Disclaimer: Invisible people can't own Twilight

Chapter One

"Shit." The gasped word clashes harshly with the stark silence, a low feminine voice breaking through darkness.

Bella shakes in the solitary quiet of her room, cold sweat dripping between her shoulder blades as she again becomes accustomed to her body. Hair sticks to her pale skin, choppy chin-length strands plastered against her face as she futilely tries to push them away. The temperature of the basement bedroom does her no favors; the walls are hardly insulated, simply concrete covered cinderblocks, and the floor is unforgiving, water-stained from flash floods, covered in seemingly random piles of clothing and books. Her bed is little more than a mattress on the floor with a few tattered blankets thrown over the worn sheets.

She presses her fingers against her eyes, forcing her breathing to regulate, trying to wash away the images from her retinas. Despite her efforts, the last nightmare is still stained across her mindscape and she had the distinct, stomach-sinking feeling that she would have to address the subject of her late-night haunts in the morning. It was unfortunate that her interference was required during school hours, as school was the only peace Bella found in her daily life, but for the safety of others, she had to act on her premonitions.

Toffee colored eyes dart to the high rectangular window situated above her bed, early dawn light breaking through the perpetual grey clouds, casting a dull blue-white light through the glass. For a moment, Bella appreciates that she slept an hour more than usual.

Of course, she thinks with a bitter snort. What is usual? Normal?

Some families had blond hair or blue eyes; Bella's entire family had dreams, a trait that had been passed down through the generations, a trait that somehow combined the future, the past, the present and the dreams of a seer. Her older brother, Riley, dreamt of the past – it was a point of pride that he knew exactly who murdered JFK – and her twin sister, Bree, had frequent frivolous dreams of day-to-day life.

Bella was not as lucky as her siblings, in many ways.

Sometimes, she wondered if maybe it was because of the way she had come into the world that directed her disturbing nightmares of murders and suicides. Perhaps, because of the fact that Bella's life ended her mother's, she was indebted to the more violent side of human nature. Once, when she was very young and had just moved into the basement, she wondered if her mother knew what Bella would have to cope with – the blood, the screams, the gunshots, or the horrifying gore.

Her nightmares, though, were not the worst of her issues; unlike her siblings, who simply wandered through their dreamscapes, Bella seemed to be involuntarily compelled to drift into an astral form. It wasn't that she simply watched the nightmares – she was part of them, a third-person witness to the horrible fantasies of people she knew. There didn't seem to be any way for Bella to resist the draw of astral projection and, as such, she took the term dream walker to a whole new level. Her nightly excursions into the nightmares of her neighbors made her basement bedroom a necessity – so people would not hear her screams – and her involuntary astral form made her sleep less than restful. Most nights, she woke up after only a few hours of sleep and then forced herself to stay awake with the use of the old coffee maker plugged into the wall in her room.

On any other normal night – or what constituted for normal in Bella's world – she would have woken earlier, sequestered in her room with several cups of strong black coffee and a crossword. As it was, since she had woken later than normal, she did not have the luxury of the bitter black drink or the smear of her blue pen; there was breakfast to cook, lest she upset the one parent she had.

With a heavy sigh that was startlingly loud in the bleakness of her frigid room, she places her feet on the frozen floor, blindly kicking her way through a pile of clothes until the familiar feel of denim brushed against her toes. Dressing in the dark, she pulls on dark jeans so torn up they hardly qualified as pants and a vintage grey shirt she found in a thrift store. Bella had never put much stock into what she looked like or what she wore – she simply didn't have the time between the nightmares, her job and her various forms of housework. Besides, she never got satisfaction from fashion that Bree does – she could care less about nail polish and hair curlers or what shade of blush looked best against her complexion.

As if proving her own idle thoughts, one of Bella's hands reaches up to ruffle her choppy bob, not particularly caring that her bed-head did not tame. She was perfectly content to let her girly, popular twin have the looks – and again, when would Bella find the time to care?

Bella glances at the window, cursing under her breath when she notices that the sun seemed to be rising much quicker today; with practiced steps, she scales the creaking wooden stairs the lead up to the basement door, expertly avoiding the loudest areas. The kitchen, as always, is empty this early in the morning but Bella isn't fooled – the sound of the shower from upstairs prompts her to hurry. Twenty minutes later, Bella is setting out a small breakfast feast, pouring coffee for her father and hurriedly stirring in his cream and sugar as the heavy thump of feet settle on the first floor.

A/N: So, Hallelujah is going to be my main focus but I started writing this during my mom's surgery and it kind of bloomed, especially since I've had a little bit of writer's block.

As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.

~cupcakeriot