When you were a child, you had this recurring dream that always started the same way:

You were deep in a forest, standing in the middle of a circular clearing. Around you were stands of trees so incredulously tall that they seemed to almost touch the sun that hung overhead. The same sun that you could feel it on your skin in the dream. And the sun was strange too. It was bigger than the sun that you experienced in the waking world. Everything was bathed in an ethereal white glow. The strangest part about the sun was that it filled you with an uncanny feeling that it was alive and watching you. The glowing ball seemed to vibrate with energy in a way that reminded you of the fairies in the story books you always fell asleep reading.

In the dream, there were birds too. There were so many of them, in the brightest, most vivid colors and they sang a beautiful melody as they swooped in and out of the clearing. When you told your grandmother about the dream later, it was hard to describe just how real it all felt as you stood there in the clearing, taking everything in. You felt warm and safe and protected.

At first.

You remembered the very first time you had the dream - that feeling of wanting to explore more of the world your subconscious had created. But the more you had the dream, the more you dreaded taking even one step forward because you knew that the second you did, the birds would stop singing.

And, even though it had been there unnoticed the whole time, you suddenly realized that you're in a cage with no escape. That safety you'd felt moments before melted away as your hands gripped the metal bars of the golden cage, and you started shaking it. Horror began to fill you as the bars grew rustier beneath your fingers. You're overcome with a sense of dread as the sun seemed to flicker and dim.

You froze as you heard a rustling from the trees and though you didn't know what was there, you knew to be afraid. It was dark, so dark, you suddenly realized. Your eyes were affixed to those trees because whatever was out there, it was getting closer. You tried again to shake the bars only to realize that you had no hands, no arms, no body.

You were simply a floating crystal in the shape of a heart.

And then you saw it. A hooded figure emerged from the forest and from beneath the black cloak, a skeletal hand stretched out towards you. Panic set in. Something bad was going to happen.

The cage door opened, but you couldn't run. Instead, you just floated towards that outstretched hand. Everything hurt, your entire body… or heart… whatever it was. You could feel yourself fissure and crack as you floated forward, shards of glass hitting the forest floor, but you couldn't stop moving towards that hand. Even as it crushed you. Even as it killed you.

You always woke up from the dream right before you broke completely. How many times had you woken up in a sweat, almost convulsing from where you swore you could feel yourself still breaking. Those dreams always upset you so much that you spent days in the hospital afterwards.

Your parents weren't superstitious people, nor were they spiritual, despite the fact that magic existed in the world. To them, you were simply a sick child with nightmares, despite the fact that the night that you first had that dream was followed by the day you were diagnosed with cancer.

You were 8 when the cancer first started making itself known. You remembered the weakness, the fatigue, but your illness went unnoticed by your parents. They weren't bad people, but your family was poor and so work always took priority over a child's complaints. By the time the doctors caught it, you were almost 10.

Leukemia, it was called. You didn't know what that meant at the time, only that something was wrong with the spongy stuff inside of your bones and that you were sick. Very sick. Your treatment started right away but your parents couldn't afford the time or money that went into all of that. Or maybe they just couldn't handle it emotionally. Looking back, you couldn't be sure and they weren't around anymore to ask.

You were so lucky to have had your grandmother. There would never be another human soul as great as that woman, you were sure. She took you to every appointment, cooked for you, cared for you, loved you. She was warm and kind and everything your parents couldn't be for you. It was almost bizarre to imagine that she and your mother were related.

After your first round of chemo, your grandma offered to take you in. She had a beautiful cottage in the country with a big yard and a garden and some animals. A perfect place to recover, she'd insisted, the fresh air would do good in your recovery. You remembered fights about it and never knowing why when you were a child.

Now that you were older and understood the world better, you knew all of the protests from your parents were due to the monsters. You grew up in the city, but you didn't really see monsters growing up. Back then, the city was still segregated. Humans stayed in their own communities, behind gates meant to keep the monsters out. You remembered seeing the news reports of what happened to monsters who crossed into human neighborhoods. The memories made your skin crawl. What humans did to them made you question who the monsters really were.

But it wasn't like that in the countryside. There was more freedom there. You remember your parents saying that the country was uncivilized because monsters were allowed to roam. Not that they actually did. You were sure the monsters saw those news reports too. They knew what happened when monsters overstepped their boundaries. Why would a monster risk it when it could mean death at the hands of a human?

You'd visited the countryside with your parents and little sister once every other month before you got sick, but you never saw a monster. Now that your parents' prejudices were clear to you as an adult, you were sure that the visits were so infrequent because of the monsters' presence. And when you did visit, there were always rules – no playing outside, no talking to strangers…

When you moved in with your grandma to recover, you were still too weak from the residual chemotherapy treatments to leave bed. You spent hours in bed reading books to pass the time. When that grew boring, you'd find yourself staring out the bedroom window, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the monsters. Sometimes you'd even day dream about befriending them and having adventures like in the books you were reading.

During the first couple of weeks, seeing a monster became the obsession of the 10 year old you. Your grandma saw through it, but unlike your parents she wasn't afraid of the monsters. She had met monsters, and that thrilled you to no end. She told you stories and answered all your questions, no matter how silly.

"Can they really use magic?"

"Yes."

"Can they eat food?"

"Of course!"

"Can they fly?"

"Some can."

"Do they speak English?"

"Most do."

For hours, you would ask, she would answer. Sometimes you'd ask the same questions, over and over even though you knew the answer. In those first days, you couldn't imagine even seeing a monster. You didn't know then that not only would you meet monsters, but you would befriend them that summer. You still remembered that summer as the best time of your life. You were somewhat healthier, you had friends, freedom, your first love...

But by the end of that summer, the dream had started again. That damn dream.

Once again you were sick, and then the riots broke out and the war that ended with the monsters trapped beneath Mt. Ebott.

…

Before your grandma died, she told you something you'd never forget. By then, you were mostly grown and the cancer was long gone. You'd sat at her bedside, holding her hand, knowing that at anytime she'd be gone. It was a hard pill to swallow because she was all you had – your parents were gone by then, and you didn't have the most genuine relationship with your sister.

You didn't leave her side once during her last day on earth. You sat and held her hand. When she was awake, you read her the same stories she read you when you were sick. When she slept, you just watched her. You didn't want to let her go. Couldn't do it.

Your last conversation you had still managed to give you chills. That night she woke up from a restless sleep, panting and when your eyes met, you barely recognized your grandmother. "… it was real," she rasped.

"What was?" you asked her, your heart racing as you stroked her hand to calm her down.

Her eyes looked wild. She was scared. "… the cage. He opened my cage..." And she was gone before you even had time to process what she was saying.

You'd never seen your grandmother look that terrified. It terrified you almost as much as her words. She had seen him too, she had floated towards him and he had killed her.

And the dream was real.

How many times had he almost killed you? How many close brushes had you actually had with death himself? No matter how many times you thought about it, it still made you shiver. There were nights when you would be lying in bed and you'd think about it and get so scared you had to jump out of bed and turn the lights on. You found yourself wondering about the dream. Were you the only one that lived to remember it? Did everyone have the dream before death? Not that you liked to get too existential about things. If the dream taught you anything, it was that life was too short for that.

Fifteen years had passed since the first time you had that dream. Almost fourteen had passed since the monsters had been trapped underground. Twelve since you'd been cancer-free. Seven since your grandma died. Time passed and life moved on.

They say that every generation has a defining moment that people always look back on and remember exactly where they were and what they were doing. When man walked on the moon, when Kennedy was shot, when the Berlin wall fell, when the planes hit the twin towers, when the monsters resurfaced.

Not that it was hard for you to remember that last one. You were in the hospital because the night before the monsters resurfaced, so had your dream.