My father put me in therapy when he started to worry about my mental health.  I tried to refuse the visits from my psychologist, but my father insisted.  He told me that if I wanted to be a positive influence in the world of politics, that I would need to keep my health at its peak.  At  sixteen years old, I did not really know what I wanted, except that I wanted to please my father.  So, I let the psychiatrist enter my bedroom that first day and countless days after.
The woman who sat at my desk stared me down and asked, “Scarlett, are you sure you can’t tell me anything about this dream you had?”
“I’ve already told you five times,” I repeated, “I can’t remember what happened in it.  I forgot what happened as soon as I woke up.  Why do you keep interrogating me about my dreams?”
“Your father is worried about you.  He is worried that these dreams will affect your career later on.”
“Is that what he thinks?  Well, why don’t you tell me what you think, Miss Fredrick?”
“Me?  Well, Scarlett, I think there is something that you are not telling me.  It’ll be so much better for your health if you just tell me what it is that has you so tense.”
“Well, I think that I’m already an hour late for school and I need to get back to class.  Now, if you’ll excuse me while I finish getting ready.”
My psychologist left my room with a pursed expression on her face as I stuffed the rest of my books into my backpack.  She knew I lied about not remembering what I dreamed about, but I could not tell anyone about it.  Especially not anyone in my family, like my father, who sent for the psychologist every time I told him I had a dream.  Eventually, I stopped telling him about them, but my dad could not be persuaded against the continuation of my psychologist visits.  After a few minutes, I closed my bedroom door behind me and made my way to school.
As I walked into school, my footsteps echoed down the hall.  My own heart pounded against the silence of the school hallways.  I did not find anyone in the main office, nor in the classrooms.  I tried to reason that there might be an assembly and everyone gathered in the opposite side of the school, but it did not seem logical.  My breathing increased as I crept slowly down the hallways looking for anyone who knew what was going on.  There had to be someone in the building that could tell me what was going on.
I came to an intersection in the hallway, trying to focus my hearing  to each turn individually.  I did not hear a thing.  I decided to take the right hallway, walking towards the gymnasium.  That was where everyone was, right?  I could not help but feel that something wrong happened.  The hallways never sounded so quiet.  I felt as though I could suffocate under the loud silence of the school’s hallways. 
I zipped around when I heard the banging crash behind me.   Taking a deep breath, I crept towards the sound.  I wanted to search for the source of the disruption. I did not know if it was another student, or someone else making the racket.  As I inched towards the source of the noise a rattling noise filled my ears.  My curiosity won as I called out, “Hello?”
The clamor of several glass vases crashing to the floor responded to my question.  While I became curious as to what made the clamor, part of me reasoned that I did not want to know. I turned back around and started running.  I did not worry about my footsteps as they pounded against the floor of the school.  My heart raced and my body went into survival mode.  I did not know what I ran away from, but I knew it could be anything but good.  I was not sure where I planned to run to, but I was positive I had to run until I no longer faced an immediate danger.
The sound of cymbals crashing against each other accompanied by the sound of objects being thrown against metal lockers rang through the halls again, but this time it sounded closer.  I knew that whatever pursued me started to gain an advantage on me.  I tried to pick up the pace, my breathing ragged and a stabbing pain shot through my side.  I took another turn, trying to lose whatever chased me down.  I did not know what they wanted from me, but the fact that they seemed to be running towards me terrified me.  Blood pumped through my veins as I maneuvered through the halls.
Repeated bangs echoed through the hallways.  Each time it felt like they were growing closer to me.  I needed to outsmart whatever chased me, or I would not come out of this school again, at least not alive.  I started to run out of breath.  I could not keep the pace up forever.  I had not trained for this kind of exercise.  We had not trained for endurance as much as we did combat.  We needed self defense, just in case something did break in through the city walls.
I found a classroom and hid in the indentation of the door to catch my breath.  My ragged breaths filled the hallway and I could barely hear anything around me.  After several moments I heard another crash that sounded so close that I knew I took too long of a break.  I stepped out of the crevice of the cracked open door and watched my predator turn around the corner all the way at the very end of the hallway.  I froze for a moment.  A creature from outside the capitol had broken into the city and come to the school. 
The existence of mythical creatures in uninhabited areas was common knowledge to anyone who had lived in the country for the past few years.  The had been discovered about five years and had managed to keep it quiet from those outside the country.  Scientists researched them for hours, but knew that tourists flocking through the country to catch a glimpse of them would upset them.  By some miracle, officials were able to keep us away from these creatures and keep the creatures outside of even the most rural cities.
After I regained my wits, I continued running away from my pursuer. The break nothing but cause my muscles to grow more weary.  I tried to outsmart it by taking multiple turns in an attempt to throw them off.  I rounded another corner and my heart sped up considerably as I ran into something.  I backed up a few steps, prepared to fight for my life, but then I saw that it was only one of my best friends, Jackson.  He seemed anxious as well, his almost black hair disheveled.  I could not believe that he found me.  I grew both relieved and scared for him.  We had to get out of there as fast as we could.  I did not what my predator could do to us.know
I could tell by the expression of remorse on Jackson’s face that something bad happened.  All my fears of the dream flooded back to me as I say, “What is it, Jackson?”
“Scarlett, I—you should probably come with me,” he told me and started to drag me in the direction he came from.
“Okay, but we have to run.  There’s something chasing me and it does not sound good,” something clanged, not too far away.  I looked back and pointed to the monster, “See?  Run!”
Jackson and I ran for our lives.  I recognized almost immediately that we headed towards the gym.  The reason I had not been able to hear anything when I walked into school was because they were all down here checking out whatever had Jackson so afraid.  I panicked earlier, so I did not hear Jackson coming for me.  I needed to be stronger than that.  The brief period that I stopped running did not help with the stitch that continued to grow in my side as we made it closer to the school’s gymnasium.  Entering the gym, I took the first thing I saw, a broomstick, and used it to barricade the doors of the gym.  I hoped that the monster would not be able to get through now.
I slowed down to a jog and then eventually to a walk as we approached a crowd of students who surrounded the principal.  The principal bent over something, though he tried to block the view of the students.  I could hear the sobs of several students as I crept towards the crowd, trying to see what hid underneath the principal of the school.  I could not see a thing, though, because the crowd blocked my path.
I leaned over to Jackson, “I don’t care how, but you need to get me to the front of this crowd.  I need to know.”
He looked at me strangely, “I’ll be able to do it, but what is it you need to know, Scarlett?”
“That’s not important.  Just do what I said already.”
Not a minute later, a path cleared for me to walk through.  Jackson led me to the front of the crowd.  The closer I got, fearful I became.  A sinking sensation entered my stomach.  I dreaded that one of my dreams would come true.  I did not know which one though.  There were too many to sift through in my mind to recognize which one this was.
At first when I got to the front, I looked everywhere except for the floor beneath the principal.  I saw Ava’s gaping stare, her watering eyes shifted towards me, unbelieving what happened.  My best friend in the world never cried.  Then, I felt Jackson’s reassuring grip on my shoulder.  Slowly I looked down at the body that laid on the ground.  I froze as I recognized the body from a dream.  Rather than being from my latest dream, I recognized Carter from the first dream I had.  A fifty pound weight crushed my insides as I recalled the dreams I had in the past two months.  I met Ava’s eyes, and I pushed my way out of the wailing crowd.  Jackson followed me.  I almost heard him as he called my name, but my mind reeled, attempting to process this new information.
I pulled my blonde hair back into a ponytail.  It stuck to my neck from the run I had.  I had a bad feeling about everything that happened that day.  I knew from experience that things would only grow worse as time passed by.  I needed to find out what chased me through the halls and what killed the student.  I could not be for sure, but it could have been the same thing.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on, Scarlett?  We heard a scream and everyone ran to the gym from their classrooms,”  I heard my best friend ask me, “And why are you all sweaty?”
“Ah, that’s kind of a long story, Ava.  I was chased across the entire school by some monster, who knows what it was,” I shuddered as I relived the event in my mind, “I think it was one of the creatures from outside the city.”
Ava questioned me, “But what about Carter’s body?  What happened to him.What does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know, Ava.  I kind of froze up when I saw him dead.  Maybe they’re related somehow.  It scares me.  Whatever that thing is, we cannot have it running around the city.”
“Well, should we tell someone about it?”
“It’s worth a shot, but they might not believe us.  After all, I’m the only one who saw it, and my father makes sure to keep the principal updated about my psychological state.”
I walked over to one of the uncomfortable desks and sat on top of it, my feet rested on the seat.  I could not make any sense of most of the event.  I asked myself why someone would want to kill a student.  What did this had to do with the dreams I continued to have?  They had to be somehow related, but I knew I would not be able to protect every one of the victims, if a pattern did develop.
I sighed, “Which means, I have to figure out some way to stop all of this.  Before more of my dreams come true.”
Jackson gasped, “Wait, you had a dream like this?  And it came true?”
“About Carter’s death, yeah.  But his murder isn’t the only one I’ve dreamt about.”
“How many dreams have you had exactly?”
“So far, ten other dreams.  I’ve only been able to identify the first and the most recent body’s.  I wish I knew the others so that I could protect them.”
“Who is the most recent one?  While we figure this out, we can protect them,” demanded Ava as she stared me down.
“It’s not going to come to that.  I’m not going to let whatever this is get that far, no matter what.  No one else is going to die.”
Ava and Jackson took seats at two desks of their own.  We were not worried about getting in trouble for sitting on the desks.  I did not worry about a teacher catching us in the classroom.  Everyone preoccupied themselves with the murder of Carter.  I hadn’t known Carter very well at all.  I barely knew his name.  A few tears escaped my eyelids as I concluded that it was not a coincidence that he appeared in one of my dreams.
The dreams had started about two months ago and at first I thought nothing weird was going on.  I had reasoned that my mind had something wrong with it.  Something in my brain made me dream about all these deaths at least once a week.  I agreed with my father that there was something wrong with my psyche.  Despite that, I tried to refuse help from the psychiatrist he hired for me.  I thought I could fight it.
Then the dreams started to grow more vivid.  I began to think that there could be no way that I dreamt about all these deaths simply because my brain was wired different..  How could I when they all seemed so real?  I neglected to mention this to my psychologist, though.  I did not want to give her more reason to diagnose me as insane.  I told no one about how vivid the dreams became, not even my closest friends.  They did not need to know what did not hurt them, but what if they were one of the unrecognizable faces in the dreams?
Jackson asked us, “So, what are we going to do now?  Are we going to go after whatever mythical creature it is?”
“I’m not sure,”  I shook my head, “I don’t think it wants to be found out.  We might have to draw it out somehow first, or be there when the next attack happens.   I have no idea where the creature could have gone.”
Ava piped into the conversation, “I suppose you’re right.  It would be stupid for us to act now for nothing to happen.  For all we know the creature could leave now.”
“Be on the lookout for any signs though.  I don’t want anyone else we care about to die when I could have stopped it the entire time.”
Ava told me, “I’m sure nothing else will happen, Scarlett.  You’re just afraid of these dreams.  I’m sure they mean nothing.”
“I sure hope so.”
I prepared to transition the conversation to a lighter topic, but the PA system came on and I turned towards the speakers to listen to the announcement.  Our principal instructed all students and staff to head to the gymnasium for an assembly.  I figured there had been an assembly planned for today and I was not wrong.  I turned to look at our friends and saw the understanding in their faces.  We would only bring up this conversation if we absolutely needed to.  No one needed to know it happened.
Together, we walked the short distance to the gymnasium.  I listened to the emergency sirens as they drove away.  After searching the already full gym, Ava jogged over to the rest of our class and Jackson and I followed her.  Liam, Carter’s brother sat next to us as the assembly began.  I saw signs of dried tears on his face, but did not say anything.  The assembly started with the national anthem and then proceeded into the memorial service for Carter.  The principal stood at the podium and talked for an hour before various teachers walked up and gave a few words about Carter.
Eventually, the assembly came to an end.  The principal stood back up at the podium.  He stood there, motionless, before he looked up at the students.  He spoke, “At this time, all students are to contact their parents to take them home.  No one is to leave the school without a parent unless they are a legal adult.  Police orders.”
Ava, Jackson, and I rose from our seats on the floor and followed the slow procession out of the gymnasium.  It took several minutes for our parents to get there.  I did not talk to my dad’s chauffeur when I got into the car and he drove me home. After several attempts at conversation, he seemed to realize that I was not in the mood to talk.  I felt like no one was doing anything about Carter’s death.
I decided it would be best to be ready for the creature in case it came back.  Several days of training at school passed by.  My friends and I prepared for another attack.  We paid extra attention in our classes and even snuck into classrooms after school.  Training in combat and enhancing our abilities more than anyone in the school, we readied ourselves for anything that could happen to the school.
Within the months that followed, I looked for signs that the creature had returned to school.  Every time I hurt a bang or even a rustle I assumed the creature had come back for round two.  Ava and Jackson had no such luck either.  Soon enough, we stopped looking for the creature.  We assumed it had moved on from the school and decided to drop the matter.  Even when we walked through the halls together one day and heard the same crash that had started the chase through the school and all three of our heartbeats spiked, sending jolts of fear through our bones.  After some investigation, we rationalized that the sound had come from the music students in the band room.
A couple months later, I had not heard from the creature, except for that one sound that my friends and I witnessed.  Nobody at the school died after Carter.  I even told my psychologist about the creature.  I figured her career was so boring with the lack of dreams I had since Carter died.  I decided I should give her something else to diagnose me with.  When she told me I had some sort of disorder, I told her, “Who are you to say I’m crazy?  I would know if I was crazy.  If you’re going to treat me that way, then I’m not cooperating.”
My psychologist sighed and left my bedroom, no doubt about to update my father on my regression.  She thought I was getting better, but then I threw her that curveball.  I refused to mention anything else of my experiences at school the day Carter died.  She did not know about the creature that chased me through the halls.  As far as Miss Frederick knew, I had a dream about Carter’s death and it came true that day.  She did not believe my dreams were related to the attack.  My psychologist was foolish.