Listen to the music video at Melissa's Dream Land.

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     Loud sirens and flashing lights haze my senses. The ground feels unbalanced and unstable to me. I try getting up, but my arms give up, pushing me to the ground once more. A rush to my head is as immediate as the sound of gravel turning under shoes become more prominent as they get closer. I try to look up, which follows by me getting pulled off of the road.

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     The doors slam to the ambulance, making me wonder why I was even pushed on a gurney in the first place. What's wrong with me? What happened to me after I fainted?

     I wait in the moving truck to hear any answers, but all I hear is the faint beeping of the heart monitors, and the wheels moving as quick as possible to the closest hospital. My veins burn from the IV in my arm.

     I want to turn to a paramedic, but I can't seem to move, much less speak. It's as if my vocal cords were ripped out of me along with my sanity. 

    My questions fade away anyways, as if they weren't even there to begin with. The pain in my head begins to worsen, sending more pain throughout my body. In that instant, the agony slowly begins to slowly grow, like the blood running slowly from a cut. 

    I close my eyes, and try to imagine that this isn't happening.

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   "Concussion to the head".... I wake to being pushed along in a hospital bed. "Keep her on IV".... Slumping into another long rest, I finally get my answers. A head concussion from fainting. But was that it?

    They push me to an operating room immediately, as nurses push out a metal table. Everything becomes a haze as something is injected into my IV. Being put onto the cold metal table, someone puts a mask over my mouth and nose, and everything goes black.

    Beeping monitors greet me as I wake to a bright overhead lamp. Rubber-gloved hands assist me to another hospital bed. 

   The smell of hospital hits me in waves. Being pushed into a recovery room, I start to wonder about what happened to that killer exactly. If he will come after me. If the police are becoming involved. If I will be okay. 

   After being put under for a while and getting stitches and getting bandaged, I am put in a small room for recovery. The exhaustion of everything today hits me immediately, followed by a long rest.

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Melissa's Dream Land

   Why am I so tired? Everything is so dark! I need water. My throat feels scratchy.

   Darkness turns into light so quickly, I feel like I should shield my eyes, but this is a dream after all.

   A bright green blanket of beautiful grass covers the entire ground. Suspicious, since I never have colorful dreams, I step onto the fresh blades, letting the grass get in between my toes. An overwhelming sense of euphoria begins to rush through my body, making me want to dance, so I do.

     The scratch of a vinyl record begins to play, and a strange song resonates through the meadow. This is then my cue to continue dancing. As I do so, flowers pop up everywhere without warning or reason. My dancing is making the flowers grow! I jump along to the melody and become entranced into this world, intrigued at my own brain's creation.

   A sort of wind begins to pick up, making the smell of lavender seep through the borders of my senses. Is this really a dream?

   My hair is blown in so many directions. My clothes full of caught-up wind. I laugh in spite of myself. 

   Why can't real life be like this? Why can't life have a purpose of having no purpose at all?

   Within the very depths of my mind, I conjured up this wonderfully ridiculous apparition. And I wasn't even mad at this at all. 

   As the entire meadow seemed to die down, the sun began to set. The music lost its swell somehow. Everything faded to black, and I woke to a boringly white hospital room and the smell of antiseptic flooded my senses. No more dream. No more lavender. No more meadow. 

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   A deep sigh, a slight turn to the light outside in my room window, and a nurse gently nudging me, and I am awake. It feels like I've been asleep for weeks. Black static crept at the edges of my eyes as I tried to get up, supervised by the nurse. When I lift myself onto my own feet, I am lead to a bathroom, thinking to myself, Thank goodness. A shower.

  The warm water crept down my body and into my pores, cleaning me in a monotonous white-tiled shower.

    As dirt and sweat becomes an afterthought from my body, I start to think about that dream, and why it was even in my mind in the first place. What did it mean? Whatever the purpose, it had awakened me to any possibility of another one. 

    Besides bizarre dreams, I am left here wondering once more. Wondering what will happen to me after all of this hospital craze dies down.

   Right now, it seems as if this is my temporary life. 

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   As the nurse situates me into my bed, she returns to her records, getting my attention for a few minutes.

        "Okay, Melissa. It seems like you've just arrived here about..." She looks through the records. "Three days ago." Three days? how did that even happen? I guess I did sleep for a while. 

      "So it appears that you had severe trauma to your head, along with a couple of stab wounds to the chest." Severe trauma. Stab wounds. Seems like that person did get to me. huh. Maybe I should've continued to run. But where could I have gone? 

    She continues to talk, but I don't listen. I'm too clouded with thoughts. Too clouded with worries. I nod when she looks up occasionally, but all I hear is muffled noise. I suddenly feel nauseous. Sitting up, my stomach lurches, causing me to retch all over myself and all of my blankets. Looks like I'm going back to the boring bathroom.

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     After another shower, I am settled down into my bed with my new clean bed-sheets. They give me ice chips and water to calm my nerves, along with some more pain medicine. The nurse realized that she needs to refrain from telling me all about what happened. I lay on my pillow, looking up at the fluorescent light above me, being entranced into sleep from its very light's rays. 

    Being pulled back into Dream land, I start to dream about, oddly enough, what my life would be like afterwards. Afterwards? after what? After this? 

   I couldn't really understand any of it, but, it was colorful once more. It was as if the doctors switched on a setting in my brain as they were working on my head that day in the operating room. What happened to me? It's as if my very skin is craving a new life. A new dream. A new goal. And I love it.

   I like the feeling of my skin itching for a new life. For a new body. For a new skin. Yes.... A new skin....

                                              ~~~~~~~~~

    "Melissa Mathers..." No.... Go away.... I'm dreaming of amazing things.... Go get another patient...

   "Melissa?"  Shoo.... 

    As I begin to try to use my hand to wave them away, my hand is held by another person. I blink awake, trying to see who is in front of me. I see that it is a very blurry figure at first, much like the killer. He's not here, is he?

   "Melissa Mathers. We need you to wake up."

    I toss and turn on the hospital bed, grunting. We? Who's we? The only "we" I want to see at this point is....well, no one. Jesus. Even my jokes are boring. 

   I force my eyes open. "Melissa. You're coming with us." 

    Oh, no I am not, I thought to myself.

    And then, what they said would change my life forever.

   "Hello there, Melissa. And welcome to your first day in the Witness Protection Program. " 

   I grunted and turned on my side.

                                                                      ~~~~~~~~~