to and the movies that I watched, all the way to the way I talked. What gave it away most though was the stuff that I wrote dark, depressing, sometimes even morbid, poetry and stories. I let them read some of it once, and after the reaction I got of horrified expressions and comments about therapy, I told them that I didn't write anymore.

Truth was that all those ideas I had for my work came from my dreams, both dreams that I had at night, when I had no control over them, and during the day, when yet again, I had no control over my thoughts. I shifted my weight and brushed my long hair behind my ears before standing up off my bed.

"I'm hungry." I stated, setting back down my stuffed rabbit and turning to Laura. "Want some breakfast?"

"You know I never turn down food," She said, leading the way to the kitchen.

Biscuits and cereal were still left on the table from where my sisters had eaten about twenty minutes before. The bread still warm and cereal still in the box, I got some cold milk from the refrigerator, grabbed a bowl and settled down at the corner chair at the bar with my food. Laura however went straight for the coffee, pouring us both a cup as I made two bowels of cereal.

I normally didn't eat breakfast, but today, it wasn't really as much as a breakfast as it was a lunch, since it was almost noon. During Christmas break no one around here, well, me and my sisters, woke up before eleven unless we had something to do. So it was a brunch type thing, and then dinner, no three meals for us.

Celebrate! The End of the World