I realized my train of thought had drifted and reined it back in.  I needed caffeine, stimulants...whatever I could get my hands on over the counter to stay awake.  Not forever.  No.  I tried to take thirty-minute naps throughout the day and night.  If I did that, I could still function.  Sort of.  Not really.  But it was better than the dreams.

Last night I’d finally succumbed.  I’d slept twelve hours.  I felt like crap today.  I’d died again.  Several times actually.  I hated dying.  The last one had been violent.  Dogs that looked very human had torn me apart.  They’d talked.  Well, yelled really.  They’d wanted me to choose.  I didn’t know what.

A shiver ran through me.  Just thinking about the dream made me tired.  I ran my fingers through my oily, dark hair to comb it out, hoping it looked decent.  I couldn’t remember my last shower and cringed at the thought of my mom seeing me like this.  Thankfully, she worked.  A lot.  We communicated via notes left on the fridge.  Mostly she told me to clean my room.  I kept it strategically messy to help hide whatever it was I bought that week, day, hour, whatever...  I sighed and rubbed my head.  It ached constantly.

My wandering eyes shifted back to Dani. She watched me with a slight smile.  She knew.  I didn’t know how she could stand kissing me.  I looked and felt like crap.  At least I’d brushed my teeth before leaving the house.  Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my faded, ripped jeans, I started making my way to Dani and the next torturous kiss.

“Bethi Pederson,” Dani said flashing her straight white teeth at me.  A smile.  Friendly, but the sight reminded me of the snarling gleam from my dream.  I fought not to cringe.

“I didn’t think I’d see you any time soon.”  Her eyes roved my face, and she angled her head.  “You don’t look so good, hun.  What’s up?”

“Same clerk as yesterday.  Can you—”

She didn’t let me finish.

“Bethi, maybe you’d be better off coming home with me and sleeping for a few hours.”

Cadence rolled her eyes at Dani’s comment but said nothing.  I could just image what would happen if I went home with Dani.  Though, looking into her soft brown eyes, the concern there made me hesitate.  Sure, she’d probably put a move on me, but I knew she’d also try to get me to rest.  To help me.  I really did like Dani, just not that way.  If only she knew, sleeping was the last thing I needed.  I needed peace.  Two totally different things.  The thought of someone helping me was tempting, but I knew I had to deal with this on my own.

“Thanks, Dani, but I can’t.”  I pulled my hand out of my pocket and tried giving her the money.

She didn’t move to take it.  “You know the price.”  Her smile was gone.

“Why?” I partially whined unable to keep the anxious uncertainty from my voice.  “You know I like guys, Dani.  Plus, I look like hell.  Probably smell bad too.”

She studied me for a moment.  I tried to look confident, but my arms wrapped around me so I hugged myself.

“It’s your eyes,” she said taking pity on me but shrugged away any further explanation.

I averted my deep blue eyes, which looked violet in certain light or on days when I got very little sleep.  Against my pale skin and dark hair, they startled people with their natural vivid coloring.

“As far as liking guys goes, I’m hoping you’ll change your mind.”  Her lips curved in a soft smile.

I was glad she didn’t mention my smell.  It would have hurt.  I wanted to shower, but the warm water put me to sleep, and standing tense under a jet of frigid water wasn’t worth the pounding headache afterward.

Exhaustion made the floor dip and crest under my feet.  Enough playing around.  We both knew I didn’t have a choice.  I closed the distance between us, fisted my hands in her hair, and pulled her down for a kiss.  Her lips were soft and warm against mine.  My stomach turned sour as memories swamped me.

This wasn’t the first life in which I’d kissed a girl.  There’d been so many dreams since the start of the school year.  In each dream, I starred as the leading lady, felt what she felt, saw what she saw—her, but not her.  After a while, I began to notice similarities.  The dreams themselves didn’t repeat, but it often felt like I dreamt of the same person even though their appearances changed from one dream to the next.  Each time I closed my eyes and dreamed, I had a unique ability.  In all the dreams so far, there had been six distinct abilities...six unique women.  Learning about them and what they could do was by far the most interesting portion of the dream.  If only the dreams ended there.  The appearance of the beasts and what they did made me shudder.  But worse still were all the deaths I experienced.

Dani misunderstood my shudder and lifted a hand to my cheek as she kissed me sweetly in return.  After counting to four in my head, I pulled back hoping it’d been enough.

The dream kiss had been just as chaste.  But it’d felt different.  I’d been saying goodbye to someone I loved dearly.  Maybe a sister or best friend.  The girl in my dream hadn’t spoken. She’d simply turned and calmly pushed through the fleeing crowd, people running from the beasts who screamed in their guttural voices for me to step forward.  In that dream, my life had been spared...for a while.  Hers had been taken.

“‘K.  I’ll get you what you need.”  She walked away leaving me standing with Cadence.

My hot, gritty eyes tracked her progress.  How could I feel this tired after sleeping twelve hours? My life hadn’t been like this for long.  After the first dream almost three months ago, I’d slept fine for several nights before figuring out the dreams were skipping nights here and there.  On the nights I had those dreams, I woke as tired as I’d been when I went to bed.  Too soon, I started having them every night.  Sometimes several dreams a night if I managed to fall back to sleep.  So many dreams.  But, I’d learned something.

Without a doubt, each dream played a scene from a past life, an echo of memory.  The surety that I was remembering, and not just dreaming made me doubt my sanity.  Some thing throughout history continued to hunt me...and others like me.  Yeah, I wasn’t alone.  Sometimes the women looked similar to how I appeared now.  Sometimes I wasn’t me, but a completely different person, one of the other five.  Often names repeated in different lifetimes, or we had family members with the same names.  But, it was the lingering details of the life after waking that convinced me they were surfacing memories and not just random dreams.

Usually I died young, unaware of the danger.  Sometimes, the dreams came and helped me to prepare.  To run.  Either way, I never lasted long.  They could track me by my scent.  Back then, though, there hadn’t been cars or other ways to travel fast.  I hoped this time would be different.  I had no doubt...they would come.  But maybe I could finally out run them.

I closed my eyes for a second to relieve the hot sting.  They stayed closed and wouldn’t open no matter how hard I tried.  My legs felt weak, and I knew I’d crumple to the ground any moment.  In a distant part of my mind, a dream gathered, an angry storm of memories, swirling and gaining speed.

Cadence’s voice and rough hold pulled me back from the brink of sleep.

“Geez, Bethi.  Get a grip.  People are staring.”

Paranoia fueled an adrenaline spike.  My eyes popped open.  My knees kept shaking, but no longer from sleep.  Flight or Fight mode.  I was ready to fly.  Controlling my breathing and relaxing my shoulders, I glanced around.  A security guard watched me.  My relief sprouted a genuine smile on my face.  The woman looked confused for a moment, then shook her head and turned away.  I could only imagine what she thought of my odd behavior.

“Thanks,” I mumbled to Cadence, thinking of the adrenaline rush.  Maybe that was the way to go.  I fingered the scars on my arms.  Pain, though effective, was a pointless method to stay awake.  After all, it was the pain in my dreams I wanted to avoid.