The Ordinary Dead

The Nightmare

In the dream, Ciara smelled nothing but pure, fresh air flowing in through the windows. Her mother always kept the windows in their house wide open, except for when it rained. Before, she had forgotten to close the windows, and there was a puddle inside Ciara's bedroom on one particularly stormy day. She could almost taste the faint scent of grass and flowers from their garden outside, the breeze carrying the smell into her bedroom, where she stood.

Ciara remembered her bedroom clearly, but in this dream, she was certain that she was standing in her bedroom from when she was younger. When she left home to live with Brendan a month after her sixteenth birthday, she had asked her mother to keep everything the same. She could remember the black and white wallpaper, and the rose silhouettes she'd stenciled on when she was bored one day. Her bed sheets would have had the same plain black silk sheets over her bed, and her chest of drawers would have had the same pink shaded lamp sitting above it.

But the room she was standing in was one she lived in before it was redecorated. The wallpaper was filled with stenciled on butterflies and castles, and her favorite tale of Rapunzel had its very own section on the wall, where a tall tower was drawn in black. From the window came a black wave of hair, and a man climbing up from the bottom. Every inch of her room was suited perfectly for a three year old girl - including the nightlight, which faintly illuminated the room, giving it a blueish glow.

Tucked up neatly in the bed lay a young girl who looked remarkably like Ciara. She could see through the safety bars that she was sleeping with her pillow rested to her face, and a stuffed giraffe toy underneath her arms. Looking over to her old windowsill, her heart sunk. In front of the closed pink curtains, a photo frame with a photo of her family stood proudly in a silver frame.

Ciara moved silently and cautiously towards the window, being careful not to wake the sleeping girl. She swept up the picture with a single, swift swipe, and scanned over the people in the photo. It showed a family of three - a tall woman with dark brown hair and eyes to match, with a skinny yet slim build, much like her own. Standing next to the woman stood a tall man, with strikingly light blonde hair - so light, that it was almost white. He wore dark clothes over his thin build, which only added to the brightness of his almost shoulder length hair, and fringe that ended above his strikingly dazzling blue eyes. He wasn't old - neither was the woman - and seemed to be in his mid-twenties.

Between the two adults stood a small girl in a pink dress, who had inherited the same features as her mother - the straight, dark brown hair, the sharp nose and thin build. She had also seemed to inherit features from her father - the softness of her cheekbones, her soft, bright blue eyes; even the way her lips curled upwards when she smiled in the photo.

Putting the photo back down, she turned to glance at the rest of the room, before looking back at the photo. Seeing the faces further away, she realized that it was in fact Leliel and her mother she was looking at, and herself when she was around three years old. All of the people in the photo were smiling, although Ciara had the brightest smile on her face.

She was startled out of her thoughts by the sound of footsteps creeping closer and closer towards her door. A bead of sweat dripped down Ciara's face as she frantically scanned the room for a place to hide. Within no time at all, the door handle turned, squeaking quietly, and her mother walked in. Her eyes set straight onto her young daughter, and she walked straight past the older Ciara. Her mother bent down onto her knees, and brushed the messy hair from her daughter's face, and kissed her forehead gently. She smiled softly in her sleep, the corners of her mouth curling upwards, as Leliel's did in the photo on the windowsill.

The door swung open again, letting light from their hallway flood into the room. Leliel stood underneath the doorway in a plain white suit and black tie, and after a moment moved into the room to be beside his wife and daughter. It seemed that, whilst Ciara stood watching the scene play out, she was invisible to those involved directly; she was standing beside them, but they could not see her.