I couldn’t lift myself. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even speak.No! Please, no.I watched in horror as my mother rose from her seat, her eyes scanning the room in search of me. My mouth moved soundlessly, desperately trying to warn her, but it was too late.
One of them was behind us, and he leveled his gun to Mom’s head. A grotesque sneer mocked our fate. Hollow eye sockets stared out while jagged teeth protruded from the mask’s twisted grin like shards of bone.
Mom held her hand out to me, and she smiled. She smiled like it’d all be okay. But it would never be okay again. She lied.
“Hide,” she mouthed to me.
“No,” my voice broke, and this time, I was able to run.
With a desperate cry tearing from my throat, I hurled myself toward her, wrapping my arms around her. I was taller than her now, so I could shield her with my body. But as I braced for the inevitable gunshot, there was only silence. I didn’t wake upeither. My nightmare always ended up the same way—my mom dying and me unable to run—but this time, I was able to get to her. She didn’t bleed. She didn’t fall. I wasn’t shot.
Instead, my mother’s touch brushed gently against my cheek, her hand seeking mine. She was so warm. So soft. I hadn’t held Mom’s hand in ten years.
“Merry Christmas, my beautiful princess.” Her voice, filled with love and light, pierced through the darkness. Her eyes, a vivid blue like the winter sky, radiated warmth. She gazed upon me like I was her most loved treasure. “Play me a song.”
“Yes,” I stammered. I didn’t even know if I was crying or laughing. “‘The Girl Who Fell From The Sky,’ from your favorite Ghibli movie. Lucie taught it to me the first year.”
“Yes, that one.” She smiled again.
With quickened steps, I descended the stairs, my heart racing in my chest. The masked men were gone, and the crowd was still unmoving in their seats, probably waiting for me to play. My two pigtails bounced with each step, their yellow ribbons fluttering in the faint draft that swept through the opera. I was clad in the same yellow sunflower dress that I had worn a decade ago, but now, tinged with blood.Why blood?My feet moved with a cautious rhythm on the stage, avoiding the lifeless bodies that lay strewn like discarded puppets in a macabre play. I grasped a violin dripping in the blood.
“Mom, look at me, I’m—”
Mom was gone.
Instead, the crowd was replaced by a legion of masked men filling the opera. They sat perfectly still, their hands clasped tightly in their laps. Their empty, hollow eyes bore into me, and their stretched, oversized smiles split their faces, revealing rows upon rows of jagged yellow teeth gleaming with a sickening sheen. They could break each of your bones with one bite.
“No,” I gasped, my voice barely a whisper as terror gripped me. “No! Go away! Mom, come back!”
I thought I had beat them, but they were back.
Their applause rang in my ears.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Give me back my mom!” I screamed, curling into a ball in the middle of the corpses. “Mom! Mom!”
The dread in my chest threatened to suffocate me. With each beat of my heart, their applause grew louder, more relentless. It wasn’t just the sound of hands clapping; it was the sound of bones rattling, of souls shrieking in agony. Their synchronized claps echoed through the opera like a sinister chant, trapping me in a nightmare.
“Dalia!” a voice called. “Dalia, wake up!”
“Lucie?” I called back, tears streaming down my face. “Lucie, help me! I can’t play. They’re everywhere. I can’t play for Mom. I can’t make them leave. Lucie!”
I jolted awake, my heart racing, and I found Levi looming over me, his hands gently cradling my face. Sweat coated my body, and I could feel myself thrashing beneath the bedsheets, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, his forehead creasing. “I’m here.”
“It’s my mom,” I choked out, clinging to him desperately, my fingers gripping his shirt. He was there. I wasn’t alone. It was just a dream. I glanced at the clock, the glowing numbers reading three in the morning. “I always have that nightmare, right before she… before she… Do you ever—”
“Yes,” he said, his voice heavy with shared pain. “Me too.”
“What if I miss my only chance to make her proud? What if I’m not strong enough to face my demons?” I murmured, my breath forming a mist against his windowpane, the opera’s dome haunting me from afar.
“You are,” Levi said, his voice low yet commanding as he tilted my face to meet his stormy gray eyes. “Because next time you see them, you’ll drown out the ugliness of the damn world with your music, like you always do. You’ll silence them, speaking so loud that everyone will listen. Do you want to talk to your mom?”
He meant going to look at her name on the plaque. A tear escaped my eye, tracing a path down my cheek as I nodded in agreement. While my father believed I should stop playing the violin to avoid triggering my nightmares, Levi understood me in a way no one else did.
I traced the scars that marred his skin and the invisible ones stitching up his heart.
