Your Smile to My Polaroids - the Official Five-Chapter Trailer

Chapter 1

I am running through a dimly-lit corridor. I don't know why I'm here, nor what I'm running from, but the ground underneath my feet seems to be disappearing as I run.

There is a white, glistening door at its end. My head is full of questions, my feet are stomping away and as one replaces the other, I take a final leap towards my salvation. As I reach it, I grab the handle and swing it open only to be met by a painfully familiar figure in a blue medical gown although I don't recollect who it is.

I can't feel the floor underneath me anymore as I stand outside of the doorway, somehow still able to be at the same level with the doctor. His face is very blurry, nonetheless, I still get the feeling I've seen him somewhere before.

"He died."

These two short, but stinging words so effortlessly pronounced by the man in blue are enough to make me realize the truth. And as an overwhelming feeling of panic, fear and hopelessness swallows me whole and makes my thoughts race... the figure's deep, raspy voice echoing in my mind, I break off into the darkness, trying to scream with all my might but somehow failing, my sorrowful being getting farther and farther away from the ill-fated door...

I jump up in my train seat, gasping for air. I can feel the lump in my throat growing, tears building up and threatening to spill due to yet another day terror.

The perception of bad dreams by most people is that, yes. It is stressful when you are sleeping, but when you wake up, the realization that nothing in the nightmare itself was actually materialistic and real relieves the pressure. You can, quickly forgetting about it, go on with your day.

For me and the type of nightmares I've been having lately, this is not the case.

As my surroundings begin to feel more real with each passing second, I try to calm myself with an anxiety-coping technique I learned a while ago.

Erica, concentrate... Come on, five things you see.

I let my eyes roam around the train.

The window. What is behind the window? A few cypresses. Okay, that is two. There is a table in front of me—three—on which a San Pellegrino water bottle is positioned. Right, number five?

I look down.

My bag.

I take a deep breath and feel the liquid in my eyes slowly retreating.

Four things you can touch, go.

I raise my hands up to my face and feel its curves. Then I touch the slightly rough fabric of my seat. I've always wondered what they were made of as a kid. I reach for my bag and sense it, then find my beloved polaroid camera in its depths and place my fingers against its smooth surface.

Three things you can hear.

The wheels of the train coming in contact with the train tracks. Two middle-aged women chatting in Italian behind me. And also...

"Excuse me, Miss, are you okay?" a manly, interrogative voice interrupts my thought flow, fluent Italian flowing out of his mouth.

I turn to its source, my eyes widening in fear of sudden appeal, and realize that the middle-aged man in a beige trilby and striped brown summer shirt, sitting in the seat across from mine is not, in fact, asleep.

"Ugh... Yeah, I'm fine," I mumble out in his language.

His eyebrows take the shape of a triangle.

"Bad dream?"

Has he been watching me the entire time?

Reluctant about responding, I look away to the side and decide to give a brief answer quietly.

"Yeah, I have been having nightmares lately."