Young Writers Society

Scarlett

It was the reverse of waking from a bad dream. Instead of reality, I woke inside the nightmare.

Hundreds of eyes stared in my direction. Fingers pointed, faces frozen mid-gasp. One man dropped his coffee and continued to clutch the air as if he hadn’t. A woman scooped her child into her arms and fled, throwing panic-stricken glances over her shoulder.

The others just stared.

A surge of terror rose in my chest. I didn’t recognise the village square; the yellow market houses lining the perimeter, the flagstone hardscape. The looming clocktower.

The salty, wet taste in the air.

Why won’t they stop staring?

It felt like one of those nightmares where I was naked in public, without any idea how I got there. I glanced down. White trainers. Denim shorts. Faded pink t-shirt. Exactly what I put on for school.

It all came rushing back. Shane. The bell for homeroom. Lisa! Oh god, I attacked her! And then?

I searched for a clue to my whereabouts and spotted an ancient woman perched stiffly on a bench—the only person not gawking at me. If she had much vision left, it was obscured by her giant sun hat and newspaper—the title stated in bold lettering: THE BREEZEPORT OBSERVER.

That explained the salty air. This was the fishing village Dad grew up in. Before he died, Mum would take a coach here and return with enough fresh seafood to last an entire season. I could picture the warm smile on Dad’s face when she cooked one of the meals he enjoyed as a child. Another surge flared in my chest, but not terror this time.

Grief.

I buried it, forced it back in its cage—if I threw away the key, if I didn’t peer between the bars and acknowledge the vile creature within, then I could pretend it wasn’t there at all.

Breezeport. I needed to focus. I glanced up at the clocktower, ignoring the mass of people captivated by my every move. The giant bronze dial and tarnished hands declared the time was 09:10. But that couldn’t be right . . .

“Excuse me,” I said to the elderly woman. Her wrinkly fingers tightened on the newspaper.

“Can you please tell me what time it is?”

She threw a wizened hand over her shoulder, pointing at the clocktower with her thumb.

“I don’t think it’s right,” I said. It couldn’t be. I was miles away from home. There was no way I could be at the coastline ten minutes after hearing the bell for homeroom.

The woman raised a watch to her glassy eyes. “I can assure you that the time is nine ten. Kids today think they know everything!”

The woman buried her face behind her newspaper. I noticed the date in the masthead: Monday, Jul. 9, 2018.

“One more thing,” I asked, a lump forming in my throat. “That newspaper . . . is it today’s?”

“Well it certainly isn’t tomorrow’s!” she huffed, lowering the paper. “And let me inform you, young lady, that it is rude to pester people when-”

She caught sight of the many people staring in our direction and fell silent. The paper crumpled into her lap.

I couldn’t bear it anymore. I started to turn back, but some guy blocked my path, pointing a camera phone in my face. He was about seventeen, my age. And also like me, should have been in school.

“Do it again!” he said with the enthusiasm of someone who just saw a dog do a backflip.

“Do what?”

“The way you ran, it was . . . it was like magic!”

“Move,” I hissed, attempting to get around him. The great thing about towering over almost everyone is that you can do things like knock someone’s phone out of their hand.

“Hey! Are you going to pay for that?”

I was already gone, jogging to the edge of the village square. People recoiled, as if I was about to turn into Godzilla and kick a building over.

I could feel the rage again, rising, taking hold. That’s how it started; first anger, then emptiness.

No, there’s another stage, I thought. Between the anger and emptiness.

My fingernails dug into my palm, as if the pain would stop the next thought from coming.

You hurt people.

A cobblestone path wound away from the town square. I bounded onto it, liberating myself from prying eyes. Shrubbery lined the walkway, curling over, forming a shady tunnel.

I darted further into its depths, plagued by the agony of my own thoughts.

A/N: Eh. I may have taken liberties with my short, choppy sentences. Also if you notice a disparity between English Vs American terms, this story is set in England, to clarify. However, I'm using made-up places anyway so it doesn't really matter ^_^