Chapter One
Before I could speak, I was once again, falling. But this time, instead of darkness, there were flashing images. Strobe light surrounded me, making it harder to see the pictures.

Although I felt myself falling, I was now inside the image of a small, blue kitten. She was in a large, empty room. There were bizarre glass sculptures across the sides on the paneled floor, but nothing else. "Hello?" she called quietly, her voice echoing. Everything seemed to melt into the next image.

Water. She was in the same room, but full of water. A rope appeared, tying around her. I could feel what she felt--my lungs beginning to burst, just wanting to be able to move. She opened her mouth to scream, and the vision I saw was now entering her throat. Once surrounded by darkness, I blinked, finding the next cruel scene.

The same cat was now on a stage, a microphone in front of her. I was in a crowd of screaming, jumping animals. The cat opened her mouth, no sound coming out. "I-I," she looked down at the script. I could see from my seat it was smeared with blood-stained, and he paws were damp with the red liquid. I was pushed down by the crowd, into the next scene.

We were in a parking lot--the kind with the walls all around it, practically making it a room. A figure I couldn't make it was holding the cat, continually throwing her face into one of the concrete arches. The cat's body was lifelessly moving, like a sewn doll. I couldn't get a good look before I blinked, making everything go away.

This was real. I could feel everything--but it looked more animated than the images I had just seen was. It was like a normal neighborhood; houses lined up across a street, a large field was across from me, and a couple normal-looking animals ran around in it, throwing a frisbee. but everything was discolored. The trees had purple bark with silver leaves. The house I was on the porch of was a bright orange, with hot pink splotches on it. The only thing that seemed normal was myself and the other animals.

I glanced up to the translucent red sign on the door. Rosie & Nikki. Before I even thought about the name in edition to mine, I figured that here I would have to deal with being called by my radio personality name, although I was thankful I didn't have to have the "D" that Tom Nook insisted I had when I first got the job.

Then, I remembered something. Bella always went on about her friend named Rosie from another town. If this WAS that particular Rosie, and her and Bella were such great friends, I would be in for one long year.

I got up from the concrete porch. Despite the material, I barely felt it when I hit the floor. It didn't seem like a big deal, considering the rest of what I had seen.

I walked in, hesitantly, to find a sobbing figure on the floor. Eyeliner dripped from her eyes, and her fur was wet with tears. But there was something more important than that; she was the same cat in the terrifying images I had seen.

"YOU!" I instantly heard. The feline jumped to her feet, a finger pointed at me. "I know you!" she screamed, her voice full of fury for some reason.

I just blinked. "You!" she repeated, falling to her knees, continuing to bawl. "I hate you," she said between breaths.

"You were there--being attacked by a clown with a knife! Thrown off the building, stuck in the coffin! But that's not anything," she panted, full of pain.

"Trapped in the room...you were in the chains, covered in blood. Why were you torturing me?" she cried, desperately.

"I--"

"WHY!?" she snapped, her voice once again full of hate. She was almost as scary as the figure in the parking lot.

I took a deep breath. "If you give me one minute to talk, I can explain," I said, firmly.

She was silent. "I saw you. You were in a wide opened space, then the center of attention, drowning, and..." I tried to think of how to explain the fourth scene as least-detailed as possible. "And some dude was smashing your face against concrete in a parking lot..." I shook my head. "I think they're exploiting our fears, but with other people, to get us ready for however they're gonna torture us." I wondered why I didn't freak out.

I could tell Rosie was holding in screams. "So you have the opposite of claustrophobia, scared of attention, drowning...and pain?" she suggested.

"Scared of death," I corrected her. "I'm actually a Masochist," I added.

"So...you like pain?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I sighed. I hated explaining the term to people. "Not exactly...It's more like..." I searched for words. "Being grateful because of the pain." Rosie blinked, and I decided to give up. "Never mind."

Up until now, I hadn't bothered to look at the house. There was a normal color scheme, to my joy--although I was used to looking at terrible ones. In my room at Nook's, I had chosen lime green walls with pink streaks, looking 'spunky.' The rooms wasn't more than a white box with a black, leather couch to the side.

Now that everything was calm, I payed more attention to Rosie, as well. She appeared about sixteen--I was glad that I wasn't quite old enough to be her mother, at twenty nine.

"You're afraid of clowns, heights, have claustrophobia, and...chains?" I confirmed.

"Blood, not chains," she shuddered. "It's gross. By the way, I'm Rosie."

I nodded. "Yeah, I saw that on the door. I'm...Nikki," I said, agreeing to take the name instead of having to explain my name was Maddie; Nikki was my Radio Personality name.

"So, we're gonna be living together...for a year?" Rosie asked. "That guy didn't explain it very well..."

I nodded. "I think...Let's go check out our rooms," I suggested, figuring it would brighten up the mood...hopefully.

Rosie forced a smile. "Sounds good."

The stairs were wooden, and some-what creaky. They gave you that feeling that you're going to fall, so I ran up them as quickly as possible. Rosie seemed to notice the same thing,sprinting up them right after me.

The same white-paint filled the upstairs hall. There was a bathroom to the side, and two bedrooms. They were identical, besides the wooden plate on each that read our names. The one saying "Nikki," was to the right, farther from the bathroom.

Rosie quickly sprung into her room, so I decided to take a quick look at mine. there was a hammock to the left, and a dresser filled with clothes I usually wore. There was a wooden desk, that had some paper and a pen on it. These people weren't so creative when it came to interior, although I didn't know how they obtained my wardrobe.

Then, I noticed a bookshelf. On it were three dusty books. I reluctantly walked over to one, kneeling down to pick it up. I wiped the dust off the black book with my paw, revealing the title, in gold cursive. "The Maddie, "Nikki D," Cromwell Chronicles" "Book I: Childhood." I flipped through that pages. I found the time I broke my nose in softball, the time my brother was playing baseball and had a foul ball that pushed me off the stands, the time I got a concussion--I had forgotten I was still a klutz back then.

I wiped the dust off the next two. "Sweet Sixteen to Adult" and "Time in Nightmares." Nightmares, I could tell without reading anything, actually had everything that I would do here, and exactly how I did it. Something had stopped me from reading it, however.

I walked out of my room, deciding to wait for Rosie. As we walked down the stairs, I decided I could hint on the books without actually saying anything to give it away too much. "So, do you enjoy reading?" I asked, casually.