The Dome City by Nichole Haines - HTML preview

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CHAPTER 1

 

I woke up feeling quite sick feverish and not well. My nose was stuffy and runny. It was 5:20AM and it was another day of having to wake my daughter Amber up for another day of school. She was in the seventh grade and could never wake herself up. She always slept through alarm clocks. I slowly climbed out of bed feeling very feverish tired and achy. As I walked out into my hallway I noticed all the lights were on in the living room. Amber always had a habit of turning all the lights on in the middle of the night because she was often scared during the night. As I was walking to her bedroom I noticed her bedroom door was open. Amber for years has been telling me for years that she has been seeing dark shadows come into her bedroom at night and even after getting my father’s cremated ashes out the apartment Amber continued to see the ghostly figures. I walked into her bedroom and noticed her bed covers on the floor and her bed was completely empty. My heart began to race in fear and confusion on to why Amber wasn’t lying in her bed like all other mornings during the week. I quickly walked into my kitchen to double check the time on the digital clock on the microwave. I slowly glanced at the clock and noticed the clock said 11:11AM. How was it possible that my cell phone said it was 5:20AM and the microwave digital clock said 11:11AM? I then concluded that the power must have went out during the night and got jammed on 11:11AM.

I decided not to call the police just yet and tell them my child is missing. I thought I would wait until 3:00PM to see if Amber came home from school. I still was feeling very feverish and tired, so I decided to walk up to the local fast food place Beems to get some iced coffee to cool off a bit from the feverish feeling. Beems was about a four-block walk from our apartment. As I was walking I noticed the sky looked reddish and pinkish at the same time. The sky never looked normal to me anymore and when I tried to tell my husband Tim he always says I’m crazy and that I’m imagining things in my head. As I was ordering my food and my iced coffee I noticed the digital advertisement boards were moving in a wave type of movement in front of my eyes. I just thought to myself that it was my mind playing tricks on me because of the fever I had, so I ignored what I was seeing in front of my eyes and paid for my food which came to the total amount of $6.66. I never liked seeing that number because I have been seeing those numbers on paper work for the last few years continuously I walked slowly to the bathroom all sweaty and pale and I was starting to get light headed so I went into one of the stalls in and sat down to see if the dizziness feeling would eventually go away after a few minutes. After about waiting about five minutes my dizziness went away. I slowly started to get up and started walking to the bathroom sinks to put some chilly water on my head. As I was turning on the water I noticed that the closet door behind me was slightly opened, so I started to close it but as I was closing the door I noticed a green glow coming out of the door. I know I wasn’t supposed to go into the company closet but the green glow coming out of the certainly got my attention to investigate the green glow further. I noticed the closet was completely empty, so I decided to quickly get inside and close the door. I started to feel for the closet wall but soon discovered there wasn’t a wall behind me and I fell to the ground instead. I slowly got up and walked towards the green glow. I couldn’t see what ahead of me because the green glow was blinding my sight as I continued to walk even though my vision was bad at that point. My foot and body hit what felt like a heavy wood door, so I felt for a door knob, finally I was able to find the door knob and slowly opened the door. As the door opened I noticed I was in the same exact bathroom I was in before, so I ran out of the glowing green closet and closed the door before anybody noticed that I was sneaking around. I was not very satisfied that I ended up in the same exact place I started off at. I then sighed to myself and decided to walk out to the lobby and get my now cold food because I wasted too much time in the magical glowing bathroom that ended up being nothing special in the first place. As I opened the main entrance door and began walking out into the main lobby area I was shocked to who I saw standing at the front counter. My heart felt like it dropped to my feet!

I saw myself at the counter looking very confused as I was ordering my food at the counter. I was doing the same thing I was doing when I first came into Beem’s to order my iced coffee and food, then I heard the cashier say to my other me out in the lobby area “Your total is $6.66 just as earlier when I ordered my food the first time around. At that moment I was afraid to come out of the bathroom and I hid behind the entrance bathroom door and kept the door opened just a slight crack. I then realized that history was repeating itself and I had to get out of the bathroom very fast because the other me in the lobby was going to be arriving to the bathroom soon. The only way to get out of bathroom without the other me seeing me was to go out the other Beem’s entrance.  I thought the other me was about to come towards the bathroom, but instead she walked over to the drinks instead of coming over to the bathroom. I guess history wasn’t repeating itself. I dashed out the door and started running down the sidewalk towards my apartment complex in complete shock. As I got towards my apartment door my mind kept racing with ten thousand thoughts to why there was another me in the same place. I then started to think that the other me may possibly show up at my apartment any minute now.  As I walked in my front door I glanced at the clock and it said it was 2:55PM, so I knew Amber should be home by 3:00PM from school.