The Memory Behind The Cat

Chapter 5: Another Nightmare

Chapter 5

*Another Nightmare*

Katniss saw herself in Athena's house again. But, this time, Athena was nowhere in sight. It was different than the other dream: she saw the man in the picture. The two of them, Katniss and the guy was sitting on the couch, their hands intertwined. The two were smiling and both looked happy. Then the dream suddenly shifted to a different setting.

The guy disappeared, leaving Katniss alone. Katniss only say a vast black space with nothing in it. The darkness engulfed her and she was scared -- too scared because she knew that this was just a dream and yet, why? Why can't she force herself to wake up?

A sparkling white light blinded her temporarily and she was now back at the house. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. She heaved a sigh of relief. Maybe I'm already awake, she thought.

Katniss jumped out of the bed and tried to look at her reflection in the mirror. Why she did it, she wasn't sure.

Man, how she regretted doing it.

The mirror suddenly broke and blood poured out from cracks. The flow was slow, at first. And Katniss never expected it to fill the whole room.

The blood, dark red and stank of rust, filled the room up to Katniss' waist. She felt she was about to faint -- the smell of blood causing it. She believed that it can't get any worse.

She was so wrong.

Spiders, all kinds -- poisonous and harmless ones -- appeared out of nowhere and crawled down the walls. For once, Katniss was glad that she was drowning in blood, thinking that it would also drown the creepy arachnids.

She could never believe how wrong she was.

The stupid spiders CAN swim! And worse, they are swimming towards her! Blood was already on her neck, and to make it worse, she could feel hundreds, no, thousands of feet crawling all over her drowning body.

Katniss tried to decide which was worse: drowning in blood or bitten to death by spiders? She realized that she wasn't given the chance to choose. Before the blood can drown her, the spiders already found her head and crawled everywhere. Katniss felt pain, horror and fear. Is this how she would die?

Thankfully, the scene shifted. She was saved -- away from the blood, spared from the dreadful spiders. She was in Athena's lawn, lying down on the grass. She stood up, observing her surroundings. What Katniss saw next wasn't that frightening as the blood or spiders but it did make her scream.

A pair of yellow eyes greeted her, which made Katniss' heart leap up to her throat. The cat was now clearly in view and it suddenly pinned her down on the ground. And just like in the other dream, the cat, six feet tall, gobbled her up and only a pool of blood remained on the lawn.