The Darkness

I woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and tears, that dream was like no other. It's as if it was trying to warn me about something. Since I couldn't go back to sleep, I decided to get up and get ready for another day of work at the most prestigious law firm in Manhattan. I get in my pink porsche taycan and head to work, but of course in this busy city there is so much traffic. I stopped at a stoplight and suddenly everything began getting dark, the air was turning black all around me.
I begin freaking out and gasping for air, clean air which is quickly disappearing. All of the sudden I am getting jerked, my head hits the steering wheel and a slow trickle of blood starts oozing from my nose? No, my forehead? I can't tell, it's too dark to see but apparently I had hit the car in front of me. I look up lazily amidst the darkness. My head is fuzzy like I might have a slight concussion. I reach over and try to find the seat belt buckle but it's somehow stuck. I yank on it multiple times before it finally lets loose, I slide my shoe back on that had slipped off during the accident. I jump out of the car to check on the person in front of me, and my car of course. Great, my car is definitely totaled. The back of the other person's PT Cruiser is pushed in so badly that the trunk of the car is pushed inside the rest of it. I roll my eyes thinking about how much damage this will do to my insurance and go to the driver seat of the other car, but when I check, that's when I notice.
Nobody is in there, I look around with the flashlight on my phone to check if maybe they had flown out the front of the car, but the windshield was still intact. Maybe they had gotten out of the car to check on something? But it's illegal to stop in that manner at a stoplight and would be utterly reckless to do in a city this size. Now that I'm thinking of it, I don't even remember there being hazard lights on which they would have had to have if they had indeed gotten out. So where is this person? I leave the car behind and start looking around at all the other cars, but just like the one I had hit, there is nobody inside.
I look out over the street at the park and see that all the plants and flowers are dead and wilted. Whatever this mysterious air is, it's doing something despicable and horrendous. I have to say it out loud to make sense of it all, everything is dying and everyone has disappeared. I am the only one left alive.

I wake up to bright lights boring straight into my soul, or is it my eyes? I can't see a thing besides these awful lights and white walls. I look down and see the paper thin blue hospital gown. What is happening to me? I could've sworn I was just in the park and that there was nobody else around even in their cars. Are there other people out here? Do they know what's happening outside? Or was it all just a dream?
It couldn't have been a dream or else I wouldn't be in the hospital, what is happening? I pinch myself to confirm that I'm actually here, and sure enough it's not a dream. I look around the room and don't see any nurses or doctors, just the IV and other cords that I'm currently hooked up to. Looking at all the things I'm connected to in this tiny room, I can't stop thinking, what the hell happened. I decide that it might just be easier to sleep until a doctor comes in, so I close my eyes and drift off. It's so weird when you go from having having vivid terrifying dreams to having no dream at all, its like I'm back outside and I'm just falling into a never ending darkness which is almost as terrifying as the dream itself was.
In the dream I had last night my hands were tied while someone came in and murdered my husband, but somehow I was the one who had blood on my hands and my outfit. It was almost as if I had killed him and then tied my own hands because I was afraid of what I might do next.
I wake up to a doctor saying my name "Alyssa, my name is Dr. Collins, are you able to open your eyes?" I do. "Alyssa, would you like a cup of water?" I graciously take the cup and down it like I haven't had a single thing to drink in days. Days, "what day is it" I ask the doctor, "it is Tuesday, September 23rd 2024, you have been in a coma for the last seven years" he replied. "How is that even possible, where is Jeremy my husband" I ask. Dr. Collins responded "I'm sorry but your husband has been dead for seven years".
All the pieces started quickly falling into place. It wasn't a dream, I did kill my husband, and I must've wrecked my car on purpose in an attempt to get over the guilt and grief. I was the only one left, because I created the darkness. The darkness is in me.