Deja-vu, Groundhog day, double-take.

You feel the edges of conciousness creeping in. The wolf as it sniffs after you at your hiding spot gradually becomes less and less real: you're in a dream.

The car starts breaking away like clods of dirt as the wolf continues to bite and snap at you, trying go get its fangs into your soft fluffy flesh.

The covers of your bed shift and your eyes open, the image of the wolf snapping still in your mind, but the image of your alarm clock ahead of you brings you back to reality.

You put your clothes on and start your day. Another ordinary day.

But something nags you. One little difference. You take your turn off the turnpike, but then it hits you: this feels like your dream. This feels like what you dreamt the night before.

It's a rather ordinary evening, otherwise. As you take your last turn, you realize that no one's cut you off today. The crises at work were not only minor- they were the same. It's starting to creep you out when you get to the theater you see some of the exact same people you saw in your dream.

You think. It was, after all, a dream. They have a tendency of disappearing like snow on a hotplate. You know something was there - it's wet. But the exact pattern? That's a lot harder to get a picture of.

You're just quietly sighing to yourself, glad to be alive, right in front of your front door, when you get the complete creeps. Soon that wolf's gonna show up - you just *know* it.

Well, momma didn't raise no fool. Last time, the keys didn't work. This time you spin around and just start running.

You're 4 blocks away from home before you stop to catch your breath. Looking around, there's no wolf.

Or is there? You see a pair of eyes walk around the edge of a corner near your house. Eyes glowing and close to the ground.

Your breath catches in your throat and you spin to run.

A few more blocks, and you chance a look over your shoulder. The wolf is there. Trotting, not running.

Playing with you.

Sweat springs on your brow, hot little beads sticking to your forehead as you look left and right for an exit. THERE! It's an open door in the side of that abandoned apartment building near your place. You duck inside and pull the door shut.

You look outside, see the wolf trot up, look with those eerie glowing eyes at you, then it trots away.

"Grandma, will you JUST dump it out?!"

Someone shouting at you isn't something you needed. You turn around and see an irate clerk behind a counter. There's a very old lady counting her change out onto the desk in front of the clerk.

The old lady gasps and says, "Oh." The clerk glares. The old lady's mouth twitches in a little fear. She dumps the change, then leaves, screaming!

You move so she can leave, and she cries for the police. The clerk behind the counter shouts, "Aw, lady! Come back! I'm not- You can- Awh..." He frowns, shakes his head, and looks at the change on the desk. He looks up in sudden realization. "HEY! This change doesn't cover it! Come back--- Awh!" He says, waving with exhasperation at her, turning around and sitting down on his stool in defeat.

You don't realize you're staring until the clerk looks up at you. You turn away.

Weirdness. That guy looks familiar somehow. Probably works in the area.

The store is your average convenience store. A drink would probably calm your nerves. That spooky dream is dispelled, now. You avoided the wolf.

What the?

The drinks are odd. "Is Pep", "7-Clone" "A&W Boot Rear"... You look at other products. They all have odd names. "Pepto Issmall", "Potato Chips (from TF manufacturing)", even some little halloween costume pices all from "TF Manufacturing".

But there IS one product that piques your curiosity.

It's...

Written by Arthur J. Pearson

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