Knight & Day

Silver Spoon

+Phoenix+

I tossed and turned as familiar images swirled around in my head.
Screaming, shattered glass, hard collisions of skin and flesh... My heart beat raced in terror.
My tormentors, many in number, all held the same rage, the same unforgiving, merciless intent. Blow upon blow, word after word, they winded me... until I began to suffocate.
Begging between gasps of air that my life be spared, my pleading fell on deaf ears.
My vision disfigured into bright, white spots and then finally....
darkness.

I opened my eyes, sighing as I realized it was all just a dream. I blinked, forcing a hot stream of unshed tears to glide down my round cheeks. I'd been having the same dream for as long as I could remember. It was always the exact same, and it always ended the same way... with my death.

I wiped the tear tracks from my face as I sat up, removing my comforter and placing the bottoms of my feet on the carpet. I stretched, arching my back and rolling my neck to relieve the pain of sleeping on an air mattress. After wiping the sleep from my eyes, I stood to my feet, slipping on some house shoes and walking towards the bathroom.

As I stared into the mirror, brushing my teeth and evaluating my appearance, I thought about what happened before I clocked out of my shift last night.

"This is the last time I'm going to put up with your tardiness, Phoenix! Show up late again and you're fired! This is your final warning!"

Those were Catherine's last words to me before she sent me on my way to the bus stop. I'll admit, I had a bit of a habit of being late. My time management skills could definitely use some work. But it wasn't something I did on purpose. My sleep schedule is super fucked up. Some nights I can't even get to sleep on account of how bad my anxiety is. It's like when I lay down to go to sleep, suddenly every thought I'd been avoiding throughout the day comes flooding into my mind all at once. All the negative shit that I'd spent all day talking myself out of comes back with a vengeance and it's nothing short of impossible to get any sleep when it happens. By the time the thoughts subside, the sun is out and the day is starting. No time to recharge or rejuvenate, just right back into responsibilities and hustling. It gets exhausting, most of the time I'm severely fatigued, but I push through. I don't really have a choice.