Our Life (Sequel to "Remnants")

Nightmares

-Carl-

I woke up. The sun was unusually bright. So was my mood - I felt... light; free. I looked around: Alexandria! I was back in Alexandria! That explained my sudden sense of optimism.

I climbed out of bed and examined my room. This was obviously Alexandria, but there was something... different about it. It felt special - familiar, almost nostalgic.

Then I realized it - my own room. It was my own God-damned room! My bedroom was in Alexandria!

I had no idea how any of this had happened, but I honestly didn't care. As far as I was concerned, a miracle had just happened, and everything that had happened - Negan, Simon, Michael... The whole damned apocalypse - it was all just a bad dream.

But those words echoed in my mind.

A bad dream.

A bad dream.

I closed my eyes, physically pained by these words. When I opened them again, I looked around, and was utterly horrified by what I saw.

My room was tattered and sadistically distorted - blood oozed from tears in the wallpaper, and the floor was absolutely full of gore and dead bodies. Bodies that I recognized.

My mom. Dad. Sophia. Shane. Hershel. Carol...

"No," I breathed deeply, struggling to process the terrifying sight that lay before me, "no, no, n-"

My cries of distress were cut off when I felt something rising in my throat - like I had the urge to vomit. I found myself unable to speak as this sensation built up, and I found myself panicking and battling for breath.

It was drowning inside.

Drowning.

Going doing... Down... Down...

Then the liquid spilled out my mouth.

Blood.

-

I awoke with a start, jolting upright in an instant. It took me several seconds to realize that I was not in a room filled with the decaying corpses of my friends and family, and even longer to calm my trembling body.

Then, I felt tears arise, and I did not have the physical or mental strength to hold them back.

After everything we'd all been through, I had not expected to feel embarrassed or ashamed to cry, but I still did. It felt... selfish, when I thought of people like Carol - who had suffered countless hours of torture before finally being executed...

There was always somebody out there who was doing worse than you. But that wasn't enough to fight back the tears that now poured down my cheeks.

"Carl?" the comforting voice of Riley looked confused from the doorway, before walking over to me and sitting down beside me, "Carl, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," I sighed, with Riley wrapping an arm around my waist and gently leaning me against him for comfort. It was enough to bring my emotional outburst to a halt, but the memories and feeling of grief that my nightmare had unearthed were still not banished.

"I know it's something," Riley smiled lovingly, "I know you too well to get fooled by that."

He has a point. Riley's always been able to tell what I'm feeling and when I'm feeling it.

"I just had a dream and... And lots of people I'd lost were in it. I have dreams like that a lot, but they've never felt this... vivid. After I woke up, it just made me realize; everyone I met after the apocalypse has... gone. Mom, Dad, Shane, Amy, Andrea, Jim, Dale, Shane, Carol, Sophia, Ed, Jacqui... They've all died, and not one of them's died peacefully either..."

"Daryl's still here," I reminded him, trying my best to comfort him, but I knew what it was like to loose people, and how hard it was to be comforted over it afterwards.

"Daryl and his brother didn't arrive until after the first month. They were both... well, putting it simply, redneck bastards at first," Carl remarked, still smirking at the use of a 'swear word.' His innocence when it came to swearing, in spite of the fact we were in an apocalypse, was just one of the many things I adored about Carl's wonderful personality.

But that personality - like mine, and everyone's who was still alive - had been tainted by the sheer brutality and horror of the world we lived in.

And it was because of that, that I concluded there was no time for lying anymore.

There was still cut on the edge of his of Carl's lip where my punch had connected yesterday.

If we were to make the best of this shitty world, we had to start telling the truth.

Which meant it was time to tell Carl about my PTSD...