Where the Streets Have No Name

I walked very slowly into the empty kitchenette of my apartment. I couldn’t explain why exactly, but ever since I reached the top of the flight of stairs, I had a weird feeling. The hallway had been dark and it seemed that I was the only one there. My footsteps had even echoed behind me.
As per usual routine I was holding my keys in my hand, however it was unnecessary. I pushed open the unlocked, cracked-open door. Despite my careless nature I didn’t leave doors open and unlocked. New York City wasn’t exactly Pleasantville. You couldn’t trust the people, because if you did you’d probably end up broke, dead, in jail, or quite possibly all of the above.
The wood floor of the kitchen creaked as I stepped onto it. In the dim light, the mocha color of the walls could pass for black. The floor was covered in dirt, which wasn’t how I had left my kitchen. I flipped on the light switch only to find that the dirt was in reality footprints outlined with mud and what I could only guess was blood. They trailed across my kitchen floor and across the clean, white carpet of the living room. They ended at the window. At that moment, though I was scared out of my mind, I was thinking about what a pain in the ass it would be to clean up.
“Hello?” I shouted into the empty apartment. “C’mon there’s got to be someone here. I get it. It’s funny. Ha-ha. You can come out now.” My original thought was that it was my old roommate trying to scare me. It would have been oh-so-typical Sydney. I mean, after all, she did still have a key. “Sydney? Come on. You can come out. I won’t be mad.” I swallowed hard. I was starting to doubt that it was a friend, but that maybe it was just the opposite. Then again, who had I pissed off?
I slowly walked to the counter, picking up a sharp knife before I went any further. “Sydney, Ava, Emma, jokes over alright? You guys finally got me.”
On the counter there had always been a photo of my brothers, sisters, and I. Looking down now though, it was replaced with a photo of people I didn’t recognize. It looked like it was a party and they were all holding cups full of alcohol. It seemed as if the smell of booze was drifting out of the picture and toward me—then again, I did have a fairly vivid imagination.
The ticking of the clock seemed to speed up, along with my heartbeat. I had no idea who was in my apartment, but I knew whoever it was had taken a long time to do this.
I followed the footprints toward the living room. I glanced quickly at the pegboard where I usually hung my keys. Now, instead of my extra set of keys there seemed to be a set of keys that looked like they hadn’t been used since the middle ages. They looked like they were for a dungeon.
Getting closer to them I noticed that they only looked medieval at the top. At the bottom they looked like normal keys—as if they had been covered, instead of with those ridiculous color caps that identify which key you have, but with an old fashioned top. I blinked because I refused to believe any of this. They were labeled with my name and what they were for.
This was just a dream, I thought to myself. This isn’t real. It can’t be real.
I walked closer to the window, noticing my normal phone had been replaced with a rotary phone—much like the one my grandmother had when I was a child. The numbers seemed to be covered with blood. For arguments sake though, if this was a joke it could be food coloring. Sydney was meticulous if nothing else.
The phone started ringing, but I ignored it. I refused to touch it, but instead kicked it onto the floor.
I looked at the final footprint. It was on the carpet next to the window—not the windowsill. Looking out, it was impossible that any one jumped. There were no footprints, and no one could have realistically survived jumping out of a window on the tenth floor of a building. Whoever did this; there was no sign of at all.
I closed my eyes. It’s just a dream. It can’t be real. It would be ridiculous. Why would this actually happen?
Gripping the handle of the knife even tighter I walked down the short hallway toward my bedroom. “Syd, come on this is getting a little creepy. And I never find anything creepy. You got me okay? You can just drop it now. You win, alright?”
The grey carpet of my bedroom floor was tinged with blood. On the bed was a body—limp and as far I could tell, dead. The unmoving body was me. I was the one who was dead. If I was standing right here, then how was I dead? Did I have a twin my parents never told me about?
I reached for the girl’s wrist to try and find a pulse, but it was barely there.
The nightstand had once been covered with photos of my sister and me at the beach, pictures from my brother’s wedding, my little sister’s conformation and pictures of my friends and me from college, not so long ago. Now there were pictures from parties that I never went to and of people I didn’t know.
This was all a little strange. No, little was the understatement of the century. This was crazy. Who was this girl? Why was she here? Why did she look so much like me? Was it me?
The blood was coming from her wrist—made to appear like a suicide, however the wound couldn’t have been self-inflicted—and I knew that pressure needed to be put on the wound, but I was afraid of what might be hiding behind the bathroom door if I were to go get a towel. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face death.
I started to wonder. Was this what I would be like, had I chosen another path? Was this just some stranger who happened to look a lot like me? If that was so, why was she here?
The questions flooded my mind faster than I could think of the answers. What were the answers, come to think of it…?
I had never been one to really believe in past lives and all of that stuff, but now I couldn’t help but wonder.

My cell phone rang waking me up from my all too vivid dream. What the hell? Maybe I really did need therapy. I looked at the caller ID. It was Sydney. “Hey, what’s up?” I turned around to get out of bed only to find a man holding a knife in front of me.
Maybe it had been more of a premonition than a nightmare. I stopped myself before I let out a bloodcurdling scream. I reached under my pillow pulling out a knife. I had no idea why it was there, how it got there, or even how I knew it would be there. Now it was even. Now I knew that I could win.
Still, I thought, how did it get there in the first place?
I stabbed the guy in the arm. It wouldn’t kill him, but I hoped it would injure him enough to leave me alone for the time being.
Before I could blink, he disappeared and when I rolled over, the corpse from my dream was next to me.

Grabbing whatever I could out of my armoire, as quick as possible I planned to leave. I ran outside into the early morning sunrise. Nothing seemed familiar anymore and no where seemed like home. I wasn’t even sure that I was real anymore.