Hypersonic Missiles

Ada

I didn't sleep comfortably despite the phsycial comfort Eli offered me. With my head in his lap and my body stretched out across the sofa I should have slept more comfortably than I had in a long time, but instead, having fallen into a deeper sleep, I found myself riddled with dreams. The kind of dreams so close to reality that you don't realise until you're in too deep, that youre dreaming at all.

And these dreams came back to me like memories. As if they'd already happening to me. Some of them had, some of them were disjointed flashbacks, near perfect recounts of horrifying memories, things I'd endured I don't know how. But others, though they felt like memories, things I'd already seen 100 times before, the events inevitable, could only have been dreams. The bad kind.

At first I was walking through the supermarket with my brother, we were looking at the yoghurts, trailing behind my mum and a shopping trolley. It was boring and we were tired and at first I felt dulled by the images until something inside me remembered that this was was something I'd never do again. That my brother and my mother were both dead. That supermarkets didn't look like this anymore. And as this memory clicked I felt desperation pull me in on myself,felt myself stop dead still in the middle of the dream.
But when I stopped my mum didn't notice and my brother didn't notice either and they just carried on walking and when I called out to them they didn't hear or they did hear and they ignored me. And as the horror of being left behind got a grip on me the supermarket stopped being a supermarket and I stopped standing still and started desperately trying to crawl, down on my hands and knees through a forest, getting pieces of twig and bark and glass in my hands as I tried frantically to force myself forward against some kind of gravitational pull.
I was trying to get away from somewhere as opposed to to somewhere else, and it didn't matter where I ended up as long as I could drag myself across the floor away from the clearing.
I could hear dogs barking, knew with one stab to my chest that I needed to find somewhere quiet to hide. Somewhere those dogs couldn't find me.
But I couldn't move, I wasn't strong enough to pull myself forward against the pressure and as I struggled j felt my muscles tense and weaken, felt myself shivering and fragile. I had this doomed feeling and then this terrible panic. When I tried to scream no sound came out. When I tried to scream I suddenly became aware that the world was completely eerily quiet. That I couldn't scream couldn't call for help from anyone.

"Ada, love wake up you're dreamin sweetheart, wake up..."

When I awoke I no longer had my head in Eli's lap, instead I found myself bundled up in someones arms, my head held in the palm of their hand, held to their chest as they tried to shake me gently awake. For a second I was confused, I couldn't worj out where I was and the gentle way in which they were speaking to me was so familiar, nostalgic almost that in my half asleep state my lips moved before I could realise what I was saying.

"Nothin dad 'm sleepin," I mumbled trying to push him away, raising my heavy arm slightly, limp hand knocking his.

Thats when they stiffened, their voice suddenly sharp, stern.

"Ada wake up now," they said shaking me a little harder, the cold tone recognisable. Breaking my heart.

My cheeks flushed as I jolted awake, hands pushed against Eli's chest in a panic, wanting nothing more than to get away from him, hide from him.

"Sorry I'm sorry... Sorry Eli..." i whispered quickly, tears in my eyes, not because of what I'd said but because of the dream, I pushed myself away and tried to scramble out of his lap and though at first he tightened his grip and tried to hold me in place, one look at my sorry eyes left his arms weak and he let me go slipping from his lap to the mattresses on the floor.

It was dark out, real dark. I hadn't realised until I'd tripped over Josh into Johnnys waiting arms that I had an audience but as the older lad caught me and steadied me with a soft chuckle and a teasing remark I became completely, crushingly aware of that fact.