I woke up with a mild sense of unease and thought upon what I had just dreamed. Deciding to tell my ever so amazing listener, my teacher, I woke up fully and started getting ready for school. It was a nice day outside. Light shining, sky free of clouds but I couldn't get past this terrible sense of unease. So when I arrived in my classroom thirty or so minutes before school began, I needed to tell somebody of what I had just witnessed in my slumber.
"Good morning," I greeted my teacher and she glanced up at from her desk.
"Morning! How are you?" She chirped in reply and I sat down at my desk heavily.
"Not so good. I had this bizarre nightmare that's creeping me out," I shivered inwardly and she got up and grabbed her coffee cup. It was a rather nice coffee cup, a sturdy ceramic gray color with three flowers in different colors. It reminded me of a flower pot every time I looked at it. The familiarity of the object calmed me enough so that I could start my tale.
"I'm not quite sure how it started out but I remember being trapped in the second floor of a building. It almost seemed like a school from the last few images that I had of it. I was trapped up there for most of the dream and I somehow managed to get killed three different times. I only know how I died the last time though and I wasn't very scared. If anything, I was admiring the gun the killer had pointed at me. It had some really pretty designs set in silver plates on the side of the old fashioned brown gun. I remember being shot three times that time but I somehow became alive again and started running around scared because he had picked up a staple...but when I got to the first floor of the building he didn't seem to want to kill me anymore and instead told me to go help his daughter. So I did but it appears that my future world consists of Latin America, United States of America, and Luxemburg that stole the British flag. I know it's strange. Imagine what I had to do when I woke up this morning to even begin to contemplate where that came from. In any case, myself, the daughter, and some other chick ended up on a bus with this really nice black lady named Clarissa who for some weird reason has underwear in her med-kit. That's basically where the dream ends and I woke up to my neighbor playing piano music," I finished looking at her for some answer to this dream. Then again, I wasn't really expecting to get one. My classmates had all filed in during my recalling speech and they seemed just as confused as I was.
"YOU!" a voice shouted and I jumped. Looking behind me, I saw the very same man who killed me three times before. I tried in vain to see if he was a staff member but he didn't appear to be at all.
"Can I help you?" my teacher asked and he waved her away. He walked straight up to me and pulled me out of my chair.
"To think that I let you out of my sight for just a moment and you wander off into a classroom! Didn't you have enough of that yesterday?" His voice was threatening and his rigged posture wasn't making it much better for me.
"I'm sorry I wondered off but I'm back!" a familiar voice called to the man and I stared at the woman coming in the room. Not only did her voice make me realize who was standing in front of me but her face gave it away. She was me. An older version but me all the same.
We stared at each other for a moment and the man looked from me back to the other me.
"You're so beautiful," she whispered and took my face in her hands. "What I wouldn't give to be you right now. What is it like seeing the future you?"
"Disturbing," I replied bluntly and smiled at her. It really was me. I couldn't think of anyone else who would ask themselves straight off how it felt to see them. What a mental break. She grinned back at me and examined my hands. I in turn examined hers only to find that they were exactly the same.
"Would you like to know the future?" She asked me and I took a deep breath. If I did it was the time to ask.
"Yes," I gave in to my more curious side and she stopped smiling and nodded.
"We, or rather you, will get in a car crash in a few years and by then they'll need someone to practice their new synthetic organs on and they'll use you. The only things you'll get to keep are your brain and reproductive system. You'll be..."
"A machine," I completed and she nodded. "And love?"
"You won't get anywhere. You'll follow this man because of it and then he'll try to kill you more than once," she sighed.
"How...old are you?" I questioned and she grimaced.
"Older than anyone should be. I've seen my brothers and their children and then their children to their graves. I don't want to live much longer. I've tired of living," she said more to herself than to me. Suddenly, she dropped my hands and took the arm of the killer.
"My country is all I have left," she said abruptly and they both disappeared.
The classroom was quiet after they were gone and I slowly sat back down into my chair. I wasn't quite sure what to make of my future self's visit but while I was thinking about it a pair of small hands pulled at my arm that was supporting my chin and it made a thud on the desk. Rubbing the offended skin, I turned to the child who had so forcefully gotten my attention.
"Kyle! I told you not to rush off like that!" A man scolded coming into the room and stopped dead at the sight of me.
"But its Mommy," the child replied and wiggled his way into my lap. My arms automatically folded around him and he snuggled closer.
"Who are you?" I demanded holding the unknown child closer as if he was the one who needed the protection and not I.
"I'm your future husband," he said weakly and slowly sank down into the nearest chair. He looked shocked to see me and I could tell that he wanted to verify that I was real, that I wasn't some figment of his imagination. How could I have abandoned a child and husband? I pondered brushing the hair out of the toddler's face and he smiled at me. I grinned back, a small ray of warmth travelling through my body. He was the most perfect thing in the entire world.
"You wanted to tell yourself that you died a good death and that you did have love, only at the very end," he continued and I turned my attention to him. "You look just like her."
"I should. If she's me and I'm her then I suppose we should look shockingly similar," I replied dryly and a laugh escaped his mouth. I could tell why the future me had fallen in love with him. It was his laugh.
"How did I die?" I asked and his warm smile froze and he put his head in his hands.
"You killed the King. The very man you had followed most of your life. You killed him just as he was about to kill hundreds of people. He had shot you but in your last dying moment you managed to get up your gun and shot him right back. You're a hero," he mumbled but the title meant very little to him at the moment. I had a feeling that it wouldn't until my child was much older and I had long been dead. Reaching forward, I touched his hand gently and smiled at him.
"Have hope. You have a beautiful child to take care of and you need to give him all of your attention and every second of every day to raise him right. He'll go through all the good days and bad days humans do. Just have hope," I told him and his eyes filled with tears and as I sat there with my future husband and future child, I felt a sudden sense of peace.
When they left, he was able to smile again and the child waved back to me. I turned to my astonished classmates and smiled calmly at them.
"How can you be so calm?" one of them asked.
"All I ever wanted was to die a good death and be loved when I go. I don't need much more than that."
