Kiera felt like shit.
She slowly opened her eyes and immediately closed them again.
The light or whatever it was hurt like hell and there was a constant painful throbbing behind her eyes and at the base of her neck.
She tried opening her eyes again, keeping it at a squint and stumbled her way towards the bathroom and towards her medicine cabinet.
She opened the cabinet and rummaged for a pain reliever she thought she always kept right there. She quickly took a tablet once she found it and slumped against the bathroom floor and rested her head against the cold sink.
She never thought dreaming of being hit by a bus would give her this much of a headache.
Once she thought the pain reliever did its thing, she gingerly got up and moved to wash her face. She was practically on auto pilot as she washed her face, brushed her teeth and only snapped out of it when she reached for the expensive bottle of moisturizer she kept right beside her mug and found only air.
She blinked at the empty space and proceeded to open the cabinets and noticed there were no sink cabinets, the only cabinet was the little shelves behind the open mirror. She frowned at the mostly empty shelves and closed it and stared into the mirror.
Staring back at her were bright blue eyes, pale unblemished skin, and tussled jet-black wavy hair.
Last she checked she'd managed to get dark bags under her eyes after the late-night part-time job of waitressing at the one of the many fancy restaurants in the city and she had straightened her hair to fit her role of concubine no. 6.
Despite many claims of instant skin rejuvenation there was no way anything she can afford can get her skin looking this youthful and stress free. And the amount of chemicals she paid for and the time it took to get that straight hair just so, it had better be permanent.
She pinched herself and nothing changed. She hurried to look for her phone and in her rush stubbed her toe against a small table that she did not remember being there. The pain from the stubbed toe made everything seem all the more real.
She found her phone beneath her tossed jacket and squinted when she realized it was an older model. A smart phone, yes, but not the one she used. This was smaller and an earlier model her friend had passed on to her when she got the latest model. She remembered not wanting to accept it but her friend had pushed and said she will throw it away if Kiera didn't accept it.
She clicked on the power button and the phone lit up and the year jolted her. She unlocked her phone with the same number password she always used.
Looked for a browser icon and searched today's date. The results felt like a sucker punch.
No reality TV show would ever go to the lengths of actually changing the online search results for several sites.
Nothing made sense.
If the date was right, she should have just turned 18 years old a week ago.
Last she checked she had turned 25 and dreading her next birthday.