E lingered between waking and sleeping, she began to dream...
She was on a beach, she could hear the sound of the waves gushing in and out of the shore, the sand was almost white and the sun shone down, she could almost feel it on her skin. She stood there admiring the beauty before her, normally this kind of scenic view would throw her into an agoraphobic panic, but this place felt different, magical. E walked towards the shoreline as she had done as a child, on a day trip to the beach many years ago, excited to dip her feet into the ocean and jump over the waves. As she reached the deep blue sea, she became aware of the fact that she was dreaming, partly due to the fact that she couldn't feel the water between her toes. "Lucid dreaming" she thought, she knew the term, she had heard that lucid dreaming allowed you to control your dreams, so she decided to test it out.
She began by giving herself magical powers, which included the ability to conjure up anything she desired and the ability to duplicate any object. Next she decided to try flying, but she was concerned that she wouldn't be able to control it, so she decided that she would only be able to fly if she wore a special bracelet made of gemstones. She flew high and low, she rode the wind and touched the clouds, it was exhilerating! Peculiarly, she noticed that night began to fall on the desert island, which seemed completely out of her control as she desired for it to stay daytime. She settled on the branch of an old oak tree to admire the sunset, she stayed there for what felt like hours and watched. The sky turned an array of bright and beautiful colours, rose pink, warm orange, striking violet, she stayed until the sun went completely down and she was in complete darkness.
Now in pitch black, E began to panic, she hadn't thought this through properly. "It's just a dream, it's just a dream, it's just a dream" E told herself as her quivvering hand attempted to summon a lamp with a lit candle in it, she was relieved when the lamp manifested. She grasped the lamp tightly and looked around as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the view was the same, but as she tried her best to listen, she heard the distant sound of drums. E was curious, she realised which direction the drumming was coming from pretty quickly, because she was deaf in one ear and when she turned her head around she could no longer hear the drumming. She was torn on whether she should follow it and discover its' source, but before she had a chance to make that decision, she found herself waking from her slumber.
It took a while for E to fully wake and come to her senses, but once she did, she remembered the terrible events of the night before. E could still feel the physical pain, the dull ache of her heart. Over the next couple of days, E didn't get any better, in fact, she got worse. E had almost lost her appetite completely and she wondered what the point was of continuing to eat, continuing to do anything other than contacting M and begging for forgiveness. She missed M and she longed for her friend, she felt as though a piece of her heart was missing and that piece was the piece that M held. The dull ache in E's chest was unbearable and every moment she wasn't attempting to contact M was agonising. E felt as though she had fallen into some kind of nightmare limbo, she couldn't move on, frozen in the moment that caused her pain. She played the events over and over in her memory like a record player stuck on a loop, wondering if there was anything she could have done differently. She felt like she was losing her mind.
E had tried to ring M's house phone a number of times, only being successful twice, both times the phone was picked up she was told that M had taken herself off to bed because she was upset. E couldn't understand why they couldn't just talk it through, she was desperate to say sorry to M properly on the phone and didn't care if M just screamed at her, she would take it. To an outsider, E ringing M may look like pestering, but E was not in her right mind, her feelings about harming herself were getting worse and she was beginning to have feelings about committing suicide. E was scared, she was terrified of what she might do, she asked her mother and father figure to not leave her on her own, staying up all night with her mother until she was sure that if left alone, she would fall asleep. Sleep was her only solace, the only time she was able to forget. But nightmares would occasionally creep in, she would dream that M was screaming at her while E begged her for forgiveness, but M was stating that she would never forgive her. But her darkest hour was yet to come.