A Day In Jayne's Life

It was a bright Sunday morning and Jayne woke up as the light streamed in her window of her apartment building. She couldn’t see the clock without her glasses on, but knew the time to be approximately 8:00, as that was the time she routinely woke up on Sunday morning to get ready to run her errands of the day. She showered, made her bed, and went to do laundry.

After a morning of mundane chores, she went to her community band practise at one in the afternoon and began to warm up with a circle of fifths chart in front of her. Suddenly, her cell phone rang. About to silence it, she saw that it was from her father, who rarely called her for small-talk. Picking up, she heard the tone of her father’s voice as he said “hi Jaynie”, and she knew something was wrong.

“Have you heard from Ethan recently?” he asked roughly.

“No, I haven’t talked to him in a while, he’s been busy at work this month preparing a lot of reports I thought.” Jayne’s thoughts raced back to the last time she’d seen her closest sibling. They had drifted apart recently, but she remembered back to the days when they had both been seen as the babies of the family, and had tried to pretend to be twins like their older siblings Crystal and Deirdre. They had done everything together, but once he finished school, got a job, and got married last year she had lost touch with him. They still kept in contact, but no longer confided in each other and talked frequently. She had last seem him at a family gathering for Brittany's birthday a few weeks ago.

“His wife called today to say that he’s gone missing. She hasn’t seen him in over a day.” Jayne’s father shook her out of thoughts again with this pronouncement.

The next few hours seemed like a blur. Jayne packed up her flute, went to her family home, and consoled her family while they made up posters and notified the police. Jayne went over the digits of pi in her head, trying to keep her mind off the horrible visions she was having of what could have befallen her always reliable brother Ethan. 3.14159… She pasted pictures onto poster paper … 265358979 … She searched through photos on her laptop for more recent, clear pictures of Ethan… 323846… She got up to try to comfort Ethan’s wife… 2643383… Realizing yet again how bad she was at small talk, she gave up on trying to draw out Ethan’s wife, and went back to poster making. The clock chimed, and chimed, and chimed. Shaking off her numeric chant inside her head, she counted the chimes, and realized it was already midnight. The day had passed, and she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunchtime. Mindless with worry, the next day began with little notice. For once Jayne did not follow her schedule, and did not go to bed thinking of world capitals, but rather all the nice things Ethan had done for her, and all the years that had gone by without Jayne praying for anything or even bothering to go to church. Tonight Jayne would pray. Please let Ethan be safe.

''But Jayne was not to find out what has happened to her brother, at least not for a while. In the night, during a fitful sleep, her body is taken, and Jayne soon wakes up to find herself in a different place altogether... ''

---Prologues--&gt;

Chapter 1--&gt;