15 Aug ALTERNATE A

Alison sat down at her mirror. She looked tired. The Rosewood police had been tailing her all week and her best friends, especially Hanna were turning against her. The question was why? They had always been there for her. Done what she needed and wanted. Why didn’t they understand the decisions she was making were for not only to protect her, but for their own good as well?

Spenser was smart enough. She could almost keep up with her. Aria and Emily ran on emotion and that was always dangerous. But there was no question, needy little Hanna was changing. It was like watching Sleeping Beauty wake from her dream world. Hanna was being driven by something else and no matter how hard Alison tried to pinpoint it, “it” alluded her.
Her head ached again.
“Not again,” Alison said out loud.

The headaches had always come. They’d started around the time she was nine. They would hit like a winter storm and ruin her day. They made her angry and mean and the worse part, no one believed her. Not even her mother or her father or her friends. Only when she left and was on the run, the headaches almost completely subsided. But now she was back and so were the headaches.
It made sense didn’t it? It wasn’t until she’d came home that they’d started again and since last week, were getting painfully bad. This one was building up to be as torturous as the one she’d had the night she left.
A rush of pain slammed into her brain. Alison closed her eyes and held her breath. She balled up her fists, digging her nails into the flesh of her palms, doing her best to squeeze the agony away. But it wouldn’t go. With each panicked moment it got worse. She felt her hands open and lift into her hair as if reaching for the hatchet someone had buried deep into her skull. Then, from seemingly nowhere, she heard a voice.
“Oh, Alison, really,” a calm voice said.
Alison’s eyes flew open. The light hurt them. The sound of a passing car was so loud it almost broke her ear drums. She spun, looking around the room for the composed voice that seemed to be standing right behind her. No one was there.
“Let me in and I’ll stop,” the calm voice said.
Alison searched the room again then, catching her own refection in the mirror, she stopped. She could see herself sitting in the reflection of the looking glass staring back, but her hands were not in her hair and her faced wasn’t flushed with fear. The Alison in the mirror was calm and collected and impatiently waiting for Alison to let go.
“Breathe, Bitch,” the face in the mirror said.
Allison shuttered. She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” Alison repeated the words again and again.
“I am very real,” The girl in the mirror said.
“I don’t believe in ghosts. Courtney’s dead,” Alison said feeling the panic in her voice rising.
“Yes, she is. You saw to that, didn’t you? Open your eyes and look at me or I’ll rip your eyes lids off,” the girl in the mirrors said.
The tension in her all too calm voice was picking up an edge. “It’s time we met.”
Alison was terrified. She wanted to get up and run away. Get out of the room. Go someplace. Tell someone.
“They won’t believe you,” the voice said. “Open your eyes and don’t make me ask you again!”
A fiery surge of pain seared into her head so violent it forced Alison to open her mouth to scream, but the scream never came… only silence. Her whole world was silent and dark.