Young Writers Society

A gasp of bewilderment breathed from my mouth. Slowly I took in my surroundings, turning my head around in amazement, and my memories came trickling back to me rapidly. The familiar bright orange of my bedroom walls, and the pink polka-dotted bedspread had never looked so comforting before. My hands felt for the table I was previously lying on. There were no bonds, and there was no table under me. I glanced down to find my feet buried in plush purple carpet. A surge of happiness, thankfulness, and relief coursed through me at an unbelievable speed. I sank to my knees and cried passionately into my cupped hands for a long time. My back quivered with fear as I shed it, trying desperately to break free from the horrific visions that still engulfed me. My breathing gradually slowed, allowing me to think clearly for the first time in a long while.

Leaning on the wall to heave myself up, I took a step towards my bedroom door, praying for reality. The knob creaked as I turned it and peeked my head out. The hallway looked normal. But still I was compelled to doubt everything was as it should be in my life. The walls smelt like their average musty selves, giving me confidence to go into the kitchen. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, food scraps lay scattered over the bench, and sliced beetroot was placed obscurely on top of a white piece of cloth, staining it blood red.
‘Unusual…’ I muttered to myself. Never in my fifteen years of age had Mum ever let the kitchen get to this state. As I neared, I recognized the white cloth as my brother’s shirt and my heart slowed.

I rushed out of the kitchen and into the lounge room, yelling for my brother and parents.
I was panic stricken. Blindly, I skidded into the bathroom. A scream of fright lurched in my throat as I saw an outline of a man behind the shower curtain. I backed out slowly. Dad wasn’t supposed to be here, I thought frantically, he was meant to be away with work. I heard the water stop splattering on the shower tiles. I stopped, and hid around the door, listening intently for a sign of familiarity to come from the man. The towel rack rattled as the towel was pulled roughly away. ‘No,’ was all I could whisper. Dad never did that. I whirled around and ran back through the kitchen, up the musty hallway, and into my bedroom.

My mum sat on my bed. Her face had aged more than ten years, haggard and scarred with pain. Her eyes sat in her temple placidly, giving her an aura of bleakness. I stared dumbly, wanting to say something, but the words fell to pieces in my mouth.

‘They found you, too.’ The words were rasped out of her partly broken lips.

‘They- they found me…?’ I was stunned. I stupidly repeat the strange woman. I felt her eyes run down me and back up to my face. She had tears in her eyes, and they streaked down her shallow cheeks, mixing with her saliva as they passed the corners of her mouth. They dropped to the floor, a sulphurous green. Acrid smoke rose to my nostrils as the tears of poison burned a hole in the carpet.

She leaned forward and gripped my loose hand. Her touch was numb, without feeling. I raised my eyes from her hand to her dull eyes. I tried reading them, exerting a stronger force than normal, but instead, I was confronted with no shield at all. I couldn’t stop myself, and I plunged into her thoughts, washed over with her emotions as well as my own. It was like I was swimming, wading through shallows and peering into different hues of colour. I was surrounded by her minds creativity, thoughts bathed in their colours. Blue was dominant, signifying unquenchable fires of hurt. Anger smouldered in the corners of her mind as well, feeding on any wholesome idea to keep it’s flame burning. I saw images roll in front of me. The same images that I had experienced. The table, flooded in red light, the three white-coated people, still circling, anxiously staring at the object. In her mind, I smelt the same horrible stink again. The white-coated people parted, allowing me to see the object on the table. I stared. I shivered, suddenly sickened with sight, smell, and mind. My eyes had finally uncovered the source of the stink. It made sense now, in a sick way. I looked down at the object again. Down at my heart. There, lying on the table, it had been sliced out of my chest.

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Everything was dark and quiet. I sat up. I had to recollect my memories, where I was and what had happened. The clock on the wall confirmed my rough estimate of time. The 4 am traffic had begun and droned miserably in the background.

The doctor had warned me of those types of dreams. Insomnia, he said, was a disturbing disease of the mind that affected even our unconscious state of sleep.

But without my faith, I would have felt unstable and affected. Something about the dreams, and this one in particular, had meaning. And I seemed to be drawing it from them. Today’s lesson was carved into my head like that blade’s cuts were into my chest.

I picked a pen up off the floor and wrote on my hand, ‘Don’t let anyone cut you open and find you heartless…it hurts.’

The bed creaked as I stood up and reached over for my alarm. The sun was rising with me and I was set for another day of discovery, another day of lessons learnt, mostly the hard way. How surreal and unassuming this life was…without dreams we would never know what we were lucky to be missing out on.