Never Let Them Define You

DOOR TO ANOTHER PLACE

"Do you hear it?" asks the voice.

"I..." She listens carefully, hearing nothing at first, then notices the faint underlying sound of erratic noise. "What is it?"

"It's you."

It slowly gets louder, indiscernible at first, but then she realizes the sound is clapping; millions of hands clapping. "Make it stop." The sound grows louder and louder, filling her ears, which she covers with her hands, but to no avail. She falls onto her knees, clutching her head, grasping at strands of hair, and she begins to scream. A blood-curdling, head-throbbing, heart-wrenching, mutilating scream that cuts through the walls. The door in front of her bursts open from the intensity and an apparition of her screaming mother's face rushes through her, then she wakes up in a cold sweat, and rubs her brow.

What the hell was that? She shakes her head and sits up in bed, then walks over to the heater and turns it up several degrees. She holds out her hands to it, feeling the warmth pass through her fingertips, seeing nothing but the orange glow, as the light of the moon barely breaks through her windows. After a few minutes, she stands up, then strikes a match and lights the lavender candle beside her bed. She looks at the alarm clock. Three A.M....I hope this doesn't become a habit.

She reaches for her notepad, then begins to flip through the pages, which become increasingly filled with scribbles. I don't remember ruining all these. She keeps flipping, seeing that whole pages are almost entirely filled with ink, and then sees a page with a drawing of a woman giving birth to a pig. She stares at it, which is drawn in incredible detail, and holds it up close to the light for clarity. The pig is completely filthy, covered in some kind of liquid, and the mother is screaming in agony and looks like she's about to pass out. It looks like the pig is looking at her, right into her eyes; even when she moves the pad around, its eyes still follow her.

Who on Earth would draw something like this in MY notepad? She suddenly feels hands on her shoulders.

"No one," it whispers.

She wakes up again, even colder, to the sound of her alarm blaring. Are you fucking kidding me? She pulls away the sheets and looks back at the clock. Wait, I'm thirty minutes late! How did I sleep through that? I literally got the most grating alarm clock I could find. She grumbles, then looks out the window and covers her eyes from the harsh rays of the sun. She jumps out of bed, stumbles to the espresso machine, makes a cup while staring emptily at the machine, then takes it to the bathroom.

She applies lashes, then goes to put on mascara and pokes her eye. "Goddammit!" Her eyelid begins to flood with tears and she blinks rapidly, causing the tears to stream all over her face. What is happening to me? That place from the first dream...it was just like that dream I had the morning before seeing my mother. At least, where I ended up; in front of that door, with that voice. She sticks her head sideways into the sink and runs the faucet over her eyes, then stops the water and pulls her head out. She takes a towel and pats her face, along with the ends of her hair, then sighs and rubs her eyes.

She looks closely at her face, taking in every aspect of it like she'd never seen it. She runs her fingers down the thin bridge of her nose, then flicks the small pointed tip. She holds both sides of her face, feeling her soft, hollow cheeks, her rigid jawline, and the way her stark features contrast each other. She holds up her hair in a ponytail to see the shape of her head, which is rounded, tall, and somewhat skinny. She drops her hair again, then shakes it a bit so it covers the sides of her head and runs down along her jaw, past her shoulders, and reaches half a foot down her torso.

You...Cassandra! The goddess, the queen, the angel from somewhere else sent to the world of mortals to change peoples' hearts. What the hell am I? Some alien with gaunt cheeks and sleek eyes who hypnotizes people for their adoration? Some higher-dimensional form contained within a three-dimensional body, who sees through things, only to lose their place and forget what they're looking at? A scared girl who sings to soothe her cries, being looked at like a saint, but looking at myself like a heathen? What is my purpose?