Tattered Strings and Tear-Stained Wings.

Straddling the line between the world of awake and the world of asleep—dancing the border between reality and dreams.

There was a blur of shadows and wings and darkness and a blur of my bedroom window all blended and mashed up together so much that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two—almost like looking up from underwater and seeing people and plants and stars, but not being able to tell who was who and what was what. It was having a foot in the real world and a foot in the dream world.

I could feel myself lulling to sleep, slipping into the dream world where all I could hear was laughter. At first, I thought it was happy, like all dreams should. It sounded happy. In my dream, my eyes were closed and sound was all I could hear, and what I heard sounded nice. It wasn’t until I opened my dream-eyes did I realize this wasn’t a dream, but in fact, a nightmare.

Blood and bodies, blood and bodies. All I could see all around was blood and bodies, and all I could hear all around was laughing and happy. The bodies looked at me with their glassy dead eyes, and they laughed, and as they did, blood poured from their lips. Out from the pool of blood came a girl with butterfly wings and golden locks and a golden smile. She looked innocent and happy and pure, and she beckoned me to laugh with them, and so I did.

I laughed with the glassy eyed bodies and the happy little girl. And as I did, something warm erupted from my lips. At first, it felt like a honey filled laugh. But drip-drip-drip that warmness fell onto the ground below me. Drip-drip-drip into a pretty little crimson puddle. Blood. Blood poured from my lips as I laughed, just as blood poured from the bodies’ lips as they laughed.

I tried to stop the laughter, but it wouldn’t stop. I kept laughing and laughing and laughing, and they kept laughing and laughing and laughing. Blood dribbled from my lips, and blood dribbled from their lips, and the girl changed. Her butterfly wings wilted like flowers, and they turned into bloody shadows. Her golden smile turned crimson, stained with the blood of flesh. From her eyes fell bloody teardrops, dripping like the blood was dripping from my lips—dripping until her eyes were nothing more than empty sockets filled to the brim with a fountain of blood.

And she laughed and laughed and laughed.

I shook my head in horror, but I could not stop laughing. And down below me was my puddle of blood, and inside it I could see the reflection of my dead glassy eyes. I screeched between my constant giggling.

The girl opened her blood-glossed lips, speaking words I could not hear nor read. And from her lips erupted a buzzing—a loud beep, beep, beep…

I gasped awake.

Gone were the bloody bodies and the bloody girl, replaced by rays of sunlight spilling through my bedroom window. I was suddenly very thankful for the fine line between dreamland and awake-land.

Slipping out of bed, I clicked off my alarm clock and went to go get ready for what was going to be another painfully long day.

-----

A bell chimed as I opened the door to Ole Stevo's, the restaurant that I work at. My nose was met with the familiar smell of bacon and eggs frying in the kitchen mixed with the mysterious musky cinnamon scent that always seems to hang in the restaurant's air, which no one can ever find the origins of. The ratty-haired busboy gave me a nod of acknowledgment as I entered the room, his floppy brown hair bouncing as he did so. I nodded back and he flashed me a grin before returning his attention back to the mop in his hand and the grimy wooden floors.

I made my way behind the counter and slipped on an oil-stained cream-colored apron (which I'm thoroughly convinced was at one point white, despite Ole Stevo's persistent denials), and leaned over the counter that separated the kitchen from the bar. Giving a knock on the mahogany wall frame, I flashed a wide smile at Brent, who was leaning over a pan of sizzling food. He looked up from his cooking and gave me a grin, sliding the bacon and eggs on a plate with ease. "Hey there, bluebird." he greeted in his thick, Southern drawl.

I scowled at the nickname, reminiscent of a terrible incident involving blue cake dye and hair gel, and smacked him on the arm, to which he chuckled softly and handed me the plate along with a glass of orange juice. "Table three." he said. I stuck my tongue out at him and made my way out of the counter to deliver the food.

I groaned inwardly as I saw the occupants of the table to which I would be attending.

"Oh, Layla!" a sickly sweet voice exclaimed. I cringed a little. "What an absolute coincidence to run into you here!"

I forced a smile at the fake brunette before me. Bits of blond were beginning to grow back in her roots and her cherry lips were pulled back into a painfully wide smile, showing off rows of perfectly straight, perfectly pearly white shiny sets of teeth. She fluttered her long, mascaraed baby blue eyes at her date. "Can I get you anything else?" I said as politely as one can between one's teeth, placing their plate of bacon and eggs on the table.

She ran a finger along his arm. "Would you like anything, baby?" she cooed.

This was when I finally turned to him, and was quickly taken aback. I met a pair of startlingly clear green eyes and hair styled in that messy, beach-hair look that looks completely untouched but probably took hours to perfect. He was the spitting image of what one might call a sea god, and what pimply twelve-year-old girls keep as screen savers and put up in posters on their walls and fawn over and basically worship. I easily deduced him to be someone too good for even the "beautiful" Sarah Marks, top varsity volleyball and soccer player queen bee, who sat next to him.

One look at him immediately put me in a foul mood. He looked to be exactly the type to use and walk over every girl he meets. I immediately felt a bit of pity for poor Sarah Marks, despite the fact that she probably does to everyone what was about to be done to her. I gave it a week before he broke her heart.

He flashed me a stunning smile, to which I almost scowled at, and said in his charming way, "No, thank you."

I gave a curt smile, turned on my heel, and walked back behind the counter.

-----

I glared at the couple at table three. "They've been here for an hour!" I whispered Lana. "That's way too ridiculously long to eat eggs and bacon. I vote that Stevo should kick them out."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Chill," she said, drawing the word out. "What's the big deal? That guy at the end of the bar has been here since the place opened, and you didn't say anything about him."

I crossed my arms. "Well he's at the bar." I stated matter of factly. "And that's different." She sighed and shook her head. I grinned at her and turned my attention out to the bleary gray sky. It's been like that all week--dark and brooding. I crossed my fingers and hoped that there wouldn't be another storm, to which would put out the lights and force me to go out to fix again.

I leaned my chin on my hand and suddenly remembered what had happened last night. That guy. What a douche bag. And that dream too. Of course, they were completely irrelevant to each other, but I couldn't help but thi--

“Layla. Layla.” A hand snapped in my face. “Lay-lahhh!”

“…Huh?”

Lana groaned exasperatedly, slapping her forehead. “That’s the fifth time you’ve done that today! And it’s only…” She checked her watch. “Twelve o’clock! You usually don’t start going off to La La Layla Land until after lunch.”

I gave a tense laugh. “Sorry!" I apologized stiffly. "I’ve been kind of…” My thoughts trailed back to my strange dream and the guy. The thought of him immediately pissed me off. “…distracted lately.”

Strangely enough, the detail that’s been haunting me about my dream wasn’t about the laughter or the dead bodies, or even the glassy eyes—it was that girl’s wilted shadow wings. And not only that, but I hadn’t thought much about the boy at all until after my dream. Now him (unfortunately) and the wings were things that popped up in my mind every two seconds.

But when I pictured him, cold bright-dark eyes and steel black hair and all, something always seemed missing.

I mentally slapped myself (for the thousandth time today) for thinking about him. I didn't know him enough to obsess about him. And besides, despite that fact, I knew him enough to want to not obsess about him. He was a douche. And I should be glad that I'll probably never know him much more than that at all.

“Layla.” Lana hissed. I jumped, and she gave a small giggle. "I think you need a break, hun." She tugged off my apron from around my waist and gave me a wink, pushing me from behind the counter. I gave her an incredulous look, but didn't question her. I waved a goodbye to Brent and the busboy. Lana batted her eyelashes at the guy sitting at table eight (who I didn’t bother to take a glance at—Lana may be my bestfriend, but she hits on every guy she sees), and flashed me a grin.

I reached out to take the apron from her hands and hang it, but her eyes suddenly widened at me. “What?” I asked, giving her a bewildered look.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked carefully, eying my wrist.

Looking down, I was surprised to see that it was a bright reddish-purple. The guy didn’t grab me that hard, did he? I was sure he didn’t.

I shrugged. “I dunno. But It doesn’t hurt, so it’s probably not that big of a deal.”

I wasn’t lying or anything—it really didn’t hurt at all at the time. She gave me a concerned look, but handed me the apron. After hanging it, I made my way to the front door, but decided against it and instead took the door in the back--which was really more in the side than it was in the back. I waved her a final goodbye and walked out.

Humming quietly, I contently turned to make my way up the alley that the side door lead to, and to the street, but froze mid-step upon finding myself face-to-face with a plain red shirt. I narrowed my eyes and looked up to find the irritating beach beauty. He gave me an apologetic look and took a step back. Giving me a tentative smile, he opened his mouth to speak. "Hi." he said.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Hello." I replied, although it sounded more like a question than an answer.

He looked at me and blinked for a couple of seconds before finally clearing his throat. "Layla, I came to apologize," he said. "For the way Sarah acted."

I snorted, remember the complaints about pulp in a perfectly smooth glass of orange juice and a piece of hair (that belonged to her) in her bacon. "Don't worry about it. She's always like that." I said, then laughed and shook my head. "On second thought, maybe you should worry about it."

He smiled. "Perhaps I should." he agreed, sticking his hands in his pockets.

I pursed my lips and regarded him curiously. "Hm, you know, it's kind of odd to stalk waitresses during their break into dark alleys and apologize for something they didn't do." I crossed my arms. "You should probably stop doing that, or else people might start accusing you of rape." I pursed my lips again. "But then again, I think most waitresses would let you, because--" My eyes widened and I stopped at that. "Haha," I laughed nervously, waving my hand in the hair dismissively. "Just kidding!"

His nervous demeanor broke as he grinned and chuckled. "My name's Jason, by the way."

I pursed my lips for the first time and narrowed my eyes at him. Maybe he wasn't quite the person I had thought him to be. "Layla." As soon as the name escaped my lips, I thought back to the beginning of the conversation. Didn't he call me that earlier? I shrugged and assumed that perhaps Sarah told him my name, however unlikely that would be. He grinned and held out his hand. I pursed my lips and reluctantly shook it.

Now, when I said that my wrist wasn't hurting earlier, I really, honestly wasn't lying.

But suddenly, a grinding shock ran up and down my arm—a searing pain pulsing and tearing, like there was something inside of it trying to shred it’s way out. The ground seem to be getting closer and closer. It wasn't until my head was planted against it did I realize that it wasn't the ground that was getting closer, but rather me getting closer to the ground. Through my blurry vision, I looked up to see Jason's concerned green eyes. As my vision got blurrier, his eyes began to turn slightly malicious. I told myself it was simply a trick in the light.

Before things went black, I could’ve sworn I saw something with wings walk down the alley in my peripheral vision. It looked so real—so real that I could’ve reached out and touched it. So real, that it couldn’t have been my imagination. Nevertheless, I immediately shot the notion down. Surely, it was only the blurring line.