I can hear groaning, a low muffled sound which I soon figure out that the sounds coming from me. What happened this time? Another nightmare that knocked me for six? I begin to feel my head pounding, which is probably a side effect of waking up – the ability to feel pain and acknowledge your surroundings.
I haven’t opened my eyes yet, I really don’t want to. There’s something about waking up that I hate, the having to face reality part. Having to face the pain. Having to face whatever dream you’ve had and then trying to decode its nonsense, finding meaning out of random scenes, words or scenarios is never fun.
Waking up to pain isn’t fun either. I stop groaning, in a bid to try to sleep again. I’m kidding myself of course, but hey, a few moments of ignorance never hurt anybody right?
Well, they probably did, but in my instance the only person whose hurting is me. So for now ignorance is okay, until my pounding head either increases in pain, or stops completely, the former being most likely and the latter being nigh on impossible.
Why was my brain thinking so much? For a person who wanted sleep I wasn’t doing a very good job obtaining it. My brain wasn’t helping the situation, who even uses nigh anymore anyway? Ugh, being awake is such a pain in the ass.
Slowly, after a few moments I begin to open my eyes because this sleeping thing clearly wasn’t working out for me. I have my eyes open and thankfully, I, or whoever had some sense to light a few candles instead of using the main light . So much more easier on the eyes, especially if you’re in my situation.
The pounding, as predicted increases and I groan again, squeezing my eyes shut and lightly massaging my temples.
“Here, let me,” a voice I recognise but can’t place, whispers. I tilt in an attempt to glance their way to discern who it was.
“Jack?” I mumble, the last time I talked to him we weren’t exactly on very good terms, something bad must have happened to make him talk to me again. The tilting did me no good, now despite discovering Jack was here with me, which was a relief, pain flared in other parts of my body.
Which was just freakin’ awesome. What does a person in pain need?
More pain!
Thanks body, I owe you one!
I lie back again, straight and allow Jack’s hands to soothe the pain away, letting me slowly drift off into sleep.
I dream of nothing, thankfully and wake up feeling refreshed. I stretch my body out slowly, testing my body but there’s no more pain so this time stretch again, awakening my muscles and pushing them to the limit.
“Careful,” Jack scolds me “you still have to be careful with your body, it’s not fully healed.
I nod in acknowledgment and then realise that he’s holding a tray which I presume is food. I sit up and my theory is proved correct he pits the tray in my lap and I gladly scoff the chicken soup and salad.
“We need to talk.” Jack says whilst I’m eating.
I wait until I’ve finished to reply, “yeah.” Is all I can say, guys are really obtuse I’ve been trying to tell him we needed to talk for a long time now.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about the prophecy, I just didn’t want to get you to get hurt. I thought that if I didn’t tell you, you would be safe, that I could figure out this prophecy and tell you about it when the danger had passed. But I was wrong and instead of protecting you, I put you in more danger, I don’t even understand it myself but I did, somehow. So now, I’m going to tell you everything, everything that I know about the prophecy but first I want to know what happened to you.”
“What do you mean, what happened? What did happen?”
“How can you not know what you did, Anna?!”
“For whatever reason, I just don’t. Please just explain.”
“You climbed up to the roof and were seconds off, jumping off! If I hadn’t caught you Anna, you would have jumped clean off.” His words catch me off guard, I don’t remember doing any of that, and why would I want to kill myself? “I would have lost you.” He mumbles, sounding so lost that it breaks my heart. Laying the tray to the side, I push myself off the bed and give him a hug.
We stay like that for a while, not saying anything, each in out own thoughts. I’m so confused, how and why would I climb up to the prison roof and want to jump off it? I didn’t even know there was a roof, or even how to get to it! Despite being upset about this prophecy business I wasn’t upset enough to want to kill myself.
My dreams didn’t make me that upset either, I mean sure they were painful, annoying and made no sense but that still wouldn’t drive me to want to take such a drastic action. And even the dreams that weren’t so bad, the family ones didn’t drive me enough to want to jump off something. I mean, sure it made me feel like crap at first but when I was more involved with their –
Wait.
Epiphany moment.
“Why did you do it Anna?” He asks in the same, broken voice.
“Why did I do what, Jack?”
“Why did you jump?”
“This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but I have a theory as to why I did it. I’m not explaining this very well. I have a theory, as to why I did it, but I didn’t necessarily do it on purpose. Like, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“How do you not know you’re about to jump off a rooftop?”
“Okay, hear me out. No talking till I’ve finished explaining. So, after that day that I saw you in the kitchen, I started having these, dreams. They, weren’t bad they were actually pretty good. They were about this family, and just the little things they did in their life, you know going shopping, or a picnic stuff like that. Anyway, the first time I had that dream I had an amazing sleep and it was so awesome.
“But then, after that I started feeling like crap. It felt like my dreams were taunting me, showing me everything that I didn’t have. So instead of being awesome they had turned out to be horrible. I didn’t look forward to them anymore, until one night I had the urge to touch one of the family members. I don’t know why I did it at the time but I touched them and was kind of … like… transported into their world.
“I was accepted as one of them and greeted like I was part of the family, it was the one moment where I had been accepted for who I was no questions asked. From then on I became a part of their family, and every night my day with them would begin, I would do what they did. And I had never felt better. I slept more and more and became more involved in their world.
“I was addicted to the high that I got from being with my new family. So I ignored anything that made them seem less than perfect. Like how they knew my name and I didn’t know who they were. Or how I was transported to their dimension when I slept. Or even how they got into my dreams in the first place. Until, one day we were at the breakfast table and now that I think back to it, I find it so odd. The mum asked me about the prophecy and I was too confused to give a proper answer so I just asked what prophecy was she talking about?
“She laughed, kind of manically, then suggested we go to play in the pool. I didn’t even know they had a pool. But whatever. We went and then one of the boys suggested I dived from an old tree house, I remember climbing it and it took my forever longer than it should have really. And when I was about to dive, everything went black.”
“That was me.”
“Yeah, probably,” I reply lamely.
“It was, a few people noticed you climbing, as you weren’t exactly quiet about it but when they called out to you, you just ignored them. So a few went to come get me while a few watched you. I followed you to see where the hell you were going but then when you climbed onto the ledge of the rooftop I grabbed you so you didn’t actually jump off.”
“I swear, Jack. I had no idea that was what I was really doing. I was dreaming.”
“I know,” he mumbles, pulling me closer. “But I thought I had lost you.” His hold on me tightens until we’re ever closer, and suddenly I was hyper aware of the situation. Things were different, this was different. I mean, we’ve slept in the same bed countless times so the being close wasn’t an issue.
This closeness, what I was feeling today was different, I wasn’t entirely sure that Jack was feeling it too, but who knows? We had both drifted into silence again, but this wasn’t comfortable.
He shifted slightly, so that we were perfectly face to face, his breathing ever so slightly hitched when he looked at me. It felt like he was looking into my soul, looking into who I was, everything that I was. Like he had never seen me before, and we were looking at each other for the first time.
“Anna,” he mumbled again, his voice thick with something that I couldn’t recognise.
“Jack?” I whisper back, scared of breaking this new fragile thing between us, whatever it was.
He didn’t reply, but instead kissed me on the lips ever so briefly. So quickly it was almost as if he hadn’t, but I had felt it and it was one thing I would never forget. I wasn’t entirely sure, how to respond but perhaps my body recovered faster than I had as seconds later we were kissing again.
It was the kind of kissing where you had no idea what you were doing, but it felt amazing so you carried on anyway. I for one had never been kissed before, hell I would never have thought of kissing Jack before but now it just made so much sense.
All too soon, he pulled away from me and the only thing that could be heard was our breathing until he said, “Anna,” and looked me right in the eye. “Anna, I’ve wanted to do that for so long… and … and I’ve always been scared that you never felt the same way.”
“Can you tell now that I do? I’ll be honest, I didn’t know myself but its just something that feel right, you know?”
“Yeah,” he murmurs with a small smile, “when I saw you about to jump off the ledge I nearly had a heart attack, don’t underestimate what I would have done to whoever made you do this.”
“I don’t. I know what you’re like.”
“Good, I hate that this has to be in the middle of all the stuff that’s going on now.”
“What is going on Jack? Are you ever going to tell me?”
“I will, I promise – tomorrow, okay? We’ll-“ he was cut off by a knock on the door.
“Jack, you need to come quick. The Guards have made and announcement.”
***
Did you like the ending ;D Did you expect it or no? Let me know what you think! Vote and comment <3