You've Got Another Thing Coming

I woke to the scent of lavender and roses, the strong but gentle smell pulling me out of the grey fog that clouded my mind.

I forced my eyelids open, only to reveal nothing but whiteness.
It took me a moment to understand that I was staring at my own ceiling, that I was lying on my back, that the girl who had -I refused to even think the word ‘grew’- so mysteriously wound up in my dress in my closet was sitting by my side and waving a paper in front of my face.
Upon that, I understood with utmost certainty that I was still stark naked.

I immediately rolled over and grabbed randomly at something to cover myself up with. My hand reached the black and white dress I had tossed away earlier, and I tugged it on faster than my mind could even apprehend.
Before I knew what was really going on, and honestly, who could at the moment, the girl was standing before me with her hand stretched out.

“It’s very nice to meet you again, Callie.”

I could only stare at her. It seemed to make her uncomfortable, because she lowered her hand and reached up to scratch her head.

“You don’t seem to know me”, she stated, and I shook my head furiously.

It certainly wasn’t every day that a girl appeared in my closet, wearing my dress and hanging off the hanger. The fact that I didn’t know her seemed to upset the girl.

“Are you sure you’ve never seen me before?” she wondered.

I stared bewildered at her. I took in her appearance, everything from the lush blonde hair that fell in locks all the way to her lower back to her slender arms and legs and light feet.
Her lips were full and red as roses, her cheeks had a healthy pink and her eyelashes were dramatically long. She had a petite frame.

Sourly, I thought she looked like something Disney had used as a model for his princesses. She was absolutely lovely.
Then, I noticed something strange: her eyes were a very unusual shade of blue. When I studied them closer, I realised that they weren’t even blue. They were lilac.

“You’re wearing my dress”, was all I could stutter out at the moment.

Her eyes had bewitched me, and I was sure I had never seen anything like it. That was why I needed something real to focus upon. What more logical for a teenage girl to base her thoughts on that clothes?

She glanced down at herself. The dress looked absolutely perfect on her. It fit her like a glove, and the strange mixture of colours only complimented the tone of her skin.

“It’s a hideous dress”, she stated, examining the fabric more closely now that I had brought it up. “Why’d you buy it?” she wondered.

“I didn’t”, I said, happy to forget about all the strange things that were going on around me and just talk regular nonsense for a bit. “I got it from my mother’s cousin’s ex-wife’s kid, who’s about fifty years old and decided she actually had a fashion sense.”

The girl touched the hem of her dress. “Well, she proved herself wrong”, she mumbled, grinning slightly.

She then looked up at me again.

“So, do you recognize me?” she asked, and I could hear a hopeful tone in her voice which confused me.

I shook my head, denying any previous interaction with this girl. Well, girl and girl... She looked to be about nineteen, or perhaps in her early twenties.
Though, when she received my answer, she looked absolutely crestfallen. Her lower lip jutted out and tears began to fall heavily on her cheeks.

“It’s me!” she almost screamed, as if in enormous pain. “It’s Rose!”

My eyes widened, and I could have sworn I saw her beautiful face transform into a horrific one. Her skin turned grey and her eyes went black, her hair hung straight and limp and deepened to a rat-brown shade. Her lips pulled up at the corners, displaying pointed teeth and a forked tongue.

As quickly as I had seen her face change, it was back to normal and her crocodile tears hung from the small, pointy chin in her heart-shaped face.

“How can you not recognize me?” she cried. “I’m your very best friend in the whole wide world!”

In that very moment, I understood something was terribly wrong. It had nothing to do with the fact that I had no underwear, my hair on end and a girl growing in one of my dresses in my very familiar closet in my very normal room, in my extraordinarily ordinary life.
No, it was the fact that she just sounded fake.

I came to grips with reality, and decided that this dream-like scenario was not allowed to go on any more. The joke was done and over with, the special effects were outstanding and all, but it was all over.
I decided that I’d had enough of this lousy actress, never mind her beauty. She was nothing for Hollywood, and even less for a practical joke.

“Look”, I said, my voice stern and confident all of a sudden, “I don’t know why you decided to play this joke on me, and even less who hired you. But this is not funny; you’ve got to understand that. So, if you’d be so kind and leave…?”

The girl’s pretty face went blank. The tears that had so eagerly flowed now stopped in an instant, and her mouth fell open.

“You… honestly don’t know who I am?” she asked, completely lost.

I stared harshly at her. “No, and I think we’ve established that by now. So, please, get out.”

It took her a couple of moments to process what I had just said. By the time she was finished I had got the impression that this girl was not the brightest crayon in the box, and I was eager to get her out of my house and myself into some decent clothes.

“Well, then”, she said, her eyes suddenly radiant. “Then you have no idea who you are, either. And then”, her beautiful, kind face began to turn back into the awful, evil one I had caught a glimpse of just before, “you have no idea how to stop me from doing this!”

She waved her arm, now greyish and thick with muscles, and grabbed a hold of my hair. She pulled my head down and ran a nail, or a claw, in a pattern across my scull.
I fought against her, but she was too strong for me. I couldn’t even turn under her grip; she had me frozen stiff with the other arm around my throat.

I couldn’t breathe. My vision began to blur, but when it was just about to give out, I could hear another voice in my bedroom. It was light and pure like a tinker bell, sweet but with a powerful edge to it. I heard it fling a couple of phrases my way, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying.

The thick arm around my throat tightened its grip, and for the second time that morning, I slipped away into oblivion.