EN | Chilumi Week 2022

𝟼. ✧ I don't remember

Prompt: Dreams/Nightmares [2100 words]

What was I doing?

The more I tried to remember, the less my memory seemed to come back.

Was I fighting? That's what I was doing most of the time, so it probably was. Yet I couldn't remember. If I was fighting, then who was I fighting?

But then again, where was I? All around me was darkness. I could barely make out my hands. It was far too dark. What was I supposed to do?

No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than a massive white door appeared before me as if by magic. Where it led to, I didn't know. But staying in that eerie darkness was less tempting than turning that gleaming, shiny handle and stepping through that door out of nowhere.

So that's what I did, my torn black glove reaching over the handle without hesitation to pull it down, and reveal what lay behind.

I left the nothingness to find myself assaulted by the faint glow of candles lighting the main room of a house. Screams hit my ears with force as small children began to circle me, chasing each other with smiles on their faces in an attempt to catch each other. In front of me, a man was probably lecturing me, his fist slamming down on the table, stopping the little ones in their tracks and sending them running away. Shouts filled the room again, but this time they were those of this man in his forties. He was yelling at me without me knowing why, as if I was to blame for all the bad things that were happening to him. What had I done to cause this?

Oh yes, that's right. I had refused to go fishing with him. I was tired of having my behavior dictated. This angry man was none other than my father. It was just like I remembered: a tantrum, my mother standing in the kitchen doorway looking on in horror, my younger siblings hiding in the corner and scared to hear the screams, and the older ones unmoved by the situation.

It's true, that was the day. That day I had enough.

The screamings that filled the room were heavy and overwhelming. Why couldn't he stop yelling at me? It wasn't my fault that I was fearful about everything, so why did he always keep blaming me? He who was strong couldn't understand what a poor, scared, puny kid like me was feeling.

I wanted him to shut up, but his lecture wasn't going to end. Yet the white door behind him was calling me, urging me to join it, to pull down the handle again and be free of this one-sided argument. So, without regard for this father who continued to bellow incessantly, I went around him to push that door open.

But no sooner had I opened it than I felt myself falling, caught up in nothingness and chaos, never to return to the home that was once so loving despite the many admonitions I had received. My existence hit a terribly hard ground, giving me unparalleled pain. I was in real pain even though everything around me seemed blurry and out of place.

I barely had time to blink when a horde of enemies appeared right in front of me, ready to attack my newly-found young body.

It was like that day when I had been slashed all over, leaving scars on my body that would never fade, as proof that what I had endured there was real.