Deka's earliest memory is a sense of all-encompassing, unrelenting dread. She feels this thing as a solid entity, in her tightening chest and tingling extremities. More still, she feels it in her throat, conglomerating there like some sort of tumor. Like a scream. Beyond this feeling, there is only a blackness so wholeheartedly dark it stands out even against her closed eyelids. She knows not where her home is, but she knows it isn't here.
Deka is barely three.
In her next memory, she is in lying in her backyard under an oak tree massive enough to occupy her entire field of vision. Colorado is in the midst of a sweltering summer, but a cool breeze rustles the leaves and dries the sweat on her forehead. Still, she remembers this not for the serenity of the scene before her, but for the suffocating trepidation curling in her toes and crawling up her spine. She counts the seconds as they pass excruciatingly by, and is make it to 364 before her sister finds her. The feeling dissipates, slowly.
Deka doesn't remember anything about her life that isn't coupled with this feeling until she is six. To this day, she still doesn't know if this is because these memories stand out because of the trauma of such a potent emotion, or if it is because the feeling was ever present.
Either way, her sister's eighth birthday is the breaking point. The Wilson household is loud and joyous and probably pre-diabetic, what with how much cake they've collectively consumed on this day. And six year old Deka is happy, all encompassingly, unrelentingly happy -- she remembers this with striking clarity.
Until tragedy strikes.
Suddenly their mother is pushing the two of them down the stairs and unlocking the deadbolt on the room the two of them are too young to ever have questioned their parents about. The air inside is crackling with a sort of energy Deka is unfamiliar with.
"Mommy, why are we going down here? I haven't opened my present yet," Christine whines.
"It's alright, I have it right here with me," she says to her, and pulls a small box from her pocket. She places it in Chris's hands and closes her fingers around it tightly. "Hold onto that for me, baby girl."
"Thank you, mama."
"And I have a gift for you too, Deka." For a moment, Chris looks like she's about to complain about this, but their mother cuts her off. "I don't think I'll be able to make your next birthday, sweetie," she says, and with shaking fingers, unclasps a gold necklace from around her neck.
And now she starts to feel it. The feeling.
"Why not, mama?" Chris says in a warbling voice.
"Never take them off, girls, alright? These will keep me close to you."
"Why won't you be close to us?" Deka thinks she says, but it can't be. Her voice isn't so a high and reedy, not so quiet and fragile. No, this voice is an imposter. This voice is that of someone who's life is falling apart.
"I love you. So, so much. Forget me, but don't forget that, alright? I love you." There are fat tears rolling freely down her face, and Deka doesn't understand what's happening. Is she supposed to understand what's happening?
"Mama?"
"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you. I love you, I love you, I--" she closes the door between them, and Chris loses it.
"Mama? Mommy! Mommy, what's happening?" She bangs on the door hysterically, but Deka is eerily calm. She knows this feeling all too well, and knows that it will soon pass with little grievance. "Mama, please!"
Though she is calm, Deka's hands are trembling so violently she can't manage the necklace enclosure. In an odd sense, she is grateful for this, because the difficulty of the task helps distract her from Chris's shrill screeches and what they might mean for the future of their family.
When she finally gets it, she sits on the cold floor of the room and covers her ears tightly with the palms of her sweaty hands. The lights are off, but she can't be bothered to look for a switch, and she isn't sure she wants to know what the room holds anyway. It is dark, very dark, and there is nothing beyond her dread. She wonders if she is three again.
A/N this might end up being he prologue to a Sci fi story or something
