My hands trembled violently as I pushed myself up from the carpet. My mouth was dry. Wait. Why was I on the floor? Theroom spun around as I struggled to separate the dream from reality. But it hadn’t been just a dream. I knew better. This was something else that I didn’t want to claim. Something that had happened in the past or something that would happen. The details were too vivid, too specific to be my imagination, but I was sure my mama didn’t know some native African man from a random forest.
I tried to erase the image of that blade slicing through flesh, the terror on my mama’s face as she ran. But the images remained, burned into my mind, for as long as I stayed in my right mind.
“Just a dream,” I whispered to the empty room, knowing it was a lie even as the words left my lips.
But deep down, I knew. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
I staggered up on my feet and out of my bedroom toward the kitchen. The dream, or vision, whatever it is, it was over. My throat was dry. I needed water. I needed to breathe. I needed to convince myself that what I’d seen wasn’t real, even though my brain told me otherwise.
The hallway stretched longer than I remembered. Framed family photos lined the walls. Mama and Daddy on their tenth wedding anniversary trip, me holding up a track and field trophy in sixth grade, and the three of us at Navy Pier last summer. Mama’s smile seemed different now, secretive, like she’d been planning something.Had she?
The house remained eerily silent as I walked into the kitchen. Everything was in its place. The breakfast dishes were dried in the rack. The fruit bowl was centered on the island. Normal. Ordinary. Except nothing felt normal anymore. Not after that scary dream.
I reached into the fridge for a bottle of water. The cold liquid hit my empty stomach hard, but I gulped it down anyway. That’s when I saw it. There was a folded piece of paper propped againstthe sugar bowl on the counter. A single sheet from Mama’s notepad that she kept in the kitchen junk drawer.
Something about its placement was off. She could’ve texted me or Dad, but a handwritten note. Too old school, too deliberate. Seeing it sent a fresh wave of dread through me. I picked it up carefully. I didn’t have a reason to. I just did.
I unfolded it slowly. Mama always wrote with her special vintage gold pen. The ink was dark purple, her signature color.
Dear Malcolm and Kasinda,
By the time you read this, I will be gone. I’m sorry to do this to you both, but there are things about me, about my past, that I’ve never told you. Things that have caught up with me. It’s not safe for me to stay. It’s better this way and safer for you both.
Malcolm, my love, thank you for sixteen beautiful years. Please don’t try to find me. Take care of our girl.
Kasinda, my heart, I love you more than you’ll ever know. I’m sorry I won’t see you grow up. Trust your dreams, sweetheart. They will show you more truth than you realize.
I love you both. Please believe that, but this goodbye is forever.
Theia
The paper slipped from my fingers, floating to the floor. My vision blurred. This couldn’t be happening. Not after that crazy, irrational dream. Not like this.
My knees buckled beneath me, sending me crashing to the tile floor. The impact barely registered through the shock. I was out.
My eyes opened with no recollection of how much time had passed. I looked over at the microwave. I was only out for about a minute. How many times was I going to have to faint from not eating to stop missing meals? The note was real. She was gone. My chest felt hollow. I wasn’t one of those teenagers who hated their mother. I loved mine. She is— was the best mother.
The tears came violently fast. My body shook with sobs that ripped through my chest like open-heart surgery. I knew this was real. I saw it. I felt it. I dreamt it.
Trust your dreams, she’d written. My dreams. The forest. The scary man called Desmond. The golden blade. It wasn’t just a nightmare in the daytime. It, the dream, was something else.
My tears eventually slowed, not because the pain lessened but because my body had run out of moisture to spare. My eyes felt swollen and raw, my throat ached from crying, and a dull headache throbbed behind my temples.
The sound of a key in the front door lock jolted me back to reality. I was sitting on the living room couch now. How did I get here? Dad. Oh god. The realization hit me. He didn’t know. I had to tell him or just give him the stupid fuckin’ note. The note that crushed me into pieces. I had to watch his reaction.
I heard the thud of his work shoes being kicked off. The jingle of keys landing in the ceramic dish below the mirror that Mom had made in that pottery class last year. Then there was the thumping sound of a tumble.
“Kasi? Why is your backpack on this goddamn floor?” His voice carried from the entryway. “I swear this girl trying to kill me.” He mumbled under his breath to himself.
I couldn’t answer. My voice was trapped somewhere in the sunken place. I heard his footsteps approaching, unaware that everything had drastically changed.
He appeared in the doorway of our living room, still in his blue postal uniform. The short-sleeved shirt was dirty and wrinkled from a long day delivering mail in the summer heat. His face showed only mild concern when he first saw me sitting on the couch with the TV off. Then his eyes took in my face and the crumpled note in my hand. Then something shifted in his expression.
“Kasi? What’s wrong?” He crossed the room in three long strides, sitting beside me on the couch. “What happened?”
I couldn’t speak. I just handed him the note and watched him take it. His hands were steady as he unfolded the paper, but he gripped it tighter with each line he read.
The transformation was subtle at first. There was a tightening around his eyes. Then it overtook him completely. His broad shoulders curved inward like he’d been punched in the gut.
