A collection of short stories surrounding death. About living with death, coping, not coping, letting go and holding on.
Because at the end of the day, what do we have but memories?
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I can't look at the night sky anymore.
When I was little, I used to stay up past my bedtime just to see the shadows from the moon, or a single silver jewel adorning the sky. I remember I would sleep outside as soon as summer came, not caring that I would wake at the first crack of dawn. The stars kept me safe, forming a palace of crystalline diamonds and silver lights. Of course, that was a very, very long time ago.
Sometimes, I wonder how long it's been since it all began. The dreams that became nightmares that slowly but surely manifested around me. I wonder how long it's been since I slept for a whole night, since I could rest undisturbed and without suffocating on the oxygen around me. Since the stars started falling and I, too blinded by wonder, fell with them.
Those are the times when I hate you the most.
You started out as one of my dreams. Like so many things before you, you were a familiar face way before I met you. You were always there in the background, smiling at someone, never meeting my gaze. Then, when the nightmares began, you disappeared. Or perhaps, the nightmares began because you disappeared.
My dreams had always been real, but crowded. I would love them as a child, spacious town squares full of people where everyone would make time for me, smile and ruffle my hair. As I grew into my teens, the faces remained friendly, reminding me I was never really alone. But then, somewhere around my late teens, something changed. The squares would fill with people rushing around, preoccupied with their own lives. My own world was no longer mine, and I began wondering if it ever had been.
Then, the sky fell. My dreams were overridden with manic starlight and slivers of moonshine, forming a hypnotic trance that consumed everyone around me. In the chaos, I actually looked for you, but you had vanished. The light burned my dreamworld for days, or rather nights, and all I could do was watch as it consumed everything around me. Then, when there was nothing but light, darkness took its place. I was alone in the dark for centuries, walking hollowly over a landscape that never changed.
I forgot how to live. I dreamt my days away in a place without light or company. I moved, walking lifelessly through my life. Then, I woke up again, and for a moment, everything was okay.
It had been another dulled out day, another cross on the calendar that I wouldn't remember a thing of tomorrow. Or so I thought. Everything had been just as usual until I saw you. I remembered you, and knew that my dreams hadn't been only mine. You remembered me, too. And for the first time, we faced each other. You were smiling, I must have been doing the same.
But in that moment, the first star fell.
The past became the future.
The dreams became reality.
The light became darkness.
And my palace became a prison.
The night sky turned empty, devoid of stars, and the world was silent, never to make a sound again.
