I open my eyes.

Why has the ceiling got so much mould on it?  I feel groggy, I can’t even remember how I got to bed.  The party last night got a bit wild.  My head hurts.  I swear I’m never drinking again.  

Although I suppose I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep.

My neck is stiff, very stiff.  My pillow feels seriously flat and uncomfortable.  I sigh out loud, this is gonna be a rough morning.  Raising myself from bed, jolts of pain stab the inside of head.  I feel sick.

When the blurriness from my vision subsides something strikes me as odd.  Why is my bedding different.  My duvet is a beige colour with an ugly stain on it. It's supposed to be white.  Looking around I take in my surroundings.  But they are not my surroundings, not my room.

Did I sleep over at a friends place?  No wait, last night at the party I had a fight with my girlfriend and she went home.  She is annoying, she can be a real bitch sometimes.  I was pissed and stayed at the party.  I remember chatting to some other girl that one of my friends introduced me to after that, we were getting along well.  I think they were trying to hook me up.

Oh god, is this that girls place?  Did I cheat on my girlfriend?  No. No. I don’t think I would have done something like that no matter if I was drunk or not.  

Wait a second.  Where are my clothes?  Why am I naked?  Oh shit.  Shit, this is not good.  Actually now that I look at it, the bed I am in, it’s a single bed.  That should hopefully rule out any chance of me having screwed another girl.

I quickly scan my surroundings, but I don’t recognise anything that belongs to me, not my clothes, wallet, phone or anything of the kind.  The room is also strange, it's got an ‘old person’ feel to it.  It also looks really old and run down.

There is a bedside stand next me There are some clothes on it and some kind of pouch with a drawstring.  Wait clothes?  These clothes are a bit strange.  A brown pants that looks to be made out of some kind of cheap material, really shabby.  And a white shirt?  It has a drawstring going down, criss-crossing from the collar to the chest area.  It doesn't look like it's a fashion statement either, it looks like it's actually used to tighten the shirt up a bit.  There also appears to be a pair of sandals on the ground.

Well, strange or not, I don’t have a whole lot of options here.  I quickly put the clothes on, without any underwear I might add, and fasten the shirt.

The pouch on the dresser once again catches my attention.  I open it up and find 10 strange copper looking coins inside.  What the hell kind of money is this?  For some reason something tells me I should hang on to it.  Back then I think this was some kind of animal survival instinct kicking in.

I put the coin pouch in my pocket, but then I realise there is something already in there.  What is this?  A card of some kind, I can’t quite tell what it’s made out of.  The name at the top of the card catches my attention, “Aluarc”.  Wait, what?!

Below the name there are various other numbers and things listed.  No, no, no, no.  Something is very, very wrong here.  Ah shit.  It just dawned on me.  This is obviously a dream.  I let out a deep sigh, I had no idea that I had such an imagination.

Alright, screw it.  It’s not often you realise you are in a dream, let's make the most of it.  

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With this thought I put the card back in my pants pocket and head for the door of the bedroom.  It opens up into a passageway.  Just like inside the room, the floor, walls and ceiling are all made of wood.  There is a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway, my room is on the opposite end.  There is a name tag on the wall next to my room's door, with the name Aluarc on it.  Attention to detail, nice.

I start walking towards the stairway, checking out the closed doors on my left as I pass them.  I guess these are also bedrooms, is this some kind of guest house?  Just before I turn to take the stairs, a name tag on the door opposite the stairway catches my attention.

'Misty.'  Wait, what? There’s no way that's a coincidence.  

I knock on the door.  No response.  “Jessica,” I call out. Nothing.  Curiosity drives me forward, I turn the doorknob and push the door open slowly.  I am stepping inside the room before I even realise it.  Wait what I am doing?  Curiosity or coincidence, I shouldn’t just enter someone's room like this, I mean what if I have it wrong.

That thought pauses me in my tracks with only one foot over the threshold.

At the exact same time I come to a stop, something flashes in front of my eyes. Silver?  There is a pain.  My cheek is hot.  Before I even have time to process what is happening, I see a spray of blonde hair following the silver flash, passing across my field of vision.  

A girl?  She seems to have lost her balance?  Why is she looking at me like that?

In the next moment she seems to find her footing and the silver object in her hand changes course.  It's coming for me.  I somehow recognise it on an instinctual level,  It’s some kind of knife.

I don’t know when it happened exactly, but my body must of moved on its own.  Before I knew it I had lunged at her, deflected her hand, swept her off of her feet and pinned her to the ground.  The knife left her hand and went skating across the floor, as she hit the ground with a loud thud.  

Damn, I don’t know how I moved so quickly and calmly,  But I clearly forced her down too hard.

She was breathing raggedly, staring daggers into me.  And then tears started strolling down her cheeks.  Wait, what?  Oh shit.  I was on top of her, straddling her, while pinning both her hands to the floor.  No matter how you look at this, it looks bad.  Anyone passing by would think I’m assaulting her.

I quickly scramble up and take a few steps back.  “Sorry.  I didn’t come here to hurt you.  I just thought you were someone else.”

She slowly gets up and backs up against the foot of the bed, not taking her eyes off me.  “Where am I?  What do you want with me?”

“Where are you?  Honestly I don’t really know.  I don’t know where I am even.”

“You didn’t abduct me?”

“Huh, no!”

“Then how do you know my name?”

“Wait so your name is Jessica?”

“How do you know my name?!  Who are you?”

“Ah sorry, my name is Michael.  I only entered this room, because my girlfriends name is also Jessica.”

The blonde haired girl gave me a blank stare, and then without warning, she jumped up backwards  over the corner of the bed and dived to the floor.  What the hell is she doing?  When she resurfaced, she seemed to have found the knife and was pointing it at me from the corner of the room.

“Whoa, whoa take it easy.”

“Who the hell are you?  What are you trying to pull here,” she said in a very angry voice.

I backed off instinctively.  I noticed for the first time there was a mirror on the wall opposite me.  The problem is I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  I touched my face just to be sure I was actually looking at myself in the mirror.  My face, hair, body, everything was completely different.

I stood there stunned, staring at the mirror, I had almost completely forgotten about the knife wielding girl in the corner of the room.  I’ve seen this face before.  

Something clicked into place in my head.  I looked over to the girl once again.  “Jessica, is that really you?”

Something in my expression must of disarmed her, or perhaps it was a shared realisation of something she had suspected for a while.  Jessica lowered the knife and tears started rolling down her face once again.  “Michael?”