NIGHTMARES

She stands like a statue in the storm, watching the man from her nightmares come closer and closer and knows that it's not worth running away anymore: that won't solve anything. When she glanced behind her just now and saw the poor guy take a fall on the piazza steps, she hit the brakes on her bike, dismounted and stood here waiting to hear what he has to say. She needs to hear it.

The rain pounding down on her head has already soaked through the guy's shirt and soft-looking black hair, making them cling to his smooth wet skin, and for a moment she lets her eyes trace the attractive contours of his body and the handsome, angelic features of his young face. There’s blood on his knees and a wet bandage on his arm and he looks vulnerable and hurt and kind of cute, not scary at all. Unfolding her arms, she slips her right hand into the pocket of her dress and grips the switchblade she put there earlier just in case.

Frank stops in his tracks a few paces away from the strange girl and stands there uneasily in the downpour waiting for her to speak. She’s watching him steadily, her gaze giving nothing away, and he feels like she is the one in control here. Either she knows more about what's going on than he does or she's at least dealing with it better and he wonders how long she’s been standing here watching him. A flush of embarrassment colors his cheeks as he realises that she probably saw him crying on the steps just now. Great.

The girl still says nothing and some of the customers in the juice bar next to the alley are staring at them through the window, obviously wondering why they're standing out in the rain without umbrellas. Looking awkwardly down at his feet, Frank clears his throat, rain dripping into his eyes, and when the silence becomes truly unbearable it's the girl who finally breaks it.
“So who are you?”
Her voice is calm but Frank can hear a tremor of anxiety running just below its surface. A cold breeze blows across the piazza and chills his wet skin, making him shiver and start coughing. The burns on his arm are stinging like crazy and his eyes are blurry with salt-water. Swallowing nervously, he takes another step towards the young woman and this time she flinches away and her hand tightens on something in her pocket. For one horrible second he thinks she’s going to pull a gun on him and he stops in his tracks, his heart pounding, and puts his hands up. “Frank,” he blurts, his voice drowning in the rain, “My name's Frank and I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I might hurt you,” the girl retorts, her eyes flashing, and he knows she means it. An icy shudder runs through him as the memory of those eyes dying bloody and mutilated comes flooding back: her murdered body falling to the blood-soaked ground where he is chained up and helpless, choking on the warm red river of her death…

“Hey, are you okay?”
Frank blinks and drops his hands to his sides. The girl is still watching him but her wary expression has melted into concern. “I’m fine,” he croaks, shivering badly as the stench of blood fills his nose and mouth. Oh god, she’s already seen him cry today, he doesn't want to throw up in front of her too!
“Are you sure?” the girl asks, “You look weird.”
Frank nods and swallows hard, waiting for the nausea to pass, “I’ve had better days.”
His cell phone suddenly rings, making him jump and the girl smirks. Frank blushes and grabs the phone from his wet pocket, answering the call without checking the ID. “Hello?”
‘Frank, where the fuck are you?’
It’s Gerard and he sounds pissed off.
“Hi Gee, I’m... uptown I think? Sorry.”
‘You can’t keep disappearing on us, man. Are you outside? It sounds like you're outside. It's raining cats and dogs!’
“Look, Gerard, I’m gonna have to call you back.”
‘What? No, wait!’
Frank hangs up and turns back to the girl. “Sorry.”
She sighs and looks up at the stormy sky as if she’s only just noticed it’s raining. “My name’s Lorna,” she admits quietly, “Let’s find somewhere dry to sit down, Frank. We need to talk.”

***
There's a small diner on a quiet street two blocks away, a 1950s themed place decked out in pink and pastel-green with a silver serving counter, mini jukeboxes on the tables, and staff dressed up like extras from ‘Grease’. The rain is apparently bad for business here because the only other customers in the joint are an elderly couple sipping vanilla milkshakes by the ice cream machine. Frank feels awkward and out of place here but Lorna seems entirely at ease, exchanging smiles with a plump lady behind the counter and leading Frank over to a small table in the back.
“So,” she begins, placing her hands palm down on the plastic table-top, “You recognize me don’t you. At the accident I could tell by the look on your face that seeing me freaked you out.”
Frank nods slowly, scratching the sopping wet bandage on his arm, and Lorna thinks about this for a moment, tucking strands of damp blond hair behind her ears. “Well, I recognized you too, Frank, and not just from MTV.”

At his surprised look she smiles , “Yeah, I get it now. You’re in one of those metal bands right? My Chemical Fall or whatever.”
“Romance,” Frank corrects, “But we’re not really metal...”
“My mistake,” Lorna shrugs, “Anyway, what I'm about to say might sound crazy to you but it’s been a pretty crazy day so far so I'm just going to say it. I know your face because I’ve been dreaming about you, most nights for over a week now. I’ve watched you die, Frank, in a series of nightmares about the exact same car accident we saw happen for real today.”
Misery and fear darken Lorna's brown eyes and Frank notices now how tired she looks under her make-up which is smudged and faded from the rain.
“My dreams are always very real to me,” she continues softly, “And I usually know when they’re going to come true. As soon as that stupid blue truck drove into my life, I knew I had to follow it and try to stop the accident but everything happened exactly how I dreamt it would. Except…”
“Except I'm not the one who died,” Frank finishes, “That other random guy did.”
Lorna nods sadly, “Yeah. Details. I’ve been having these horrible dreams…well, I think premonitions is a better word for them, for about a year now. Not every night, or even every month, but they always come back eventually and show me a new disaster and whatever happens in these premonitions happens in real life, Frank, every time I swear. Storms, house-fires, my dog getting hit by a truck, my best friend’s cousin dying in a drive-by shooting! It keeps happening and I would have stopped it all if I could but the dreams are too confusing and unspecific, the settings and the victims are random, blurry... there’s no proper warning. Honestly it all seems so fucking useless!” Blinking back tears, Lorna bites her lip and stares angrily at the table, her fingers curling into fists. Frank stares at her in shock as her words sink in, still shivering as water drips from his wet clothes.

A middle-aged waitress in a poodle skirt suddenly appears by their table with a notepad and pen and beams them a wide white smile. “Are you kids ready to order?” she asks and Lorna looks up and pastes on a fake smile of her own. “Black coffee please, and a plate of curly fries.”
“Okie dokie,” the woman chirps, scribbling on her pad, “And for you, hon?” she asks, turning to Frank.
“Oh, um, the same. Thank you.”
“Be ready in five.”
The woman sashays away and Lorna’s face falls, the look of angry despair returning as if it had never left. Frank guesses that it probably never does. She just hides it well.

When the food and drinks arrive and they are left alone again, Frank tries to explain his own nightmares to Lorna, including the gruesome role that she always plays, and she doesn’t react like he thought she would. He assumed she’d be frightened or something, seeing as how his other nightmares have already come true, but inside she just looks thoughtful.

“I wonder if it’s actually going to be me who gets stabbed though,” she says, munching thoughtfully on her fries. “After all, I dreamt about you dying over and over again in that car crash and now it turns out it was never going to be you.”
“So you're saying that some other poor girl is going be cut up and killed and I have no way of knowing who it's going to be?” Frank groans, “Fucking perfect. I guess that’s why in the nightmares I always know that I can’t save her, even though she’s begging me to help.”
“Woah wait a second,” Lorna snaps, dropping a curly fry mid-bite, “The girl with my face actually spoke to you in your dreams?”
“Yeah, she...s-screams my name,” Frank stammers, fighting to keep the awful sound of those blood-choked screams from his mind, “And I want to help her more than anything, but I’m chained down or tied up and I can’t move. There’s so much blood and it’s all over me, in my eyes and my mouth...”
Suddenly his food doesn’t seem appetizing anymore and he pushes the plate away. The diner is warm enough for his clothes to already be drying out but he's still shivering and feels unbearably tired. Lorna seems nice but he would rather be anywhere else right now. He doesn't want his dreams to be real but here he is talking to someone who suffers from the exact same horrible thing. Why is any of it even happening though? And why him and this girl? They have nothing in common and aren't even from the same coast. Who or what the hell has decided to give them sneak previews of future tragedies? God? Satan? Aliens?! Fuck this.

His cell phone rings again and he answers it numbly on auto-pilot. “Hello?”
‘Frankie, please don’t hang up,’ Brian's voice says quickly. Why would he hang up? Oh that‘s right, he cut off Gerard. Oops.
“Okay.”
‘Thanks. Listen buddy, I need you to come back to the hotel now if you can,’ Brian continues, sounding like a worried parent, ‘It’s important.’
“Okay,” Frank says again, too exhausted and confused by the day’s events to say anything else.
‘Great, cool,’ Brian sounds relieved. ‘I’ll be waiting in the lobby. Bye.’
“Bye.”
With very little feeling, Frank hangs up and sighs. Across from him, Lorna is picking quietly at her food. “You have to go now,” she says.
“I guess so,” he mutters, rubbing his weary eyes which feel like they're full of sand. There's a powerful headache brewing in his skull and his skin feels tight and feverish.
“I think it’s odd that the woman with my face said your name,” Lorna says, “It could mean that you do know her in real life. Maybe it’s someone you love who’s in danger.”
“Or maybe it really is you,” Frank replies glumly.
Lorna frowns at his bluntness. “Maybe. But dreams are abstract right? You have invisible knives in yours; I have nameless streets in mine. Perhaps we’re picking up on each other’s dreams somehow and our subconscious is getting confused and pasting our faces onto the bodies of the real victims.”
“Who knows,” Frank sighs in annoyance, standing up to leave, “I mean, neither of us actually knows what the hell is happening to us. We can sit here and talk and guess but we don't actually fucking know anything! Maybe we're just going crazy!”
He’s shouting now but he doesn’t care, all he wants to do is get out of this place and back to his normal life. He’s had enough of running away from his friends, and more than enough of talking about death and blood and stupid useless prophecies or premonitions or whatever. He’s too tired and it’s all too much.

Unconcerned by his outburst, Lorna rises from her chair and takes his hand firmly in hers. He stares at her in surprise for a moment until he realises that she’s also holding a pen. “This is my number,” she says, scribbling her full name and digits on his skin, “Please call me if something else happens, Frank, or if you figure out who’s really going to die. Maybe we can help each other.”
She looks into his eyes for a moment, her expression cautiously hopeful, and adds, “Maybe we can save a life.”
Frank shivers again and pulls his hand away, Lorna’s fingers are like ice on his skin. “Yeah. I’ll call you.”
“Thanks. It was nice to meet you.” Her fake smile is back and Frank tries to match it with one of his own without really succeeding. “Yeah, this was really fun. We should do it again sometime.” She chuckles humorlessly at his lame joke and glances out at the rain, “The storm’s getting worse. Be careful out there.”
Frank nods distractedly and drops some money on the table to pay for the food he hasn’t touched. “Good luck,” he mutters as he walks away. Lorna's brown eyes are heavy with sorrow as she watches him leave. “You too.”

Notes

(Hello beautiful people! Next chapter will be up in a couple of days. Frank and Gerard need to have a showdown I think yes? Please comment if you are actually still reading this drabble and i will love you forever! xx)