THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR
DAMON
I thought I was fine.I thought I’d be past this. How unfair to her. To him. I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. But I can’t fight it. I can’t control it. Not at night. Not when the demons come and pull me to the depths of hell. I’m broken. Sullied. When the sun is up, I can see the light. I can find hope in her eyes, in the future we’re building.
But at night…
At night, I drown.
Wake up!
I'm submerged in the same fucking dream again, trapped within the lucid nightmare that refuses to loosen its grip on me. The park, the laughter, my family—so deceivinglynormal.
And yet it all unfolds with the same cruel predictability.
Wake up! Wake the fuck up!
How many nights has it been now? How many painful reminders?
I’ve lost count.
It’s a sunlit Sunday, the sky a vast, innocent canvas of blue, but I know what's coming. I know it will all change in a split second. It’s the calm before the storm and no amount of dream logic can shield me from the impending upheaval.
My mother smiles at me. And like clockwork, it’s time.
The air grows thicker. Ominous. Gray clouds swirl around me. Thunder claps in the distance. Destructive. Malevolent. Exactly what I deserve.
I hold my breath as the dream spirals into a nightmare.
As it always does.
We run, seeking shelter from the rain that morphs into a torrential downpour. Vicious droplets sizzle our skin us as we flee the once-idyllic park. And then lightning strikes, deadly and precise.
My father falls first, collapsing into a waiting coffin. Terror tightens my chest, my screams useless against the unrestrained forces of my psyche.
Another clap of thunder and my mother falls next, another coffin materializing to claim her lifeless body.
I try. I try so fucking hard to save her. But I can’t move. My legs, my arms, my entire body is locked,frozen as I desperately attempt to free myself from my mind’s shackles.
No!
In a flash of light, Gabriela falls next. And then the coffins multiply, surrounding me in a haunting graveyard. An eerie burial ground. The rain pounds down on me, drowning out my anguished cries. Headstones taunt me from every direction. Dirt and mud and rocks cover the once-polished ground.
And then she appears—Alison.
Draped in black, she floats toward me, her smile unsettling. How can she smile at me? How can she look at me with anything but anger? Fury. The storm rages on around me, but her expression remains serene.
Stupid girl. She shouldn’t smile. I did this. I did this to her.
She's an apparition of death—a death I caused. And I watch her in helpless horror as the cycle repeats. The thunder comes, and I want to close my eyes. But I can’t. I’m paralyzed, forced to relive her demise over and over and over again. And then the lightning strikes, tearing her apart, but there's no coffin waiting to cradle her. To hold her. To make her comfortable.
Alison lingers, suspended in the air, a shredded soul with no sanctuary, no resting place. I look to the heavens, pleading, bargaining with forces beyond my understanding.
And suddenly, I’m free. My body is once again under my own control. I run toward her, breaking free from the shackles, desperate to catch her. The thunderroars, and I sprint, each step a futile attempt to outrun my deadly past.
But it’s too late and the lightning claims her once again. And then she’s gone, fragments of her being dispersing into the wind.
"No... No!" I scream. “No!”
