My body tensed, and I felt my chest continue to heave as I fought to get my breathing under control, but I couldn’t let it show. I had to hide my panic. If my mom saw it, if she noticed the sweat beading on my forehead and upper lip…

  I glanced towards her seat, and my eyebrows pulled together as I realised it was empty. She wasn’t there. Relief washed over me, and I couldn’t help but sag back in my chair. I had no idea where she was, but I hoped it meant I’d have slightly more time to stop panicking quite so much before I had to face her again.

  It would be fine. She hadn’t been that bad recently, but I knew she would have been vicious if she’d seen how badly I was hyperventilating. I could already almost hear the cruel laughter that would spill from her lips as she realised I was upset over something as small and unimportant as a dream. She’d find it hilarious and would demand to know what had happened, what had managed to upset me quite so much.

  A shiver slipped down my spine. I could barely remember it. I had no idea what had happened in my dream to make my heart pound quite so hard, but nausea bubbled in my stomach, and fear continued to grip me. Even if I told her that, if I said I couldn’t recall whatever it was, Mom would still want to know more. I knew she would.

  It wouldn’t be empathy or sympathy that was motivating her. She wouldn’t bombard me with questions to better understand why I was so shaken and to help reassure me. It would be calculated. She’d be hungry for more information, excited for an insight into what bothered me most so she could mock me for it. It would be thrown back in my face at some point. I knew it would.

  But she wasn’t there, I reassured myself as I took a deep breath, my eyes flitting towards the large glass doors at the front of the service station. I didn’t need to worry about it just yet. She was still inside, so I was fine. I still had time, and thinking about her was just making me more worked up, which wasn’t helping at all.

  Leaning to the side slightly, I rested my forehead against the window, enjoying the feel of the sun-warmed glass. Breathing at that angle hurt, though. For some reason, each inhale sent a twinge through my chest, and despite how grounding the window felt against my skin, I couldn’t stay there for long.

  What had happened, I asked myself as I looked down at my body, taking an experimental deep breath. It caused another stinging ache, and I felt my confusion grow. The pain felt too sharp to be a pulled muscle or something like that, but I had no recollection of anything else that could have caused the pain.

  I probably just wasn’t paying attention, I realised. A car probably cut Mom off as she was pulling into the station or something, and she’d had to brake suddenly. The seat belt probably yanked me back, and I didn’t even notice, or maybe I was still asleep. That would make sense. Mom wasn’t always the most careful driver, and she did like to slam on her brakes to prove a point, even when it wasn’t entirely necessary.

  She said she had to do it. Apparently, when driving, it was best to do things like that to show other drivers that they were being stupid or unsafe. You can’t exactly get out of the car and tell them just how idiotic they were being, she’d told me one day, so the only thing drivers could do was to over-exaggerate things.

  That made no sense to me, though. Surely, Mom was being a danger to the other cars on the road by braking suddenly after the car pulled out a bit too close to her. The people behind us had to slam on their brakes too, and it felt entirely unnecessary. Mom hadn’t even been that close to the car in front of us, and she wasn’t driving particularly fast.

  I was dumb enough to say that to her. The words slipped from my mouth before I realised what I was saying, and she was furious. She accused me of questioning her driving, of saying she didn’t deserve to have a license, and pulled over, threatening to leave me at the side of the road to walk home by myself, but that wasn’t what I was trying to do at all. I just didn’t understand and spoke without thinking, but I’d learnt from then. No matter how tempting it had been, I’d never said anything that could be interpreted as questioning her driving again.

  That was probably what had happened, I decided as I rubbed my chest distractedly. I did have a vague recollection of my body rocking backwards as something hit it, so it was probably just the seat belt. The pain seemed to be radiating from about the right place, anyway.

  My eyes flicked towards my jumper again, and the urge to pull my neckline aside and peer at the skin below bubbled up within me, needing to know whether the impact had caused a bruise or a red mark or something. My fingers gripped the fabric, and my gaze darted around the car park, making sure that no one was looking at me before something tugged at me.

  I froze as a wave of something close to confusion seemed to pull at the back of my mind, and I dropped my hands into my lap as my eyebrows drew together. I looked around, trying to figure out what was happening, but I wasn’t sure.

  Something just felt… wrong. I couldn’t quite work out what it was, but something was a bit off. It felt like I’d come into my room after school and noticed that something had moved, that my mom had been looking through my stuff and tried to put everything back where it was so that I didn’t realise. She didn’t do that often. Usually, she didn’t care whether I could tell that she’d been searching through my belongings, but it happened from time to time, and it always made me feel unsettled.

  My eyes scanned the car park, trying to find the source of my unease. There was nothing obvious that appeared out of place, as far as I could tell. It was just a regular car park and a normal-looking service station on the side of a motorway. As far as I could tell, we were still in Scotland too. It was too green for us to have crossed into England again.

  Maybe that was the issue, I considered as my eyes found the trees not far from us. Mom had parked right by the edge of the car park, and it backed onto a forest. It was so densely packed that I could barely see through the trees, and so many plants seemed crammed into the spaces between them. The weeds and thickets were so overgrown it would have been almost impossible to traipse through, but anything could have been hiding in there.

  Goosebumps broke out on my arms, and I glanced towards my mom’s door, making sure the light was glowing. Luckily, it was. I must have already locked the car doors, even though I didn’t remember doing it. That wasn’t particularly surprising, though. It was an almost automatic reflex.

  I always made sure to lock the doors when Mom left me in the car. Even if it was for only a few minutes, I had to do it. It didn’t feel safe not to, and that was because of my mom. She’d told me too many horror stories about people being dragged from their cars and thrown in the back of a van before they even worked out what was happening.

  It was even more dangerous near a motorway too. Apparently, that made it much easier to get away, and the kidnappers could be halfway to France with me in the back before the police had even been called. That was what Mom had told me a while back before slamming the door and walking away without bothering to look back or lock the door. I was sure she’d spent even longer than usual in the service station that time, and she was far too happy when she got back to find me trying not to have a panic attack. I’d tried not to worry too much, but every single person who’d walked past the car had made my heart race. I almost expected them to smash the window and whisk me away.

  She was exaggerating, though. I was pretty sure of that, at least. It probably did happen sometimes, but Mom made it seem like it was a regular occurrence, like every single car park had at least one person lingering in it, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab someone.

  Maybe she was right, a small voice at the back of my head whispered as my gaze found the light on Mom’s door again, needing to check that it was still locked. Nothing had happened since I looked less than a minute ago. There was no way for it to just unlock itself, and I would have heard if Mom had done it, but I just needed to know.

  She could have been right. I had no way of knowing for sure whether there was someone in the car park looking for the right victim, and maybe they’d decide it was me. I couldn’t see any vans, though. She always said they’d drag me away into a van, and there weren’t any near me, but perhaps that didn’t matter.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Some of the cars were kind of big, I realised as my eyes found a fancy-looking black car that had parked on the other side of the road behind Mom’s. The boot seemed large enough for someone to shove me into, so maybe they didn’t need a van. They could just put me in there and drive away.

  But Mom would notice. They wouldn’t get halfway to France like she said. That didn’t make sense. We were still in Scotland. They’d need to drive for hours to get to the Channel Tunnel, and that was plenty of time for her to notice that I was missing and call the police. Plus, I’d have my phone. As long as I held onto it tightly or hid it, I’d be able to bring it with me, and as soon as Mom got back to the car and realised I wasn’t there, she’d phone me. If I answered…

  My thoughts seemed to trip over themselves as they stumbled to a halt, and another wave of confusion gripped me. It was more intense that time, but I still wasn’t sure why. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, and I glanced around the car park as frustration rose within me.

  Something felt… familiar. That was what it was, I realised. It was deja vu. Something about that thought, about the situation, felt strangely familiar, but that wasn’t particularly surprising. I was alone in a service station car park, waiting for my mom to come out so we could continue the journey. That happened over a dozen times whenever we went anywhere.

  She always stopped often, saying she needed to use the bathroom or get some fresh air, but I was pretty sure she just needed a break from being around me. Even when I wasn’t talking or paying any attention to her, she seemed to struggle with it, and I understood. I think we both needed the short reprieves from each other’s company.

  That was all it was, I told myself, trying to believe it. We’d already stopped a handful of times, and it wasn’t even midday yet. That was why it felt familiar, and I was just getting worked up over nothing. As long as I ignored the nagging sensation that continued to bother me, I’d be fine. Mom would come out of the service station soon, and we’d be on the way again.

  But it wasn’t easy. The growing sense of wrongness plagued me, trying to convince me that something else was happening, and I couldn’t help but examine the building before me, even as I told myself that everything was okay. It looked fine. Everything about the squat window-lined service station appeared completely normal.

  They all looked the same, really. It felt like the majority of the rest stops along the main roads had the same layout. They were all surprisingly large buildings lined with advertisements, containing a handful of shops, fast food places, and toilets. The only real variety was in how clean the toilets were, but I assumed the ones in the station we’d stopped at weren’t too bad. It seemed like a pretty clean place. I couldn’t see any rubbish littering the forecourt, and the bins weren’t overflowing.

  My gaze flicked towards the door, checking to see if my mom was approaching before movement caught my attention. A soft chuckle escaped my lips as I stared at the screens in the windows. Something had gone wrong with them. I was pretty sure they were meant to be displaying ads, but there must have been an issue in their programming because the images were moving too quickly. They were changing constantly, looping through countless pictures without pausing for even a second.

  It must have been intentional, right? Surely, that was part of an ad. It would stop in a minute and have some joke about how the world was moving too fast or something. I was pretty sure I’d seen something like that before. Maybe it was promoting a coffee chain or a roadside hotel. That would have made sense. They probably say something about how nice it would be to slow down and let the world continue to rush by.

  Or maybe someone else had done it. It might not have been a marketing thing. Perhaps the person who set it up just really didn’t care about their job. They might have been trying to get fired for some reason, or maybe they were just trying to pass a message on to someone.

  My head jerked back slightly. Where had that thought come from, I asked myself. Why would anyone use the screens to send a message, and how would they even do that? How would anyone understand what the flickering images meant? I wasn’t sure, but somehow, I knew that was what was happening. Someone was trying to send a message, and I was their intended target, but why? What did they want to tell me?

  Run.

  The command seemed to flash into my brain, and I began reaching towards my seat belt before I could stop myself. Confusion and restlessness thrashed within me, and I looked around desperately, searching for my mom, but I couldn’t see her. Instead, I just found people. People dressed in matching clothing.

  They looked like poorly designed video game characters, I realised as panic made my hands tremble. Someone had just clicked copy and paste on their clothes, only bothering to design a few different options. There was a dress, jeans and a white T-shirt, and a hoodie. Those were the only outfits the people in the car park were wearing, and it felt wrong. It was lazy. The designers should have done better.

  My eyes found the screens again. What was going on? Why did the people all look so similar, and who wanted me to run? I should listen to them, I decided before immediately changing my mind. That was stupid. I didn’t know where I’d go if I did run, and I wasn’t sure whether I was meant to be running away from something or towards it. Plus, I hadn’t even received that instruction yet. The screens were still cycling through advertisements, and they would be for at least another couple of minutes.

  How did I know that? I was absolutely certain that they would. There wasn’t even a sliver of doubt in my mind, but how? How could I possibly know what was about to happen in that world? Could I see the future? Was that what was happening?

  No, I realised slowly, looking around again as my heart continued to thump. That wasn’t it. I’d been there before. The world, the service station, the people… it was too familiar, and I wasn’t just imagining it. I’d sat in the car outside that building, waiting for my mom to return far too many times to count, but she never came back. In the hundreds of times I’d lived it, if not more, I’d never even seen her. Did she exist in that world?

  And how did I know? How did I know with utter certainty that I’d never seen her? Why was I so sure that I’d lived it before? I couldn’t remember the other time. My memories refused to reveal themselves to me. No matter how desperately I lunged for them, they flitted away and remained stubbornly out of reach, but still, I knew I was trapped in a loop.

  It wasn’t the first loop I’d been trapped in, I recalled. My mind felt foggy. It was hard to wade through to find the world I was thinking about, but somehow, I managed to locate it. Memories flooded into me, and I couldn’t help but smile as Aaron’s face floated before my eyes. The kindness, the love, in his gaze warmed my heart, but it died too soon.

  Just like I always did in that loop.

  That world was different, though. I was different there; I’d been called Beth. That was what he’d called me, but I was sure it was still me. I could feel it. I might have had a different name, but I was still the same person. Each version of me that died there was real. They were all me, and he was trapped there. He was forced to spend his days watching the girl he loved die over and over again, unable to do anything to stop it from happening.

  But time worked differently there. It had been moving on. He was growing older. I knew he was. He looked older, and that had surprised me. I’d expected him to look younger, for his face to be more boyish and his cheeks fuller, but he’d changed. He wasn’t being made to relive the same short snippet of time, and that meant the rules of the loop, whatever the reason for him to have been trapped there, must have been different to the world I was in.

  Terror leapt within me, and my breath caught in my chest. What did that mean? My loop was shorter. Time was being reset, and I was being dragged back to the beginning again and again, but I still couldn’t remember it. I couldn’t remember how it ended or what I was doing there. Why was I there?

  My grip on the seat belt tightened. I clung to it tightly, needing something to hold on to. I wasn’t going to have to watch the person I loved die again and again like Aaron. Somehow, I knew that, but I was almost certain I was going to be killed. I was going to have to experience my own death repeatedly. Would I ever get used to it? Was that something that would ever stop being quite so terrifying? Would it always hurt?

  I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have the answer to any of those questions, and that scared me even more. I needed to do something. I’d already died too many times. The pain was something I knew far too well, but I hadn’t gotten used to it yet. It still stole my breath each time and left me sobbing whenever I woke up, and I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want to live it again.

  My breathing was too quick. It came in sharp gasps, but I couldn’t get it under control. Panic flailed within me, and I looked around, searching for something that would help, but there was nothing. I needed to leave. That was all I knew. I had to leave and get away from the place before it was too late. If the doors open and the Company appeared, I’d…

  Fear flooded my heart as the screens lining the service station turned white, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block everything out. It was childish logic, and I knew it, but part of me honestly believed that if I couldn’t see the screens, if I didn’t know what was happening there, I’d be safe. Nothing would be able to hurt me.

  But not knowing was worse. I knew I needed to do it, but I was too scared to open my eyes again. There would be something there. Something or someone would be waiting for me just outside the car with weapons held at the ready, and I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to.

  I reached out, clawing desperately at the dizzinesses that waited at the back of my mind. One leapt out towards me, but I batted it aside. That wasn’t the world I wanted. It wasn’t the place I was looking for. I wanted to go home. Back to my reality, where everything felt normal and no one was going to hunt me down. I needed it. I needed the peace and calmness of my world. I was so tired.

  For a moment, I thought the dizziness was going to fight against me. I was so scared that it would pull away or refuse to yield, but reluctantly, it wrapped itself around me. A sob of pure relief threatened to escape my lips as my surroundings began to spin, and I tumbled through the worlds.