13. The Nightmares

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I find myself in an empty room, except there is a child who looks nothing like a child. She is wrapped so tightly inside a thin mattress that I can see only her feet and somehow... her right arm... which has become a knife from her elbow to the place her fingers should be.

I run to her, try to calm her, yet she wields the knife in blind panic, unable to tell friend from foe. Someone pulls me away from the blade.

Opening my eyes I take in the fresh air. Adyns figure towering over me, his hands on my shoulders.
"Again?" He asks, his tone soothing and empathetic. I nod and sit up wondering if I was the girl in the mattress, part human, part weapon, fighting the entire world because she never saw the face of her true enemy.

He walks back to the fire, turning the squirrel on a stick, over it. It's small, not much to eat but I'm hungry. We are both so hungry.

Crazy how fast you forget your hatred and roast squirrels over a fire with your number one enemy just to stay alive. I guess in the end surviving is more important than anything else in the moment. So we became a team, for the moment.

Sitting down on the fallen tree I start chewing on the tough piece of meat.

"Do you remember it this time?"

I shake my head and play everything down while in reality I remember them so vividly, it's painful.

Yesterday I dreamed I was in a corn maze, running like a panicking chicken looking for the exist.
No matter which path I took it always came back to the hangman's noose at the center of the maze. There was only one way out.

In the beginning it was always the same nightmare. Paralyzed, naked, cold. The masked man would come closer with the knife, making sweeping movements to a music only he could hear. He would be closer, then further away and then closer again.

They turn more crude and creepy every day, and it all started when we walked into this forest.

"Do you want the rest?"
My eyes meet his dreamy brown ones before I look at the meat he is handing me.
"No, you need it" I say, although I could eat about a hundred more of those little animals.

"You know I was thinking about moving to another area"

My eyes shoot back to him.
"You think something is about to happen again?"
Although I know that death in here is not real, the fear still is. And I am scared of running away again. Whatever cruelty they are sending our way now.

"Hmm" he takes a bite "One week in the city before the earthquake, one week at the lake before the tsunami. Today is the seventh day we are here"

"But we skipped one area plus the incidents always happened around midday, which would be about now"

"How about we pack everything up and move just in case?" he proposes

"To the desert? No vegetation, nothing. No food, no water. Nothing. How long are we able to live there? I can tell you how long. Two days maximum" the words fall out of my mouth like a waterfall.

I'm exhausted and with every additional day I feel like I'm loosing track of my goal.
He took care of me, even saved my life. How am I supposed to expose his true self? Am I sure he is that evil? Do I even want to win?

He did prove his survival skills.

"Calm down" a mild smile touches his lips and his hand rests on my shoulder "We can wait a bit. But if the sun sets and nothing had happened, we pack up and move, alright?"

For the rest of the day we collect some more wood for a fire or sit underneath the tree, looking at the green roof over our heads.

"If you never got here, what would you like to work?" Adyns head rests on the old tree.

"I would work in my mothers shop to help her"

"But you don't want to do that. If you could choose any profession, what would it be?"

"Hmm. Maybe a nurse" I think and see from the corner of my eye how he shifts his head to look at me.

I turn to him and start giggling. We stared at each other in an odd way, as if it were a silent argument. Our glances battled each other, until he moves his head closer to me.

I sit frozen, from both fear and excitement. He leans in, so my forehead rests against his. We close our eyes. Both our breaths are shaking. His lips brush mine, softly. I want to pull away but I feel paralyzed as if I'm dreaming.

My eyes still closed, I await to feel his lips on mine again, but nothing happens. Confused and a little disappointed I open my lids to see Adyn looking past me. Just from his expression I know what is going on.

Grabbing my wrist he pulls me up.
"Follow me"

What are you fighting for?Wo Geschichten leben. Entdecke jetzt