Dauntless

Dreaded Dreams

I knew where I was before I even opened my eyes.

Dead, dark, and hazy. That's what the atmosphere felt like, and that's how it would always feel.

You know that feeling, that one terrifying feeling that suffocates you during nightmares? The one where you feel as if there is a hand grasping at your throat with its sharp long claws, one that won't let you go until it deems you wrecked enough to the point of insanity? Well, that's what this place is for me. There's a difference between us though, you wake up from your nightmare.

I don't.

To be exact, I live through my nightmare every moment of my life. I see it hovering above me when I sleep. I see it trailing behind me when I'm carring out my missions. I see it when I'm with my team members who I care for far more than I should. And I see it when I'm mourning for the loss of my brother.

It haunts me and it makes me afraid.

Afraid that the brother I long for is truly dead.

My thoughts trail to close; however, as my eyes flutter open to the sight of an abandoned amusement park. To be more precise, it's the place where my nightmares first began ten years ago and it'll be where they end as well. I hesitantly glance around my surroundings while appreciating the carousel ahead of me and the colorful ice cream shop across from me, the one that hyung and I would often visit to get ice cream sundaes. I wish I could say that I still feel nostalgic here, and I do, but I've been here so often in my dreams that it doesn't even feel like a memory anymore.

It feels like a prison.

The street lights ahead of me are my only source of light in this never ending darkness, and if I wasn't terrified of the place, I would have appreciated the wind caressing my face as I drowned myself in the happy memories that were associated with the area. As it turns out, though, this place is taboo for me. I don't care for the joyful memories. How can I, when it is also associated with such a dark memory?

I soundlessly begin walking along the deserted path leading to the carousel until I am only but an arm's reach away from it. Images and memories flash through my head of hyung and I. Images of us playfully running around the carousel while it moved around in circles.

The innocent laughter and bickering I shared with hyung in the past, I can still hear it in echoing in my ears.

I reach my hand out to the handle bar closest to me, desperate to connect myself with those memories, only for the carousel to vaporize into smoke. Wide eyed, I stumble backwards as I watch the smoke take the younger forms of father, mother, hyung, and I. Father has his hands wrapped around mother and is whispering words of love to her while hyung and I chase each other around, trying to get a bite of each other's ice creams.

Hysterically, I continue to watch as two masked forms creep onto my family from behind the carousel, their hidden guns with silver crosses revealing themselves in the darkness as the wind ruffles their leather jackets.

A tear runs down my cheek as I watch from afar. I wish I could clasp the hand of my brother. I wish I could drag him away. But alas, I'm trapped in a memory, and one that doesn't allow me to do so.

My younger self trips over and scrapes his knee while hyung became hysterical at the sight of the stream of blood trickling down the injury. It doesn't take long for Hansol's alerted voice to catch mother and father's attention. It doesn't take long for them to come running towards their youngest child.

It is then that the first figure reaches my unguarded brother, his unworthy hand covering my twin's mouth in an effort to muffle his screams as they drag him away from mother and father's line of sight. He would have successfully escaped with him as well, had younger me not pointed him out to father.

I bite the inside of my cheek as I watch father engage the first figure into a fight. They are both talented in the arts of combat and it doesn't take long for father to be completely preoccupied into the battle.

That's when everything goes downhill.

Father doesn't notice the second figure hidden nearby.

He doesn't notice the silver cross etched onto his mask.

He doesn't notice him cock his gun.

By the time he does, it's already to late.

BANG! BANG!

My body slides to the floor as I watch the bodies of father and hyung fall to the ground. Just as their blood begins to stain the ground, the assassins with the silver crosses escape with a limp body in their hands, hyungs.

They don't look back at the unconscious father laying in his pool of blood, the hysterical mother screaming her children's names, or the traumatized son who had just lost his brother.

I wished they had, for then they would have something to haunt them for the rest of their lives as well.

I clasp my quivering hands over my ears in an effort to erase my family's screams from my ears.

Please, please, let me wake up!

"Taeyong!"

"Umma!"

Please!

PLEASE!