I was always...different.
Some of my earliest memories are of my maman comforting me from yet another nightmare. I remember always asking her why I had so many of the dreams in which I'd die in various, grotesque ways. The mes in my dreams didn't always look like me; sometimes they were girls, sometimes boys, sometimes neither, or both; sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes taller, or shorter; some had different hair, or eyes, or lacked the freckles that my maman said make me unique...but they were always still distinctly me. Some died in car wrecks, some drowned, some starved to death, some were killed by thieves, and some died in wars. Some bled out slowly in an alleyway as the heavens mourned their loss, while yet others went quickly in their sleep.
My maman has always insisted I had the nightmares because I am special. Yeah, right, I always thought. I'm just me. I'm not especially tall, or handsome, or smart, or strong. I've never had any real friends, either. In fact, I was never exactly well received by my peers.
I remember, when I began school, some of the other children with older siblings telling stories that only made me have more nightmares. It was then that I began to have a hint of just how 'special' I am. Or, was?
I learned that those nightmares of mine? Everyone has them. Our reality, or dimension, or world, or whatever you want to call it, is a bridge between all other realities. It's not uncommon knowledge; there's a day once a year when we can see other versions of ourselves for six hours starting at sunset. I like the versions of myself where I'm taller, and have longer hair, although I'd never wear my own hair long. They walk around through our world like ghosts, interacting with ghost objects only present in their own worlds. It's useless to try to talk to them. Well, most of them anyway. They can't see or hear us, other than the rare few.
...I'm...rambling. The nightmares, those are visions of our other selves dying. They say whenever you narrowly avoid death in this world, one of your doppelgängers die. Then, you dream about it. They say it's a gift from God to our world to make us appreciate our lives more...but it's only really ever made me hate mine. If there is a God, I bet it was an experiment, not a gift.
I was 'cool,' in elementary school. The girls liked my copper red hair and freckles, and the boys thought I was 'edgy' because of how many nightmares I had. They thought it was cool, and I wore the bags under my eyes as medals of honor. Each sleepless night a testament to how difficult it was for me to die.
In middle school, no one cared. Everyone was into something different, and I faded into obscurity.
After my first year of high school, my maman and I moved far away. Far enough that everyone doted on my accent, and I had to speak English instead of French. I didn't question why we had to move. My life had grown boring - monotonous. I began to have nightmares more frequently after I turned sixteen, and, as it was 'cool' again to have them, I ran my mouth. At first, I was 'cool,' and I had a lot of 'friends.' Then people stopped believing me. "There's no way!" "Not every night!" "How important do you think you are?" "There's no reason for you to come so close to death all the time!" "No one's going to try that hard to kill a loser ginger like you!" So I stopped talking about it, and I lost my friends. My maman worried, but I kept my grades up, so she never worried too much.
When I was seventeen, on the Night of Viewing, I wandered outside to walk through the streets and pretend I was a ghost like the other versions of me. I noticed how few of me were left. I wasn't as surprised as I should have been, I think. That night, I saw some kind of creature. Thinking back, maybe I should have told someone. Maybe someone could have done something, maybe I could have done something differently, spent more time with my maman.
