Timekeeper

Timekeeper

The Dream

Aside from the prologue of this story that I posted yesterday, this is my first real try at non-school related writing. I would appreciate lots of feedback, so please comment and don’t be afraid to be brutally frank. Thank you!

As soon as it engulfed her the blackness evaporated, the world began to spin, faster, faster and faster. Everything in the room became blurred. The dream was over, and I woke with a start. I could feel cold sweat running down my face, and once more I was terrified. I looked slowly around my room, no watches, no bloody dead girls, and no knives. My name is Aurora; I live just outside of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I’m fifteen, I’m not really tall or short, I have shoulder length blonde hair with side bangs. Those are all pretty usual things, but I don’t think I’m a very usual person. For starters there’s that dream. I’ve had that dream every night for as long as I can remember, it never changes. I try not to think about it during the day, but I seldom succeed. The lingering feelings of unease and desperation that it brings last well past waking. That dream… It’s so strange I can barely explain it. I’m not thinking that girl’s thoughts, yet I am part of that girl. It’s like if you could leave your body and observe yourself even as you continued to go about your life. That’s the best analogy I can think of.

When I was younger I worried constantly that one night in my sleep I would die for real at the end of my dream, and never wake up. Sometimes I still do. Having that dream every night has affected me a lot; I’m jumpy, so much that I’m scared of my own shadow… and far less frightening things. My parents thought that maybe my babysitter abused me or something, and sent me to a child therapist when I was four years old. Going to a therapist was nearly as scary as my dream. If I’m asked a lot of questions I tend to seize up and become disoriented and succumb to full out panic. They didn’t seem to care about that though, they sent me to that therapist for nearly a year. Even though I spent all that time there I never told her about it. I’ve never told anybody about the dream; I’ve wanted to so many times, but something within has always held me back. I frequently scream and cry in my sleep, I know it keeps my insomniac mother awake more than is normal even for her. I tell her its nightmares, but I never get more specific. No matter how much I feel that telling somebody about it would make it go away, I can never let them know.

After hearing a bit about me it probably comes as no shock to you that I’m far from the most popular girl in school. Most kids dismiss me as “weird” or “disturbed freak”. I suppose they’re right, but it still hurts to hear it whispered every time I walk by. The teachers aren’t too fond of me either. I’m fairly intelligent and get above average grades, but in our society nobody of any age can really stand to be around the socially inept. It would appear that girl and I are alike in the way that we’re both alone. I mean I have a family, but we rarely spend any time together. I tried to write a story about her one day, while working on the details I wondered if she had a family. With all her other pain I wanted her to have a warm family. But somehow that struck me as wrong, and I knew that she had nobody to turn to. I’m not a very good fiction writer, and that story eventually fell through. When I first started it I thought that since I couldn’t tell anybody about the dream maybe if I fictionalized it, controlled it that it would go away but… no such luck. All that changed was that instead of being merely jumpy I became incredibly depressed for a period of time.

I had been thinking for quite some time now, and wasn’t likely to fall back asleep (Thank God) so I got up slowly to avoid dizziness and walked across my room. I wondered vaguely what time it was but didn’t check because for some reason I have an unnatural phobia of clocks. I guessed it must have been around 5 am as the sun was just rising. It was strange I realized, that with the amount of times I wake early, scared out of my skull I had never sat down to watch a sunrise. I loved sunsets; I watched them all the time. But at sunrise I would simply glance out the window and find something else to take my mind of my discomfort. However this time I drew back the curtains fully and sat in front of my floor length window. There was a wildlife reserve behind our house so there were no other houses or large buildings to block my view. It was quite beautiful, more so than any picture. The differing hues that mixed together in the sky made it simply lovely.

There was something else to about this particular sunrise more than colours, something hidden and dazzling. It seemed as though there was something starting today that was more than just a new day. Perhaps it was just my mind playing tricks one me, but perhaps not… For a moment I was filled with exhilarating thoughts of adventure, it would be exiting to leave my familiar home, to go somewhere uncharted and wonderful… if only I wasn’t so scared. I sat in front of my window until the sun was well into the sky. I heard both my parents leave for work; I heard my twin brothers wake and make a general ruckus. Not too long after that I heard my alarm go off. It was only then that I eventually processed that today was in fact Monday, and I had places to be. I got through my morning routine a great deal faster than usual because today my heart wasn’t filled with pain and regret, today my whole self was filled with the contented memory of the first and last time I watched the sunrise.