As yet unti­tled, or hes­i­tant­ly titled either Pre­ja Vu, or Pre­view, I haven’t yet found one that smiles at me. Feel free to sub­mit suggestions! 🙂

You look like shit.”
Ryann looked at her friend, who was steer­ing back into ear­ly morn­ing traf­fic. “Thanks a lot, Ash­ley. I know I can always count on my best friend for some encour­ag­ing words.”
“You also know that you can count on me to tell you the truth,” she shot anoth­er apprais­ing glance at Ryann who had flipped the visor down to check the truth­ful­ness. “Did you stay up all night work­ing on those sketches?”
“No, actu­al­ly they came togeth­er sur­pris­ing­ly fast. I was done by ten. Wait ‘til you see them; I added an atri­um on the south fac­ing entrance. Remem­ber how Mr. Brackus want­ed to bring the out­doors in?”
“Yeah, I can’t wait to see them. Your archi­tec­tur­al genius nev­er ceas­es to amaze. Now, tell me what’s up. You had a dream, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
Ryann sighed, and pressed three fin­gers against her fore­head, as if that would keep the dream from begin­ning again. “I had a dream,” she said simply.
Ash­ley kept silent through­out the remain­der of their com­mute. Ryann was glad for it; Ash­ley seemed to know when to push and when to back off. Soon she drove the lit­tle four cylin­der hatch­back into the cov­ered park­ing garage and found a park­ing space. It took a moment for them to adjust their eyes to their dim sur­round­ings. Ash­ley cut the engine and turned toward her friend. “So do you want to tell me about it? I assume it was a death dream this time, oth­er­wise you wouldn’t be look­ing like a corpse yourself.”
Ryann’s dreams had been a dai­ly dis­cus­sion since the two met in col­lege. A few years ago, one of her dreams had made head­lines a few days after she detailed it over cof­fee one morn­ing. Anoth­er time Ash­ley encour­aged Ryann to make a report to the police. It turned out to be a good thing she had, it had saved a lit­tle boy’s life. After that, they began watch­ing the news­pa­pers close­ly for more proof. They final­ly assumed that each of her dreams had become real­i­ty, and the friends would spec­u­late on any pos­si­bil­i­ty of find­ing the sub­jects of the dream.
Ryann didn’t dream about peo­ple she actu­al­ly knew. They were strangers. There was no con­nec­tion that they could find between any of them and Ryann her­self. Each dream was a mon­u­men­tal moment in the lives of these strangers. Why that moment came to her in a dream days, some­times weeks before the event, was still unknown. Often the dreams were set in anoth­er coun­try, its par­tic­i­pants spoke lan­guages that Ryann could only some­times iden­ti­fy. She saw snip­pets of births, first steps, can­cer remis­sions, car acci­dents, grad­u­a­tions, and the most dis­turb­ing: deaths. Any­thing that could evoke a strong emo­tion­al reac­tion, Ryann would be an invol­un­tary observer.
Ryann met her best friend’s gaze. “Yes, it was a death. A murder.”
“Oh, God.” Ash­ley knew that a mur­der meant Ryann would spend the next few days try­ing to find the vic­tim before the event. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the com­plete stranger would be found before being mur­dered was prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble, and they both knew it. They both also knew that Ryann couldn’t pre­tend that she didn’t know about it. If there was any way she could save a life, she would. “Tell me about it,” she said softly.