Year: 2014

A flash of lightning brightened up the dark bedroom for a moment, amplifying the shadows and making them crawl along the wall. I was lying in my bed with the covers over my head, like a child, using the blankets to shield myself from my fears. Two earbuds were shoved in my ears, playing loud music to drown out the thunder and trying to wash away the thoughts of the events of the day.

Although, through the music and the thunderstorm, what happened floated back into the front of my mind as I started to drift into a deep sleep. Filled with dreams and nightmares.

"Don't cry, sweetheart," a sweet voice cooed to me, over the sounds of distant explosions. "You're going to be fine. Everything is okay."

The woman's face hovered over me, slightly blurred. I felt like I knew her, she was familiar to me. A white light surrounded her features.

"Goodbye, my child."

Darkness.

This is the dream that I'd been having since I was a child. This woman's voice had been haunting my thoughts for the past 22 years of my life. This single dream is the only one that I've ever been able to remember in complete detail, but tonight, something was amiss.

The darkness quickly morphed and swirled into a building, more specifically, the roof of the 23-story building that I worked in. My lunch was clutched tightly in between both hands as I walked closer to the edge. Sitting down on the concrete ground, I placed my plastic container filled with food on the prism that surrounded the perimeter of the roof's surface and relaxed as a soft, tickling breeze of cold air brushed against my cheeks, turning them a slight pink colour.

The grey sky began to open, letting small droplets of water fall back down to the Earth's surface. I laid back and stared up at the storm clouds as the beginnings of the downpour hit my face. Then, as if a shower had been turned on, the rain became increasingly heavier and consistent, drenching me in a few seconds.

Standing up with the intention to get out of the torrential rainfall, a unfamiliar voice sounded from behind me.

"Time to fly, Mary."

Those words echoed in my mind as I attempted to turn around to see the source of the voice, but two hands roughly gripped the back of my jacket and, with inhuman strength, threw me over the edge of the building.

I shot awake with a gasp, a cold sweat forming on my forehead. The sheets on my bed were tangled around my feet and I was now sprawled on the floor next to my bed. This dream was new and almost as haunting as the only other dream I'd ever had.

I ran a hand through my messy hair and looked at the time on my phone. It was still early into the night, the moment I walked through the door of my apartment, I went to bed.

My stomach growled and ached, begging for food and disrupting me from my thoughts. Sighing, I untangled my feet from the sheets and stood up, walking to the kitchen. With my newly acquired, totally healthy, packet of crisps, I migrated to the living room and sat crosslegged on the floor with the junk food in my lap. I gazed out of the massive window, that took up an entire wall of the room, and watched the droplets of water trickle down the surface, what was left of the previous rainfall. For a while, I just ate and stared out at the twinkling city lights, it was only broken when a bright orange light shot into the sky from S.T.A.R Laboratories, making the storm clouds spike with electricity.

A wave of of light spread out across the city, it only took a few seconds to reach me. I was standing by then and the moment the shockwave touched the window, it shattered and pushed me back. My body slid across the polished floor, only stopping when it collided with the wall opposite to where I was standing prior to the explosion.

I blacked out, feeling a wall in my mind begin to crack and lost memories leak through.

A falling sensation, a red glowing light, crashing, crawling out of something, my parents.

I didn't understand the flashes, when I came to I was afraid to say the least. There was a massive indentation in the wall where body impacted it. I had a slight headache in my temples, but my hitting the wall was not the cause. That amount of force should have caused me to have, at the least, a bruise.

With this came the realisation, for the second time that day, that something was wrong with me. I closed my eyes once again, a dream quickly swirling through my mind.

A building, the roof above the 23 floor. I walked closer to the edge. Pink cheeks. Grey sky. Rain. Storm clouds. An unfamiliar voice. Time to fly, Mary. Two rough hands. Not human. Thrown off roof. Falling. Hitting the ground.

Now my mind had come to realise. This was not a dream. This was a memory of the events that happened today. I shouldn't be alive. I walked away unscathed and I didn't understand why. I should be dead.


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