Storms

It was raining, but it wasn't the usual boring rain of London that she'd come to know so well. It was  a storm. A real storm. A storm that reminded her of childhood summers, of nights spent curling up on her blue armchair looking out at the rain, waiting for flashes of lightning and counting until the thunder could be heard. She hadn't seen a storm like that here, so she had gathered her warm covers around herself, and sat next to her bedroom window, staring at the rain.

She couldn't have told you what she found so enthralling, the raindrops hitting the earth violently, the plays of shadows and light, the darkness and the damp, but she knew storms were special, she knew that on storm nights magic was closer to her world than ever, and strange things could happen.

She must have dozed off watching the rain, but when she woke up her throat was dry, and her muscles felt cramped, she opened her eyes frowning, uncomfortable and tried to stretch out, thinking she should go to bed, but the storm hadn't ended, her curtains were drawn and the window was open. She tried to think back in alarm, wondering whether she'd opened it before she'd fallen asleep. She was having trouble moving, as though her limbs were responding too slowly, and the panic started settling in, spiraling into her stomach, flooding her mouth with the metallic taste of blood. She spat out, tears in her eyes, scared, but it was only saliva.

Taking deep breaths she tried to look around. Nothing seemed different in her room, but she could feel a presence, she could sense something was there that shouldn't be. Yet everything seemed to be in order, exactly as she'd left it, except the window. She tried to move again, and this time it came easier, as though her limbs were waking up from a long sleep. She stood up, bunching her covers around herself as though they could somehow protect her. She closed the window, feeling uneasy as she did so, wondering if she was trapping in something that should not be in her room. Then she turned to face the mirror. She looked pale and scared, her hair was messed up from the position where she'd been sleeping, but there was nothing unusual about her. She almost laughed out loud. She had always been scared of mirrors, a fear born of the stories that she'd read in her childhood, that if you looked into a mirror at midnight you would see your own death. She had dared the mirrors many times, alone and with her friends, and all she'd ever seen was herself. She had always felt relief afterwards, and a sense of foreboding: maybe seeing nothing meant something, maybe she was misinterpreting what she saw in the mirror. Then suddenly she let out a panicked gasp. The window reflected in the mirror was open. She turned around, but her window was closed. She had just closed it. She turned back to the mirror, petrified with fear and stared at the storm raging, the curtains flapping in the wind, the wrong reflection. She blinked and it was gone. The window was closed, and she was there, trembling in fear, and next to her, overlapping, was a shadow of herself, a ghost, a copy that wasn't solid. She looked scared too, rooted to the spot, staring at herself, or at her other self, in the mirror.

-Liz? Are you alright?

She heard her dad's voice, his footsteps coming down the corridor, and suddenly understood. This wasn't her house, that wasn't her father, and she was the intruder.

-Yeah! I'm... I'm OK, just fell asleep with the window open. -she lied, her voice shaking, knowing that she did not want to see this stranger who would look like her father and treat her like his daughter but who was just a stranger, who didn't love her, who did not know her.

She wanted to go back to her room. To her real room. This other place was horrifying. It was the same, and she knew no one else could tell the difference. Her parents whom she was supposed to have known for 20 years would not be able to understand that their daughter wasn't the same daughter, that she wasn't her, that they'd somehow changed places in the storm.

-Do you always watch storms with the window open?- she asked the ghost of herself, or perhaps herself, not really caring about the answer, but trying to concentrate on something different, something that wasn't the fact that she was trapped somewhere else, where nobody knew her and she could not get back.

And suddenly something snapped. Lightning and thunder came together and she woke up, sitting on her armchair, her mouth dry, her limbs a little sore, but perfectly capable of moving. The window was closed, and when she looked into the mirror the window in the mirror was closed too. The ghost wasn't there anymore.

-Liz? Are you OK hon?

And that was her dad.

-Everything's fine Dad, I had a nightmare.

He walked into the room, and saw her sitting on her armchair.

-Watching the storm?- he asked, smiling. She remembered they'd watched them together when she was a child. She nodded. -What did you dream?

-It wasn't a dream exactly. I think I woke up and I had this horrible feeling of irreality, like I was in a parallel universe, like you and mum weren't yourselves. Everything was the same, but I felt like I didn't belong, like nothing was... mine... -she could not explain it exactly in words. -It was scary.

He nodded and went over to her bookcase.

-I'll never understand how you have your books organised- he said.

She smiled.

-I think I'll go to bed- she said, watching him pick up one of the comics he kept in her room.

-Do you mind if I borrow it? -he said.

-Go ahead.

And as he left the room, she felt the shadow of another leave with him. But she wasn't scared. And for a second, she wondered.