INCIDENTS

1.

Early in the morning on the first day of May 1994 Tanya Ferguson wakes from an unsettling dream, not quite a nightmare but still it is unsettling all the same. She wakes so suddenly that she needs a moment or two to catch herself, not only to realize that a moment she had just been within or rather witnessed was not a moment of reality rather it had been somewhat of a dream. Was it that, however? What is just a dream? Perhaps it is or had been a kind of snapshot of reality, a moment yet to be, presenting itself to her through a dream.

She cannot consider that just yet for she is stuck, glued to the spot she is in as if she were experiencing something akin to sleep paralysis. Her eyes have opened wide and are staring up at the bedroom ceiling in the home her eighteen-year-old self shares with her mum.

This quickly becomes distressing. Knowing she cannot move, somewhat of a panic attack begins to set in. Her heartbeat quickens as does her breathing. Movement is so difficult that she cannot even turn her head no matter how she tries. Seconds pass that feel so much longer than what they actually are until the point when whatever has gripped her has released her.

Once her movement has been returned to her control, she first moves her head from side to side then quickly moves up to take a sitting position at the side of her bed where she rests for a moment or two to gather and calm herself.

Mum is already up and is downstairs. Hearing some movement coming from upstairs mum calls out though Tanya does not respond. That nightmarish dream returns to her, taking a forefront position in her thoughts.

Having moved into the bathroom, Tanya stares at the mirror in an effort to allow the recall of that dream to come through. It's not long before it begins to return to her via that mirror just as if a video replay is playing out. She sees rain, she sees a café, she sees a woman, a woman she does not and could not know and this is if who she sees is an actual woman at all, she sees this woman enter the café and then go on into the lady's restroom.

She sees that restroom darken as if she too has entered to observe events while being unable to interact in any way. She sees that lady's reflection alter before the restroom mirror cracks, she sees that lady leave the restroom in somewhat of a panic and she sees that woman collide with a young man. Then it ends, the vision or dream replay, whatever it is. The sudden appearance of a rather large crack in her home bathroom ends the vision, a sudden and thick crack from the top left-hand corner stretching down to the bottom right-hand corner.

This sudden crack makes Tanya gasp and take a step backwards. She takes a second or two to gather herself once again.

'It's real ...' she speaks out loud to herself. 'It's ... very real ...'

Something more than just the dream is what she is referring to and not just the dream itself or the rather large crack in her home bathroom mirror. The one thing that tells her more than anything else that this is true, and that what she believes really is something very real is the café itself from that dream vision.

That café, she knows it, the café, she knows where it is, and a brisk thirty-minute walk could bring her right to it. With an ever so brief hi mum bye mum and no breakfast, Tanya is soon off to go visit that café for herself. The bathroom mirror, as it so happens, does not actually have a rather large crack in it and mum would not see such a crack if she were to enter that home bathroom. This is all weird ... so crazy weird.

Standing across the street from that café brings with it a very surreal moment. It indeed confirms her dream was real, is real. Well ... this is what she takes from her current moment anyhow. Tanya has, of course, had many dreams but none of them had ever replayed in a waking moment as her most recent one had been, and she has to consider just how many of those other dreams were real. Quite a few she would imagine though none of them gave her an option to do anything with them ... not just yet anyhow. Perhaps now that will change. Yeah, perhaps she is capable of seeing things that are yet to come.

Now she has come to be as close to the café she so happens to be in this moment, she may as well go across the street to it and into its lady's room. She has never been to that lady's room before though still she is amazed to find that it looks exactly as she had seen it in her dream. She had no doubt that it would be the same but having no doubt and being in the place itself is not exactly the same thing.

Tanya does not need to use this facility and that fact does not stop her from indulging herself. It is just a lady's room, no different than your average lady's room but it is just that ... different. She has never before come to be within a room she had only previous seen in a dream or a vision. Because of this she has a need to take a moment to reach for and touch that mirror, a mirror that in this moment hasn't got so much as a scratch on it.

Having come out of that lady's room Tanya is more than a little surprise by the fact she is approached by a lady she has never before seen and to add to that she is even more surprised by what this lady is about to say to her and no, it is not the lady from that vision she had.

'This way please ...'

'Excuse me?' Tanya asks being not so sure how to respond to this moment.

'You are here to apply for our open position, aren't you?'

Tanya takes a second to once again gather herself then blags her way through this moment. 'Yes ... yes I am.'

'Then this way please.'

Tanya indeed plays along and before she leaves the café, she has herself an employed position within it. Six weeks pass and the moment she had foreseen comes to pass. She witnesses it for real. The woman from her dream, her vision, enters the café and heads straight for the lady's room. It is not long before she comes out of the rest room in one heck of a frenzy, so much so that she collides with a young man. Pretty soon they take up a seated position together at a table not long after which he comes up to the café counter and orders two coffees. Tanya says she will drop the coffees over to them.

It is only after this chance meeting of two strangers that Tanya begins to put things together. There are other visions, other dreams as they have actually been for many years. A darkness is on its way and Tanya may have had an opportunity to prevent, upset or delay that darkness before now though she has done nothing. She had not known she might have needed to do anything; she may not have known that there was an opportunity though when two and two are put together she finds it more upsetting that she had not seen it earlier, that she had not made herself available to do anything.

A want and a need to change that certainly takes a hold on her from here on in. The one advantage she will have going forwards for her is this newly acquired trust for that second sight of hers. Whatever it chooses to show her from here on in, Tanya feels that she must act, she feels she must play her part in aiding the world in surviving whatever is to come attacking the world, or at least whatever part of it she so happens to inhabit.

The two people, a woman and a man, who came together for a first time in that café are Kay West and Darren Mitchell. They will one day marry and have a daughter they will name Anna and Anna will so happen to also be a daughter of Darkness though it will be another daughter of Darkness that Tanya will one day take charge of.

At a gathering, once it comes to happen in 2018 and once its intent has been ousted, Tanya makes herself known to Majella Smith. They both have visions and dreams though visions and dreams that would act differently in each. It is clear that even though Majella is a daughter of Darkness she does not want to be and will not be a minion of Darkness. Tanya feels she is suitable to aid Majella to defend Light against Darkness even with the failed attempt to positively affect a girl named Maxene, behind her.

There are others here at this Ball too, when it comes, that Tanya knows, none of whom she came her with. Jason Alveron is here and is feeling more of a pull back to Light than what he had been feeling when he and Tanya had been spending time together a couple years prior. Another person here too is of course Maxene, the girl Tanya failed to protect or affect, someone who got away from Tanya twelve years prior to the ball. Of course, Anna Mitchell is here too.

An ever so brief coming together occurred just two years prior to a Ball when Tanya and Jason went to visit Maxene's father in an asylum like prison facility. Yeah, Maxene made quite the entrance on that occasion no matter how brief it was ... indeed she had not stayed long for she vanished almost as soon as that appearance had been made. Such a moment led to months being used in tracing her whereabouts as Tanya had been sure that Maxene wanted that certain trio of people to come together.

Yeah, the Ball, Maxene is here. Even if there had been no brief appearance two years prior, Tanya would recognize the girl she hadn't otherwise seen since the girl was just six years old. Would she even think of Tanya as being mother ...?

Without getting close enough to Jason Alveron and without contemplating Maxene's presence, Tanya does indeed make herself know to Majella. Despite the presence of Darkness along with the gathering of a most unusual group of individuals, Tanya does not get or try to take an opportunity to speak with Maxene.