No Strings Attached

Chapter 5

I gasped softly at the sudden disruption, snapping my eyes open. What was that? I listened intently to the silence to see if I could hear anything else. After 30 seconds, nothing happened. But I decided to check with Dad.

I entered his bedroom, and discovered that he was awake as well. "Did you hear it too?" I whispered.

He nodded slowly.

We stand for another moment before deciding that it was most likely the neighbors being clumsy and dropping something. But I was still skeptical. It sounded much more forceful than just an object falling. There's no way it was just a falling book or even a crashing lamp.

I slid into my fluffy comforter, clutching Bop to my chest and gazing into the mesmerizing teal light coming from the lava lamp on my desk—which was coincidentally the same color as the ends of my waist-length hair. Yeah, so lava lamps were a big thing in like 2008, and then the trend ended. But my mom surprised me with that gift for my eleventh birthday, the same year she was diagnosed with cancer. With all the hospital bills we had that year, our money was tight. But I wanted that lava lamp more than anything because Macy had one just like it, so when I ripped off the wrapping paper and saw the box, it was the happiest I had been since the doctor said it was acute myeloid leukemia, and Mom had 5 years to live. I lost interest in it after a year or so because the newest things were out, but since she died I lit up the lamp every night just to remember she's still alive in my memories.

I somberly smiled at the memory, and laid down on my pillow. Even though I was still confused about the odd noise, I fell asleep without much effort.

--

I woke up in cold sweats and uncontrollable tears at 6:16 AM. It was my recurring nightmare I frequently had the day after Mom was brutally stolen from me. Dad burst through my bedroom door and rushed to my bedside, stroking my head and holding my tight.

"Hey, hey," he coaxed. "It was only a dream. Just a dream."

"No, it wasn't!" I sobbed. "It wasn't just a dream."

He was silent, but he knew what I was talking about because he stopped rocking me. My nightmare was my mom's death. She did not die peacefully. Leukemia is painful, and the only way to halt the pain is by overdosing. Mom was strongly against suicide, even if it's for that reason, so she chose the torturous route out. I highly respected her for that, but it made it even more difficult to watch her die. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and we'd have to rush her to the emergency room. I missed school a lot because of it.

My dad carried out to the living room and put on a kettle of water. He dug through one of the boxes on the counter to find my favorite mug: a really wide black one with a white smiley face one it. He always made me chamomile tea with a touch of mint extract to calm me down after nightmares.

Seven minutes and lots of tears later, he handed me my mug and sat on the other end of the couch. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked as I gently blew on the steaming drink.

I shook my head and looked into the yellowish-green liquid, studying the ripples from my breath as they cascaded across the surface.

He sighed and patted my knee. "Well, I'm going to shower now. You can take your time, and we will go whenever you're ready."

I barely nodded, but he stood and left, receiving the message. Taking a cautious sip of my tea as to not burn my tongue, I recalled my nightmare against my own willpower.

It was always the same. A horrible distortion of my mom's death. In reality the doctor's let us take her home so she could pass in a comfortable place, but my mind changed it to make it seem as though it didn't happen that way, and she died in the hospital. But that's not what made it bad. If anything, that was the best part of the dream. Usually my dad and I were out of the room getting lunch when we heard a piercing screech coming from my mom's room. When we dropped our food, we sprinted to the hospital room. But we never got any closer until it's too late. When we finally reached the door, we discovered that it was locked from the inside, and my mother was lying still as stone in the bed attached to all sorts of cords and wires and machines. Since leukemia is a blood cancer my imagination exaggerated the effects of the over-production of blood cells and in the dream she appeared soaked in her own blood with boils covering her body. I was usually banging on the door begging to be let in when I woke up. Sometimes, though, I was the only one outside the room when she started having all that pain, and my dad was the one who locked the door. That's was the version I experienced that time, and those are always the worst ones.