Regret

5. You Are Not Your Struggles,

It was as clear as the bright rays of the sun shining down on everything in the town, that she was pregnant.

A huge bump had overtaken where her regular flat stomach was, making her almost have to waddle everywhere she went. She didn't mind, at least that's what she told herself, that her feet were swollen and her breasts were sore, that her legs felt weak after a long day and she had to rest more than she walked.

He told her it was all worth it because one day, when she's watching her baby playing in the sand box he promised to build, she won't remember the pain she went through.

And, of course, she fell in love with whatever came out of his mouth and agreed instantly.

But yet, when the sun went down and the stars came up, she sometimes had dreams of her child, and they weren't as innocent as he said they would be.

The baby playing in the sand box looked exactly like the man she knew she would never see again. The same facial structure and the same bright eyes, making her heart start to beat a little faster and her palms start to get a little sweaty.

And when that baby grew up, turning more and more into that awful man, they would start to do the same things the man would do. Making her trapped in a constant reminder of that night, suffocating her until she would jolt up in bed, clutching at her baby and telling her dog to quiet down so he wouldn't awake the sleeping man next to her that desperately needed his beauty rest.

Then she would lay back down, resting her head on her pillow, and staring at the ceiling fan as it made its rounds in the room.

Every morning when she got a kiss on the cheek and a question about how she slept, she never would tell him her dreams about the night before.

Believing that those dreams were her own struggles, she kept them in.

Yes, she believed they were dreams, not nightmares.

Nightmares are about bloody clowns and blood-sucking vampires, things that horror movies excel in bringing into a horrible light; not her unborn child.

She refused to think about her child as a nightmare, instead that unborn child was a dream.

A mystical want of the future to come.