When Autumn Ends

Chapter One

Fourteen years later...

I was running. Faster than I have ever run before. Not running away from something. More like...towards something.

I seemed to be chasing a shadow that was out of reach. I couldn't see anything else. It was a pitch black tunnel, and the shadow was the only thing I could see.
I didn't know why. All I knew was that I needed to catch that shadow. I needed to.

I was getting closer now, the back of the shadow seemingly clearer now. I saw long, glossy hair, and a slim body. A woman. Someone I recognized.

The shadow was within reach now. I stretched out my fingers, out of breath, desperately reaching...

The shadow turned.

It was my mother.

She hadn't aged a day, looking just around thirty-three, the age she was the last time I saw her.

Behind bars.

I felt tears start to rise, taking me by surprise.

"Mom..?" I whispered.

She shook her head. Not her.

As I looked closer, some features seemed to be off about her. Her eyebrows seemed more arched, cheekbones not as high, hair slightly longer and darker, and eyes slightly more almond-shaped. She was blurry at the edges, giving her the eerie look of a ghost.

I recoiled, confused.

Suddenly, her eyes turned red, her hair lifted up in terrifying tendrils of smoke, and her mouth opened in a wide, gnarling sneer.

"I killed your father," she sneered in a raspy, hoarse voice. "I did it. And you're next, once I find you. You're next!" she screamed.

I took several steps back, terrified. She started advancing towards me, hands held up, looking ready to wrap them around my throat and strip me of life, the same way she did with my poor father, all those years ago.

I tried to run. But I couldn't. She caught up to me, wrapping her ice-cold hands around my throat, and I stopped, choking for air, reaching for my throat to rip away hands that weren't there.

"No...not this way..." I gasped, losing air. But she wouldn't stop.

As my vision faded to black, two figures appeared to me, distant, yet familiar.

My real mother and my father.

I watched them stand there, powerless, looking sad as I writhed to death.

"No...please..."

I woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for air like I hadn't breathed in weeks.

Panicked, I glanced around me, searching for the shadow, for my mother, my father, anything.

Nothing but bedsheets and a slowly-lightening room.

I slowly calmed myself, reminding myself that the shadows moving across my room were just that: shadows.

Another nightmare.

It's been like that every day for the past fourteen years. I hadn't seen my mother since the night she was taken away. Young as I was back then, I'd always assumed that once her trial came around, she'd be proven innocent and our lives would be back to the way they used to be. Surely they wouldn't convict her. She was his wife. She loved him.

The trial came and went, and with the underlying evidence, my mother was sentenced for life, rotting away when she could've been making hundreds and thousands of people happy, like she used to.