I woke up in the middle of the night, breathless. I felt so exhausted, parched and confused.
Was it just a dream? Sure it didn't feel like one.
I couldn't even remember how I ended up in my bed. I do remember the bits and pieces of what had happened, I remember feeling scared to death, but I wasn't sure whether those were the fragments of my imagination or my subconscious mind messing with me again. A part of me believed that everything that had happened was real, even though the other half of my injured brain screamed against it. I tried hard pinpointing onto something, as per my therapist's advice, but these checkered boxes just kept flashing in my blurred vision and I wasn't sure what to decipher from it.
I try waking my wife up, but she is sound asleep. She does sleep like a sloth sometimes.
"Diana... wake up!" I say nudging her, hoping it would do the trick, but she isn't there sleeping by my side. My heart started pumping a bit faster as I try to control another anxiety attack from creeping in.
I call out her name in panic and it is just my own voice echoing around the empty cottage. Where is she. I got up from my bed to look around.
"Diana, where are you?" I call out praying that she'd reply back.
A strange yet familiar tickle ran down my spine as the noises in my head kept getting louder with the intriguing silence I kept receiving.
I walk out the house hoping that I would find her but I see her nowhere. Its not happening again, is it? I trip on something by the door and I bend to pick it up. There it was, the familiar checkered box, a simple Rubik's cube. Normally I would just throw it by the table as it was my wife's and I am too bad at solving it. I have tried it a lot of times but I usually don't get it right. But today I feel that there is something about it. I know it sounds insane, but I feel like its calling onto me. I slowly pick it up calling out my wife again and start shuffling it. After a while, the formed into a triangular pattern, which I am sure I have never accomplished before. With a slight twist, the box split into two. I open the box praying that it isn't what I think it is.
'YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME' read the letter inside the cube and the earth just crushed under my feet.
This isn't happening. Not now. Especially not after everything we've been through.
I knew what I had to do. Let me finish this game once and for all. Without a second thought I rushed towards my car and sped through the highway as my past flashed in front of my eyes like series of slide-shows. What if something happened to her...
I wish I didn't know what that letter meant. I wish I had no idea where I was going. I wish I wasn't a part of something that could essentially ruin my life for good this time. I wish...
YOU ARE READING
Take Me Back
Short StoryThere are a few stuff that we can never run from. Sometimes we are too afraid to face the real situation that it might start haunting us unless we come in terms with it. This short story revolves around a person named Rodgers, who is an ex-con, stuc...