I sat up in my bed, panting, drenched in sweat, struggling to breathe.
I blinked hard, a feeling of relief engulfing me gently as I looked around.
I was in my room. It was all a nightmare.
Slowly, the recollections began to feed into my brain. The teacher, the graveyard, the strange nurse.
I took a deep breath, and it helped.
My aching head appeared to be recuperating too. I took one more look around, the novel which I had been reading earlier before the nightmare had fallen off the bed.
I glanced at the little clock on the bedside table near the lamp. It was a quarter past 3 a.m.
My parents were in the other room, their room. I didn't want to bother them.
I crawled under my blanket, scared of both the dark and my dream. I covered myself completely, forcing myself to go back to sleep but I couldn't.
My eyes closed, but it was a waste; the reflections were still there.
I wished it were already morning, but the day seemed to be breaking slowly.
I clipped my eyelids closed, tightly, cursing under my breath, trying to ignore the flashbacks of the nightmare.
It isn't real, there was nothing in the dark and the shadow I had seen earlier at the hospital, it was... It was all just mind over matter, nothing was after me or my life. I tried to calm myself.
Tom had his own room. I couldn't bother him again, I didn't want to be walking around in the middle of the night after a horrible nightmare.
My hands found a torchlight after an almost futile search.
I turned it on gingerly, a splash of victory and bravery in my heart as it illuminated the room.
I blinked rapidly, looking around. Nothing, just my room with chairs and heaps of clothes on them, then, a wardrobe.
Picking up the novel, I continued from where I had stopped, before I'd been transported by the compelling laws of nature, into a ruthless world with a mad teacher.
"I find her character appallingly rude!" Mrs Aliya spat venomously.
Her face and chin molding into concurring dips and planes.
Tousled locks of curled hair jiggled as she spoke with rigid shoulders.
Amy flinched, the words came suddenly, furiously, she watched as Aliya's jaws tightened, feeling amusement and understanding mingled in her heart.
It had to be about Carolyn again.
The new tenant and neighbor who had moved into the opposite bungalow, barely three weeks ago.
"You mean Carolyn?" another lady wanted to confirm, her lips pursed with amusement, at the rate at which the words flew through the air with tearing velocity.
She was Mrs. Brucewarne, another family friend and a neighbor too, from the apartment building just adjacent to ours. Amy quietly admired how perfectly her recently stretched hair, sculpted her face into something more beautiful.
"Of course, Brucewarne! Carolyn! Whom else is the old bird?" Mrs Aliya was wide-eyed and flabbergasted.
She couldn't be ignorant.
Amy watched as her friend spoke, disgust highlighting hazel colored eyeballs, painted burgundy lips dripping with disbelief and shock as they parted lightly to accompany the batting lashes.
"How could you even ask me that? Who else lives next door, strutting around in those ridiculous fishnet stockings, swearing like she owns the street and acting like she's some kind of goddess?" Mrs. Aliya explained with sheer exasperation.
Brucewarne nodded it had finally clicked.
"What has she done this time?" Amy cut in, her voice carrying the weight of someone who wanted an end to the endless speculation.
She had noticed it all. The way her closest friend's disdain for the new neighbor had sharpened with every passing day.
Amy herself wasn't one for idle chatter, but in this town, Carolyn was the cherry atop every whispered conversation, the icing on the cake of gists.
In just a month, the newcomer had managed to carve her name into every lip, her reputation sealed not only by her striking presence but by how swiftly she had the bachelor mayor dangling from her little finger.
"We had a meeting yesterday at the city hall. We had to discuss a means to raise revenue for a project aimed at improving our community. Amy, Brucewarne, you won't believe what happened!" she snapped quickly. Her voice cut through the room.
"What happened?" Mrs Brucewarne was curious. Amy leaned in.
This new lady and temptress was really walking her way into the minds of people, the Hall of Fame, and control of the mayor's heart.
Everybody hated it, but there was no way to speak about it. For one, she couldn't be told directly, her steaming attitude, the animosity of how it would sound.
"Mrs. Anderson suggested the Bayer's shop, our oldest grocery mall, as a prime location. But I saw it, that sly little exchange of glances between her and the mayor. It was as if she bewitched him with nothing more than a flutter of those cheap false lashes. The man melted into her hands, her puppet on strings! She had him hypnotized, like a little serpent. And in the most ridiculous show of blind devotion, the mayor tossed aside Mrs. Anderson's suggestion and handed that precious slot to Carolyn's new café," she snarled, her voice sharp enough to cut glass.
Amy blinked, startled. She'd braced herself for drama, but not this kind.
Mrs. Brucewarne's arms flew to her hips, her jaw slack with disbelief.
Mrs. Anderson wasn't just another neighbor; she was the backbone of their community, a name carried with reverence.
For the mayor to side with Carolyn felt less like a decision and more like a betrayal.
Unbelievable didn't even cover it, it was scandalous.
"I always knew it! She'd have something up her sleeve with those trappy squints and cleavage of hers and fishnet socks. Now, of all things, picking her nonsensical suggestion over our well-respected Mrs. Anderson's," Mrs. Brucewarne chipped in. Bubbling as she spoke with fattened roundness.
"Ladies! We have groceries and shopping to meet up with. Let's get going already," Amy reminded, whipping her hair into a ponytail.
"Oh, look who's talking! You've kept us waiting, dear," went Mrs Aliya's savage little mouth, punctuated with a smirk.
Amy ignored her, a smile tucking at the edge of her lips. She was menacing yet the most caring of her two friends.
Words as sharp and piercing as a dagger.
Eyes moving to and fro, seeking whom to consume next, yet she had a soft soul, she was as an old cliché, Amy remembered, harmless as a dove.
Clasping a stud to her right ear, Amy cried out.
"Tricia, Tricia!"