[My apologies for the lack of Fiction Friday lately. But I'm back! A special thanks to my friend Melody for telling me about her crazy dream that served as the initial inspiration for this piece. Enjoy!]

Keeping secrets was all I knew. As natural as breathing. Such was the price to pay when born extraordinary in an ordinary world. Before my grandmother passed away, she made me promise to guard my secret, no matter the cost. But even as I promise passed from my lips, a certainty swelled within me. I knew that one day, I would break it.

The world was ending. It was obvious. But apparently, only to me. Trying to show my friends what I saw was met with confused looks and nervous snickers, followed by a mass exodus from my life. Consequence number one of people finding out the truth according to granny.

Be prepared to live a life of solitude and harsh judgement.

Despite what I saw, the world continued to thrum along all around me. Clueless commuters and tourists meandered through the park on, what they believed to be, a beautiful day. A red-faced man knocked into me without apology, too caught up with yelling into his cell phone. I wondered if he would still be such an ass if he knew that this was the beginning of the end. Would whatever had him steaming mad be worth it?

Gazing up at the sky, my breath hitched at the sight of how much the tear had grown. It was like a frustrated artist took a giant knife and jammed it into the canvas of our world, starting deep in the heavens and dragging it toward earth. The slit between our world and whatever lay beyond glowed in the purest white.

My lungs filled with electrified air. My chest heaved. But I stopped myself short of screaming: Look! Run! Save yourselves!

I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t some tin foil hat wearing doomsday conspiracy theorist. I was just a girl with a gift. A girl whose main worry a week ago was whether or not Billy Ortiz was going to ask me to prom. And now, it was hard to believe that I’d ever cared about something as inconsequential as a dance. There would be no prom. Hell, soon enough, there might not be a Billy.

Or a me.

I felt a tingling at the nape of my neck and I knew the time was near. It always started this way. Soft, almost comforting.

The brilliant slash had reached earth and disappeared along the horizon. I watched in horror as a blackish gray dot mutated into a long, skinny tendril. It unfurled from within the glow and entered into our world. Smaller tendrils sprung from its tip. As the terrifying appendage reached toward the ground, I heard the first screams.

The tingling in me grew and morphed into a pounding pulse that wracked my entire body. My abilities weren’t limited to just seeing what others couldn’t. I was gifted with a wide array of gifts. Each one important, according to granny, in fulfilling my ultimate purpose: to save the world.