It started in a dream.
Ashley knew it was a dream the way everyone sort-of knows it's a dream, when they're dreaming. But sort-of knowing it's a dream doesn't always mean you don't get scared, or happy, or turned on. Knowing it's a dream doesn't help very much when it all feels so incredibly vivid. And this dream was deeper and more vivid than any Ashley had ever experienced before. She couldn't have woken up from it even if she wanted to.
The start of the dream wasn't really very clear, but Ashley found herself in a familiar place: one of the many lecture theaters at her college. It made sense she'd dream of being there; she spent many hours each week in one lecture or another, listening to some professor drone on about something or other. Ashley was pretty nerdy and a good student, but she was the kind of person who preferred figuring something out for herself to letting someone else tell her how it all worked. To her, that was the whole point of physics, her major. It was all about breaking everything apart and inspecting it piece by piece to figure out what every little moving part did in the whole system of the universe. Where was the fun in someone else giving you all the answers? Besides, most of her professors were just so boring.
In the dream, though, the lecture theater was a little different to usual. It was dark and shadowy. It seemed like it was night outside. That was weird; why would Ashley be in school at night? The lights were off too, and the only light in the room was supplied by flickering wax candles scattered across the rows of seats and tables that filled the room. Outside, there was a crash of thunder, and the room was momentarily lit up white with the blinding flash. Ashley shivered. She'd never seen a lecture theater at her college look anything like this before. It was like a scene from a horror movie.
Ashley found herself walking aimlessly around the room, reaching out to touch the furnishings as she did. They all felt so real. This was a dream, deep down in her mind she felt sure of that. But she'd never had a dream quite like this before. She never normally remembered her dreams as anything other than a fuzzy sequence of images and feelings. This was totally different. It was like she was really there.
"Are you lost?"
Ashley wheeled around at the voice, startled, and found herself almost face-to-face with an extraordinarily strange-looking girl. The girl looked to be around her age, but towered at least a foot over her. That wasn't entirely unusual; Ashley was on the short side. What was unusual was the girl's incredibly pale countenance, and her long, smooth, black hair, and her glimmering, blood-red eyes. Even more disconcertingly, Ashley had been totally unaware of her presence beforehand. She hadn't heard her enter the room, or walk up behind her. It was like she had simply emerged from the shadows. Ashley tried to tell herself it was just dream logic. But that didn't help ease her nerves one bit.
"I said, are you lost?" the girl repeated. Ashley shivered at the cold, sinister, predatory note in her voice, and took a few steps away. As she did, she was able to take in what the girl was wearing. That was the strangest thing so far. The girl was dressed in a long, black dress of many folds and layers that looked to Ashley to be beautifully crafted of soft, expensive cloth. The black layers parted in the middle at the front, revealing bright crimson inner folds. When the girl shifted her weight from one leg to the other, she whole dress shifted as one, the layers falling over each in a new pattern. It looked like something an elegant, European noblewoman would worn centuries ago, but darker and more gothic. Ashley's gaze was drawn slowly upwards, and she saw that the dress was bound tight around the girl's waist by a studded leather corset that accentuated her curves and her breasts wickedly. And though the dress extended down the girl's arms to flared, flower-like cuffs, her top of her chest was bare, exposing her pure white skin to the air. Ashley couldn't stop herself staring a little.
"A third time, I ask," the girl repeated, advancing on Ashley. The sound of her high-heeled boots on the hard floor was deafening in the otherwise-silent room. "Are you lost?"
