From Dawn (published)

Six

Saturday
1:00pm

It was another scorchingly hot day. Dawn hurried to her car and cranked up the air conditioning. It was a twenty minute drive to the closest mall, and she spent the time singing along to the radio. The headache that had been plaguing her was finally easing up enough that it was looking like today was going to be a good day.

The parking lot that circled the mall was packed. It was a too hot to be outside Saturday afternoon, and it looked like half of the population for miles was inside it's air conditioned walls.

Dawn always parked outside the bookstore. It gave her an excuse to browse the titles, even if she couldn't always afford to buy herself one. On her way inside the mall, she took the time to weave up and down a few aisles, trying unsuccessfully to decide which one she wanted to read next. There were so many that looked good. Trailing her hand along a shelf, she inhaled deeply. Dawn loved the smell of the books. Reluctantly, she let her hand drop away from the row of colorful spines.

Making her way further into the store, she passed a mother with two little girls looking at a book with a big pink unicorn on the cover. The mom looked up as Dawn passed, and Dawn gave her a polite little smile, but the mom frowned in her face. Then the woman took a step back, pulling her kids with her, a scowl marring her features.

Dawn let the smile drop from her face. People were so rude, she had no idea why she even bothered to try to be polite.

Shaking off the incident as best as she could, Dawn was feeling annoyed now, she left the store and walked to the meeting place she had texted to Kay earlier.

She ordered two drinks from her favorite place and found a rare vacant table in the busy food court. Sitting down, she checked the time on her phone. Kay should show up any time.

While she sat there, Dawn felt like more than one person was staring at her. A group of teens at the next table over wasn't even bothering to hide their looks. Two middle aged women seated on the other side of her looked away suddenly when she caught them staring. It was all unnerving for a person who usually didn't cause much of a stir when she walked in to a room.

Starting to feel self conscious, she felt her face for any blemish that might have popped up suddenly. She didn't find anything, so she looked at her clothes, hoping that she hadn't dropped food on herself earlier, or something.

When she found no reason for all of the staring, Dawn wished for a mirror. What the heck was everyone looking at? Allowing her long hair to fall forward, she used it to hide behind. She was feeling both very irritable and a bit paranoid, and if Kay didn't show up soon, she was getting out of there. This day was getting too weird for her.

"Hey," the chair across from hers slid out and Kay dropped heavily into it. "Got your wake up text."

Tucking her hair behind one ear, feeling immediately better now that a friendly face had arrived, Dawn smiled a little evily. She had known that her text would wake her friend up. She pushed the second disposable cup across the table, closer to Kay.

"Thanks. You didn't drink from this, did you?" Her friend knew her too well.

"Nope," Dawn lied. She'd tried both flavors before settling on the one currently in front of her. What Kay didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

Kay sipped her drink with a grateful sigh and finally raised her still blurry gaze to look at Dawn. "I'm taking your crap shift and you woke me-hey! What's going on with your eye?"

"Huh?"

"Your eye." Kay leaned closer, "Doesn't that hurt? It looks like it hurts."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She raised a hand instinctively, but didn't know which eye to cover. They felt fine.

"Wait a second," Kay rooted through her purse and pulled out a small mirror. "Look." She thrust the mirror out emphatically.

Taking the mirror, Dawn was hit by a wave of anxiety. For a long second, she didn't want to look at the image. The way everyone around her was acting, she knew it couldn't be good. If she didn't see whatever was wrong herself, then maybe it would just go away.

She knew that thought was crazy.

Dawn looked in the mirror.

Her right eye jumped out, startling her. The part that should have been white was instead a bright red. The pale blue ring surrounding her pupil was almost swallowed up by the color.

"What the..."

It was no wonder people had been staring. Her eye looked like something out of a horror movie.

"You really didn't know that was going on? Didn't you look in a mirror this morning?" Kay looked concerned.

"I did. This wasn't like this when I got up."

She touched the skin around her eye, pressing gently, checking for any soreness. She blinked. Nothing, if it wasn't for the startling color of her eye, she wouldn't know that anything was wrong.

But something was obviously very wrong. Your eye didn't just suddenly bleed for no reason. A sinking feeling hit her hard in the pit of her stomach. She thought she knew what was going on.

Dawn had been very reluctant to open her eyes under water the day before. There was a reason for that. She sighed. It looked like she had caught some sort of weird eye infection from the stagnant water.