Disclaimer: All the recognizable characters in this story are the property of the Twilight saga's creator and author, Stephanie Meyer. I only own this crazy plot of this story and are borrowing her characters because I'm a big fan. No copyright infringement intended.

A/N: Warning-There are admittedly going to be sensitive and disturbing subjects broached here and possibly equally upsetting graphic images conjured up. By no means am I intending to make light of these extremely serious situations. But, I will make no excuse for what I wrote. It was a necessary part of the plot. You may consider it over-the-top; however, remember that they are contained in a dream, and sometimes dreams are extreme-the mind is a fascinating place after all. Also, remember that this is a work of fiction, and sometimes writing for dramatic effect is needed.

If its any consolation, I cringed greatly when I wrote this and had a lot of difficulty myself pushing through it. It is part of the reason why I am behind in posting this chapter (that and I was having an emotionally tasking day with my children).

With all that said, I now * run and hide *.

DO I EVEN WANT TO READ REVIEWS FOR THIS CHAPTER?

OK, JUST GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT IN YOUR REVIEW

I'LL SUCK IT UP

Chapter 8: The Visions Within Alice's Dreams

"Silent Lucidity"

by Queensryche

Hush now don't you cry

Wipe away the teardrop from your eye

You're lying safe in bed

It was all a bad dream

Spinning in your head

Your mind tricked you to feel the pain

Of someone close to you leaving the game of life

So here it is, another chance

Wide awake, you face the day

Your dream is over...

Or has it just begun?

Alice was a little girl, maybe only a child of five or six. She looked teeny-tiny in her pretty, pink-checkered dress with the big bow tied at the back. She always had been small for her age. Her long, wavy curls were tied in pigtails and flapping with the slight breeze. Her eyes were shining and a wide smile adorned her face, showing off her missing front teeth. She was looking up adoringly at the bright-eyed and happy faces of her three older brothers, who were mere children themselves.

Emmett, Edward, and Riley had the sun's rays beaming down on them, making it seem like they were glowing to Alice. She stared at them in wonderment.

They were in a beautiful meadow; it was lush and green, surrounded on its perimeter with huge trees, and teeming with life as birds chirped, butterflies flitted from the flowers, and chipmunks scurried about. Alice and her brothers played in the meadow-chasing one another in the tall grass, spinning in circles until they fell down during ring-around-the-rosy, hiding amongst the outlying trees during hide-n-seek, and the boys wrestled in the lush grass while Alice rolled through the flowers. They were all having fun, being carefree and laughing boisterously. They were having the time of their lives.

Then suddenly dark clouds moved in from beyond the horizon, causing the sun to disappear, and the meadow to be shrouded in darkness. Alice eyes widened as the meadow became engulfed in the storm. The wind became very violent causing the tall grass to bend and bow, the petals of flowers to rip off, and the trees to shudder and lose its leaves. Wildlife ran to take cover. A torrent of rain fell from the darkened sky above. Things had changed so quickly.

Alice then found herself alone in the meadow. Where were her brothers? They were nowhere to be found. Alice was scared and she called out to them; however, there were no answers and Alice was completely alone. She wandered about the meadow, searching for them, and finding no trace of them.

Then a small tornado came and swept up little Alice in its whirlwind. Alice called out for help, but there was no one to heed her call. As she spun in the depths of the tornado, she felt largely like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. She was finally dropped by the tornado at the entrance of a poorly illuminated alleyway, bewildered but unscathed. She was adult Alice now.

Alice walked cautiously into the alley, wary of what she might find. She walked a little further in to find her three brothers cowering in a corner. She called out to them, but they didn't hear her. She then noticed that they were completely surrounded by women, lots of them, various faces, some of which she recognized as women of their pasts, including some of the girls that she used to be friends with. They were an angry mob ready to attack her brothers. Alice again called out, but it was as if she was just a ghost.

Then just as the mob enclosed on her brothers, the scene changed again. A hole in the ground swallowed Alice up and she fell endlessly down an abyss until she was deposited into an unfamiliar hallway with opened doors to rooms.

Alice walked down the hall and looked inside the first opened room, curiosity getting the best of her. She saw Emmett laying in what looked to be a hospital bed. In fact, Alice seemed to have found herself in a hospital.

Emmett was very sick, pale and weak, opened sores riddled his body; it looked like he was barely hanging onto life. Alice drew a sharp breath in as she saw her once virile brother looking so frail. He really didn't look like the Emmett she remembered. Emmett didn't seem to notice her standing over his hospital bed. Maybe she was just an apparition.

Emmett looked up to the ceiling, his eyes vacant, then he inhaled a deep breath before closing his eyes and the shrill sound of the machines by his bedside filled the room. Alice moved to a dark corner of the room in tears as she watched doctors and nurses rushing in the room for a code blue. A paper flew in Alice's direction and she caught it. Taking a look at the piece of paper, she found it to be a death certificate, Emmett's to be exact, and under cause of death, four ominous letters: AIDS.

"It seemed Emmett's overly love of women led him to one wrong woman, which he was reckless and impulsive with, and he was forever affected by that one night. One night of passion ended his life," a deep, narrative voice echoed inside Alice's mind. Alice felt utter disbelief at what she just encountered and ran from the room in complete shock.

She ended up fleeing into another room and this time it was Edward that she saw inside. It looked to be a dingy hotel room that he was in-filth covering the walls, the carpet stained, and the sheets dirtied and messy. Edward was seemingly drunk and passed out on the mattress, an empty bottle of vodka clutched to his chest. Alice took a hard look around and found the room littered with empty bottles of hard liquor. He seemed to be drinking himself into oblivion.

Edward didn't look anything like himself. He was considerably thinner, but his belly was bloated from too much drink. Gone was his lean, chiseled form. He looked considerably aged, even though Alice figured him to be only ten years older than he was now-mid 30's maybe; however, he looked closer to mid-40's, especially with the few days of beard growth he was sporting. His skin was sallow and he had dark circles and bags under his eyes, even though Alice could guess that Edward had been drinking himself into a stupor then sleeping it off most every night. The one thing that hadn't change was that Edward's hair was still a riotous mess.

Another piece of paper flitted over to Alice, seemingly out of nowhere, as she stood over Edward's lifeless body, which without Alice even realizing what had happened, now laid inside a casket. It was Edward's death certificate in her hands and the cause of death read: heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver.

The same narrative voice from before entered into Alice's consciousness, "It's unknown whether Edward drank himself to death because of the loss of a love, or whether it was due to feelings of loneliness. Either way, he had finally made a commitment to a constant companion, the bottle. But, it was this companion that cost him everything, including his life."

"Stupid narration," Alice muttered to herself. "Captain Obvious," she continued. Alice wanted to kick and scream, but she seemed to have no control over her limbs nor did she have any voice. Alice was able to run, however, and so she did. Again, she was in shock over what she had seen and couldn't imagine any of it to be real, but it all looked and felt very real.

By now, Alice knew where she was running to-the last opened room in the hallway. She had a good idea what she would find there. This time she found herself inside Riley's bedroom, finally someplace familiar to Alice.

The room was softly illuminated with candlelight and Alice could hear the muted sounds of people in the room with her. Actually, she distinctly heard moans, groans, a growl, and the sounds of skin slapping on skin. It could only be the noises of people fucking.

How very typical for Riley, Alice thought. Sure enough, Riley emerged from underneath the covers, a look of pure ecstasy upon his face.

Without warning, the door to the room burst open, taking Riley and his lover by surprise. A crazed looking woman emerged from out of the shadows wielding a gun. Alice yelled, but of course she wasn't heard. She tried to reach out for a phone to call for help, but the phone seemed to move further and further away from her hand. She ran towards Riley, her legs feeling like it was made of Jello, and Riley seeming like he was miles away. When she finally reached him, she just passed through, exactly like a ghost.

It was happening all so fast, yet it still seemed as if the scene playing before Alice was occurring in slow motion. Riley pleaded with the woman as best he could, while his lover recoiled behind him. He was having no effect. The woman was crying, yet had a look of determination upon her face.

Alice tried to plead for her brother's life too, but it was useless. She wasn't actually there, just a ghostly version of herself made to observe. No damn piece of paper or narrative voice needed. The message was loud and clear. Alice jolted awake to the sound of three gunshots.

Alice sat up in bed trying to catch her breath and erase the flashing images out of her mind. As hard as she closed her eyes, she couldn't shake the visions. There was also a new image replaying itself over and over in her head, as if it was added to her dream slide show. It was that of her standing over three gravestones side-by-side, the names of one of her brothers elegantly etched into the stone, and in the background the same mob of ladies from earlier in the dream were laughing and celebrating uproariously.

It was just a dream, Alice repeated as a mantra. However, she couldn't help the feeling of dread washing over her and taking up residence. She bolted from her room and ran to each of her brothers' rooms to check on them. She needed to see with her own eyes that they were all alive and well. They were all still fast asleep and breathing. Alice sighed in relief as she exited Riley's room and closed the door quietly.

Alice knew that she couldn't get back to sleep after that nightmare. She was too high-strung. Dawn was starting to break and so Alice headed for the kitchen; it was her haven.

As a chef, Alice always kept the kitchen well-stocked and had everything she needed to create the fanciest of meals. She gathered a ton of ingredients and began to cook. She cooked up a storm, since cooking was a major stress reliever for her. Alice loved to cook, it was her passion. As she chopped, mixed, and flambéed, she was temporarily able to push the disturbing images from her mind.

By the time Alice was through, it was already mid-morning and she had cooked enough food to feed an army. She sighed, knowing that she once again got carried away, as she tended to do.

As expected, none of her brothers had awoken yet, and Alice didn't think that any of them would actually get up before noon. Alice checked the clock on the wall and realized that she had just enough time to catch the late mass at church.

She set aside enough food to feed her brothers, placing them in buffet servers that she set along the island, keeping the food warm until they were to wake and eat. She penned some instructions for her brothers for the food and left it in plain view by the servers. She then packed up the rest of the massive meal, placing some in the fridge or freezer to be saved to eat later, and what was left over she readied to take and donate to the church food bank. It made her feel good to know that she was going to help provide a nice meal to the elderly, needy families, and homeless people that the church regularly fed in their little cafeteria on Sundays.

Alice went back to her room after the kitchen clean-up, showered, and started getting dressed for church. As she passed her brothers' photographs again, an idea sprang to her mind. At first, she ignored it, but as she continued to get herself ready, the idea kept nagging at her.

Was it really possible for her to change her three brothers' womanizing ways and find them love? Having them fall in love would surely change the situation they were in now, on the verge of a complete meltdown. Their attentions would certainly be focused on the new women in their life. Alice knew that they didn't seem to have any luck in finding love; it was why they were still all single and living the lives of playboys. Alice greatly believed that one good woman was all they needed to turn their lives around, and in the moment, they hadn't been exactly dating the best of women. Who better to matchmake them to the right women than her? It was going to be a tremendous task and would certainly be an overwhelming undertaking for her. However, Alice never backed down from a challenge. If she put her mind to it, she had no doubt that she could accomplish great things with her new mission. Her decision was made. As if she really had any other choice.

As she put her high heels on her feet, she went about her room gathering the things she would need for the rest of the day, including packing an overnight bag with a change of clothes for after church and for even later than that. She had no illusions that it wasn't going to be a long day of research and planning for her new mission at the library. She would just crash later at the nearby apartment that Emmett owned and she had a key to.

Alice was going to do it. She was going to embark on this mission that could forever change her brothers' lives. She knew that she was technically meddling, but she fully hoped that the end would justify the means. Unfortunately, she had no way yet of predicting whether her mission would succeed. A lot of her ability centered on decisions that were made in order to set things happening in motion. It couldn't be more clear to Alice, however, that she needed to change the path of her brothers' futures. Their lives depended on it. If she did nothing, then her nightmare was what she could expect to happen. Alice knew that she was sent that terrible dream for a purpose; it was a warning and just the catalyst she needed for her to do something.

As she loaded all the things into her car then drove off to church, she felt much lighter than when she first woke up from her nightmare. With newfound determination, she couldn't wait to start her mission.

END A/N: It wasn't too bad for you readers, I hope. We did end on a bright note, if that makes up for anything.

Chapter 9 teaser:

"You better fucking make me believe that you're not with that asshole, Jasper. So, help me Mary Alice Cullen, I will race over there and drag your ass away from him. I'm sure Emmett and Edward will back me up," Riley exclaimed heatedly over the phone.

Oh! * cue suspenseful music *