***
“What she needs to do is face her own past. She’s always running away from reality, preferring to hide behind that shallow façade and pretending to be okay, that it’s really no wonder it all bounds back on her in her nightmares.” – Dr Christina Jones, Leonara Rhinehart’s psychiatrist.
***
“Only you can carry on your father’s legacy. You must follow in his footsteps!” Uncle Harris’ voice booms from his seated figure behind a large oak desk. For some unfathomable reason, his normally clean-shaven face has grown a long white beard.
I nod respectfully and open the door to the right of his office. The room is spacious and the décor is all grays and blacks. In the centre is an empty large black desk. I fearfully step towards it. There are streaks of red all over the desk, the only indication of colour in the otherwise dreary room. I touch it. It is still wet, I remark in my thoughts, as I try to rub off the stain. It won’t come off. Irrational fear grips my heart. I try to rub it off again by wiping it on my jeans. The stain remains stubborn and, I notice in horror, even seems to have spread all over my hands. The rational part of my brain tells me it's only a stain while the other side urges me to scream and scrape it off somehow.
Knocks thunder on the door of the office, distracting me from my dirty hands. I frown, who could it be?
I call out, “Enter!” and a swarm of people clothed in office attires with identical masks of furious faces stalk into the office until they surround my desk. Another swarm of people enter, but this time, they are all wearing Rhinehart cleaning uniforms. The next group dons Rhinehart hotel staff uniform. The next group consists of various types of uniformed staff, but with the same identical furious expression. Simultaneously they all bark complaints at me. Voices overlap each other to the point where I cannot even distinguish any words. I feel my heart jumping out of its cage in panic.
When I glance down at the desk and find, among the splatters of red liquid, a little red sticker reading “confiscated” on it, darkness engulfs my surroundings.
I wake up in cold sweat. A nightmare. It was just a nightmare. I’m safe. I’m in my hotel suite.
Granted, it’s a Rhinehart Queen Executive Suite, which doesn’t help recovery from the traumatic nightmare I’ve just endured about Rhinehart hotel management failure, but still, at least it’s comfy and luxurious and without complaining staff and bankruptcy. I sigh. This issue must really be getting to me if it can invade my usual nightmare subject. I hope I won’t have to rely on pills again.
Turning my head, I groan when I see the clock indicating 7:48 am. I can’t even bring myself to go back to sleep now, in fear of the nightmare continuing from where it left off. Nonono. I refuse to give my evil subconscious such power over me. It’s the subconscious, it should remain in the subconscious, why bother the conscious mind like that?
I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and shower. As soon as I’m done, I press speed dial #3. He picks up on the 5th ring.
“Mm.”
“Get up.”
“Mm.”
“I’m up.”
“Why? Didn’t you want to wake up late? Go back to sleep.” He says groggily.
“I can’t. I had a nightmare. So get up.”
“Do you want to come here and snuggle up with me? That way you won’t have nightmares and I’ll get some sleep.” He really has no shame.
“Shut up you insensitive pervert.”
“Call me a pervert after you grow up a little. I have no interest in little girl’s bodies.”
YOU ARE READING
Running into her
General Fiction"I just want to see if this will teach me how to feel again. And since you seem to want to die anyhow, will you please let me kill you?” Dubbed as the Walking Disaster Magnet, Leonara Rhinehart, the Rhinehart conglomerate's sole heir, only goes to T...
