Secret Inferno

Dreams

I was standing in an old house. The walls were wood paneled and there wore bookshelves that went all the way up to the ceiling filled with books. There was a very expensive looking rug on the floor with very elegant furniture. A large dark green couch in front of a large fireplace in the center of the wall opposite of the heavy wooden doors.

On the couch was a little girl, around four or five years old with dark hair. I couldn’t see her face; the couch and the girl were facing away from me. She was crying.

I slowly walked up behind the couch and looked over the girls shoulder. She was holding a picture that looked to have been made in the early 1800’s. It was a picture of a woman who looked to be about in her thirties with dark hair just like the little girl’s. There was something about the woman in the picture that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place what. The woman looked very somber, yet very beautiful at the same time.

I was about to ask the girl why she was crying when a man came through the doors. He was very tall and burly. His raven black hair was in a short and neat ponytail at the base of his scull. His face was hard and in a deep frown.

He took no notice of me and walked over to the little girl and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Why are you crying?” he asked her. The girl stiffened at the man’s touch. “I thought I told you to never cry.”

The girl turned around and looked up at the man, fear and pleading in her eyes.

“F-Father, I- I-”

Before she could finish whatever she was going to say, however, the man, her father it would seem, took his hand off of her shoulder and promptly used that hand to slap her with enough force to knock her to the floor in front of the couch, the picture sent into the fireplace. The girl’s father walked around the couch and stood in front of her.

I watched as the girl, now sporting a split lip and a red cheek, slowly pick herself up into a sitting position. She looked up at her father. He looked furious. He pointed a finger at her and spoke in a very stern and threatening voice.

“Crying is the same as pain! It is nothing but another form of weakness! No child of mine is going to be weak! Now, get up and stop crying! Or would you prefer to disgrace our family name by continuing this display?”

Suddenly, the scene changed and the library disappeared. The little girl was now standing in front of a rather large house that was on fire. House was probably not the right word; mansion was more like it. It looked to be at least four stories high; at least it would be if the roof hadn’t caved in on itself.

Her father walked up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder, much like he did in the library, only this time the little girl wasn’t crying. Apparently she took her fathers harsh and unreasonable words to heart. She just stared at the flames with a blank stare. She was seeing, yet not seeing the catastrophe before her.

“You see now, my little Spitfire,” he said to her, “this is what happens when you let someone to close to you. They take advantage of you and use their knowledge of you to destroy you. This is why you must never trust anyone but yourself and your instincts. Do you understand?”

“…Yes… yes, I understand father.”

I jolted awake, breathing heavily and sweating. Damn, that was a weird dream.