Who is this girl? I recognise her from somewhere. With short blonde hair and eyes... eyes the colour of the deepest part of the ocean. Her bottom lip slightly fuller than the upper and as she turns her head a bump in the middle of her nose. A Roman nose. I have the strangest feeling that if she stood up she would be just under six foot. Five foot eleven. A very peculiar height for a girl. Same as myself in fact. Same as me. Oh my god! It is me! How? I can feel the questions spinning around in my head, all trying to spew from my mouth at the same time. None of them dominant within my mind. None seeming to capture exactly what I want... no need to know. My brain is desperately trying to tell my eyes that what I am seeing cannot be.
I look behind her at the other passengers and they all seem to be staring at me in absolute horror. Their skin palest white, like a sheet hanging on the line on a beautiful summer day and eyes staring and glassy, like the surface of a frozen lake in the middle of winter. If I continue to look at these people's faces, their astonishment and their... their... fear will begin to seep into me and chill me to the bone. I tear my eyes away and start to analyse this person in front of me. Even though I am an avid reader and have read about people who have experienced these sort of things, my mind is still reeling at the fact that this person is me, but surely can't be. It makes no logical sense. Its took uncanny. I keep waiting for someone to jump out and announce that this is all a joke, but some instinct older than civilisation is telling me that this is real and that this cannot just be coincidence.
As my eyes lock with familiar blue eyes, I feel anger surge up from deep within me. I do not like to be played like a fool and this certainly feels like I am being tricked and made fun of and I do not find it in any way amusing. 'What are you?' I put as much venom into the question as I could muster. This is NOT me. I am unique. One of a kind, not easily replicated. The face that looks back at me narrows its eyes and looks at me as an owl would survey a mouse for a meal. As she continues to look at me she pulls up her top and shows me a brown paw print on the right hand side of her stomach. A birth mark. The same mark I had. My mind reeled, and I could feel my sight beginning to go foggy around the edges. This other person was me. Questions, the same questions keep circling around and around in my mind like a hurricane. How is this possible? Is it real? What is its purpose? But the most pressing of all; why me? All I want to do is go home and make myself a cup of tea, but obviously it is too much trouble for this universe to let me do. That's it! The universe. I look at her and she smiles as she can see the realisation has finally hit me. Of course! I stretch my hand out towards the glass in front of me and she did the same. As our fingers touched on either side of the glass. A parallel universe. It actually existed. I could definitely feel the cool liquid surface of the material between our hands, but a type of heat signature was gently interwoven within it. I could feel her. However my wonder was short lived as on the points where my fingers made contact with the glass fine cracks were appearing and spreading out and upwards. I tried to pull my hand away... and found I couldn't. My hand was fixed to the glass. As I turned startled fawn eyes on her I caught the acrid stench of fear coming from her.
'Help me' I shouted at her. She shook her head at me, but not for the fact that she didn't want to help me but in the fact that she couldn't help me. I looked back at the glass and noticed that the hairline cracks were now becoming ragged gorges within the glass and revealing a scene exactly the same as my own. Finally my face appeared between the glass. Relief washed over me that she was safe and hadn't been harmed in anyway. But any relief I felt was washed away by an ice cold dose of fear from her first words.
'Run! Get off the train at the next stop! In your world at precisely 1:24pm Stephanie Mould dies from fatal burn injuries from the container of petrol under your seat. You need to get off.'
'What about you?!'
'I should be fine. Hopefully now that I have warned you we both should be out of danger and we will both remain in our relative dimensions.' Something about her flat tone and the way she wouldn't meet my eyes made me wonder whether she knew something she wasn't telling me.
'But why are the dimensions collapsing? I don't understand.' Just at that moment the train finally came to a complete and rather sudden stop. I started to rise at her insistence and head towards the train's opening doors. The further from my seat I got the faster the glass seemed to be resealing itself.
'Don't look back.'
I don't know why people say this because of course when they do you instantly whip your head around to look. And what I saw made my blood freeze in my veins. Everything froze. A man was visible walking past my seat with a lighter in hand. He was covered in a brown trench coat despite the warm weather and sun glasses covered his eyes. As he walked past the lit lighter fell from his hands. NO! I instinctively started running back onto the train, like hell itself was on my heels. What I saw halted me in my tracks. My face, engulfed by flames. She'd known! She had known that if she saved me, she would be the one to suffer. But why? As the tears streamed down my cheeks at the loss, I noticed a letter attached to the glass from where my death scene had played out. I quickly grabbed it and read it. And felt myself begin to shake with a rage I had never felt before.
And this is the day that Stephanie Mould died. Goodnight, sweetheart.
- G -
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