• Sweat dripped from her brow as she woke from her demonic dreams, coloured by images of faces she might have once known in a forgotten memory. Three nights, she thought, this dream continues. She rubbed her bleary eyes free of sleep, and squinted at the bright blue numbers that proclaimed proudly that it was far too early for logical beings to be awake. She swathed her heated face in her white comforter, leaving a thin sheen that quickly evaporated, cooling her face from frenzied redness.

    For a while, she sat, calming her breath and raging heartbeat. When a loud beeping interrupted the sanctuary of blank thought, she patted at her nightstand for her glasses. Twice, they slipped from her fingers, landing with a dull thud onto her bed. Ridiculous, she grimaced; a dream is merely a dream, a figment of one’s imagination. Nothing more, nothing less.

    Then why did her lungs burn with the need for air? Eyes swivel and her blood rush? What was the reason for the tremble of her fingers as disjointed pieces of unconscious thought wrap wiry tendrils about her limbs and squeeze?

    Nothing more, nothing less. That is what she told herself.

    Methodically, automatically, she pulled on the attire for the special sector of the police force, the secretive league of well trained, ruthless hunters of criminals. Every once in a while, she would chuckle sarcastically at the newspapers; missing? As if. The face that graced the front page of the grey sheet would be one she knew, the head attached to the body she burned in the incinerator.

    A smirk twisted at her lips as she tightened the tie about her neck, perhaps the dead has decided to play a cruel trick on the living, pulling her under and away into a personal hell. After thinking for a moment, she laughed, the AUD police force never gave anything to her, an yet she continues to abide by duty, though it took and took. It had taken her family, friends, existence, now it was leeching on even the sanctity of her mind.

    Still absently, she strode into the kitchen, but turned towards the front door when she found that the thought of food sent her stomach into cartwheels. She pulled a nondescript grey trench from the closet and tied the laces of polished shoes. Fifteen minutes of driving brought her deep violet car to the entrance to an underground parking lot, where work awaited four floors further underground.

    She was glad for the lazy monotony of sorting through profiles and tracking reports, finding the task deliberately mind numbing.

    Brown eyes glazed over after several hours of clicking through pictures and REfile documents, and a long day ended with a trip to a small bar where she hoped to drink her nightmares away.

    Sluggishly, she dragged herself back into her house, the trees casting eerie shadows she has been long immune to. She fumbled in her pocket, feeling for the rounded shape of the front door's key, and turning it in the lock with a firm flick. Expecting a headache, she quickly brewed a cup of coffee and silently nursed the porcelain mug until her eyes drooped, and darkness overrode her consciousness.

    Twenty-eight faces grinned at her from a sea of red, undulating streaks of soul sucking black streamed about the haze.

    Twenty-eight.

    Memories flashed though her frazzled mind, and she heard vague registers of agonized laughter.

    Twenty eight voices; twenty-eight pictures; twenty-eight files; twenty-eight shots; twenty-eight fires.

    Twenty-eight bottles of ash.

    The laugher rocketed toward shrieking heights, singing slowly, mockingly.

    You remember us, you should, you should! Hell is not a place, but a state of mind!

    Deaths, many, many deaths, and yet they all seemed to matter so little, importance tucked away with the bottles of grey dust, labeled only with a name and nine numbers. But there was one visage away from the rest, young, alive, stained not yet with the touch of death. For he, she could not recall even a number. Green eyes, brown hair, tall, slender, and thin lips pulled into a frown.

    But her concentration was broken when a now familiar tightness coiled around her lungs, and she drowned slowly within her own mind as wisps turned to mist and mist turned to fog and fog turned to rain and rain turned to seas. Black cackles bubbled around her, and grasping fingers wound around her ankle. She’s drowned, burned, buried and ripped, bled and choked, withered and pierced.

    She didn't know when she started screaming, or when she stopped to begin laughter that tore apart her throat. She didn't know if this happened every night, or if this time it was special. All she knew was that it hurt, and that nothing can save her from it.

    Once again, her blurry ceiling was a welcomed sight. At the corner of her eye, she saw a intermittent blue light from vaguely the direction of her laptop.

    Merrily, her computer blinked with illegal joy for its message. With a click of a mouse, she opened up the e-mail, and once heated blood froze in her veins, her fingers hovered awkwardly above the keyboard.

    Green eyes, brown hair, tall, slender, and thin lips pulled into a frown.

    Twenty-nine.