Title: On This Day
By Kaie Darkstar

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I used to dream of dying, and it used to frighten me. There was always blood splayed all over the place, no matter the method. It was a rather gory sort of report if anyone ever asked me what my dreams were about. Sometimes it was a knife across my throat, or cuts down my arms, or a sword through my chest, or a hail of bullets. They were all equally bloody. And for some reason, even laser fire would dump the contents of my veins out on the floor. It was rather unsettling--I thought heat would cauterize the wounds. But then, that young, I hadn't yet been seriously burned. But it doesn't frighten me anymore. After all, enough exposure to anything and you'll get used to it. I'll get thrown off a cliff and I won't wake up feeling anything more than numb. It's very cold at night.

What does scare me now, of my dreams, is that sometimes I don't die. I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of living. I kind of like it, as a matter of fact. But that's beside the point.

The problem with the dreams that don't kill me is that everyone else dies. It's not always all at once and not even always someone I know. But after a couple of months, every person whose face I've managed to retain memory of has been murdered by my subconscious mind, sometimes more than once.

I hate feeling helpless, which I usually am. I mean, I'm not a brave soldier, or a wise doctor, and by no means am I a miracle worker. And sometimes I can't even move--not that moving is even particularly constructive in some cases. But being immobilized generally isn't very reassuring. I don't think too clearly when I'm already panicking.

And sometimes ... I can't do anything because I'm already dead.

That's when I really feel guilty.

After a while, I got sick of trying to find meaning in my dreams and lied when people asked if I remembered them. And they did ask rather often, or at least my roommates did. Between the screaming and the occasional broken bedside objects, most of them were ready to kill me themselves by the end of the term. At least it meant I always got the bottom bunk--once I'd broken a collarbone falling from the top one, that is.

I gave in once. Not about the bunks--there was actually enough room to put both beds on the floor that time. But my roommate this time wouldn't stop pestering me about my nightmares, so I let him have the details. I'd been thrown in some primitive stone dungeon for torture. Definitely one of the messier ones. He said, "That's totally gross," and never brought it up again.

He told me plenty about his own dreams. Kept insisting that they were visions of the future, and there were times when he was very close. There was one where an eagle flew him across a deep, fathomless chasm. His friends took him hang gliding the next weekend.

I didn't go with them. The previous night had him drowning in the river at the bottom of a marble canyon. The water was so red. I didn't tell him about it, didn't say anything, just told them that I needed to study like mad and that I was fine on my own two feet. I told myself that it couldn't possibly happen. That I wasn't some kind of prophet.

I don't believe in my dreams. I don't want to, never mind that with the thousands of scenarios that had flashed under my closed eyes, it was pretty likely one of them would resemble my eventual death. If I hang onto my disbelief, I don't have to deal with the possibility that I were responsible for warning people of their imminent, violent demise.

But I think if you really believe something, it can make it true. Or truer, at least. It was always the visions that he got all excited about and expounded for hours on that actually bordered on reality. He just knew. I never listened to him, just sort of tuned him out whenever I could. He was a great friend, the only one who didn't totally blame me for interrupted sleep in the middle of exam week. But I couldn't take it; I couldn't hear his dreams and not think about mine at the same time. And wonder if I were a walking specter of doom.

So I wasn't paying attention when he told me he'd had a real, hard, believable nightmare. The particulars passed through my mind, a simple accident with a large vehicle, too much momentum, but I didn't actually work at trying to decipher it. We'd been planning to go for a walk along the riverbank, had to get through several blocks of poorly designed streets before we'd actually reach the park, though. I didn't put the two together.

Not until it happened, and I woke up alone in a curtained-off section of hospital room.

Now, I lie here and listen to the wind tear through the sky, watch the clouds float by. It's been rather peaceful lately. I haven't even been dreaming--not that I get a whole lot of rest this way, but at least I don't have to face the dreams. I have enough guilt right now without them.

If I saw his dream at night, I don't think I'd live to see morning. He didn't, after all.

But then, he believed it.

And I didn't.

So, I'm alive. Is that my fault?

Maybe if I keep telling myself it isn't, one of these days I'll believe it.