Free Wraith's Awakening (Para-Ops) by Virna DePaul

CHAPTER ONE
     
    I know I have a hangover of cosmic proportions when I can't even open my eyes.
    Clues two, three, and four? My lips feel dry and cracked, my mouth is filled with a bitter taste that coats my tongue and throat, and my stomach feels both hollow and heavy at the same time.
    Finally, and worst of all, I stink-like sweat and manure and rancid milk all rolled into one-the foulest smell imaginable. I wonder if I'm lying in my own puke, an extremely revolting thought.
    Enough already.
    I need a shower and I absolutely refuse to crawl there in the dark.
    My lids strain, pulling at lashes covered with grit and glue until they lift. Through a filmy haze, streams of light break through the blankets that cover me. I shift, grimacing when the lumpy mattress cuts into my breasts, stomach, and thighs.
    Bracing my palms against the bed, I push up, only to be yanked back down when my hair gets caught beneath me. I blink several times, both in pain and in an attempt to see better, until my hair, hanging down beside my face, and the backs of my hands come into focus.
    With a frown, I think I must be dreaming or viewing the world from someone else's eyes. My hair isn't white nor my skin a milky blue, yet that's what it looks like at the moment. Another person's skin seems to be covering my hands, which I shift several inches to the side until I can push up without catching my hair again. The scratchy weight of my blanket slides down my back as I sit up, revealing two things: I am naked and I am lying outside in a pile of garbage under cardboard, not, I repeat, not a blanket.
    What the-?
    Okay, so that settles it. I'm not hung over, I'm dreaming. But what an odd dream. I'm reminded of that scene in the first Terminator, when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Beane teleport to Earth in their birthday suits just minutes apart. They hadn't been sleeping, however.
    I push aside the long sheet of cardboard and move a few inches until I am sitting on concrete. Reaching out, I pick up a crinkled hamburger wrapper. The paper is emblazoned with the golden arches. Affixed to the top is a receipt for a McDouble, a McChicken, and a yogurt parfait, all for just over three dollars. Although the print is slightly blurred by grease stains, the purchase was made at a McDonalds in Charleston, South Carolina.
    Holy crap! Is that where I am?
    I drop the receipt, watching as it is carried away on a light breeze. I'm in an alley that dead ends into a graffiti-sprayed brick wall. On the other side, however, the alley opens up to a sidewalk. Although the alley dips in the center, causing water to collect, I've managed to avoid the dampness. I, along with two teal-green dumpsters, am hugging the dry pavement next to a building and a Park Here sign.
    Pulling my knees to my chest, I prop my chin on my folded hands and wait for my neurons to fire and transport me somewhere else. I wonder what a dream transition will look like and idly imagine a Salvador Dali painting-one with melting clocks. But many minutes tick by and the scene before me doesn't change. When my stomach rumbles, feeling decidedly more hollow than heavy now, I tentatively get to my feet.
    I groan at how difficult the task is. My joints feel frozen, as if they haven't been used in a very long time. There's a burning on my left shoulder blade that only worsens when I try to touch it. I bend over, hands on my thighs, trying to straighten despite the pain in my low back, when I hear a faint rustling sound coming from the mouth of the alley.
    I jerk upright. Terror joins the pain zipping up my spine. Who knows who or what is coming closer. If a person dies in a dream, doesn't she die in real life? Is something resembling the Terminator-3000, sans human flesh, coming after me? Weird dream aside, I have no desire to die in a dingy alley, especially since it doesn't seem to be an appropriate setting for a particularly peaceful death. And peaceful death or not, I have things to do. A life to lead. I