Prologue
This is short, but it’s just an introduction. I hope you enjoy. Please like and comment. Thank you!
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The same old dream haunts me day after day. Night after night. It has invaded my thoughts and makes it hard to focus. I mean, how can I when a man with thick black wings calls out to me? I can’t see his face. It’s always cast in shadow. But he yells my name, but not really my name.
“Thalia!” The name is a roar. But he can’t mean me, right? My name is Carmen. But... I think it has to be me. I mean, I’ve been the one seeing him for my entire life now.
And I crave so desperately to see his face. To remember more than the outline of his body and his wings. I wish one aspect of this dream would die though. Fire surrounds this mystery being, hot and fiery. Even in my dreams, I can feel it’s heat. I always wake up sweating, my palms red from trying to reach him through it.
I don’t dare speak a word of this to anyone. Especially, my mother. She would think me crazy. She’d probably think my dreams are the work of the Devil. And, I refuse to be taken back to that dusty basement of Priest Bailee’s. I refuse to lay there.... screaming as they washed me in holy water and prayed over my blistering body.
When I was young.... I had reoccurring bouts of burns spreading all over my body. I remember waking up screaming. The smell of fire still in my nose. My mother said that during my episodes, I would cry out to God to save me. To help his child. I would tear at my back, ripping my clothes away.
She had thought an exorcism would be the answer.
She’d thought wrong.
The burns became worse. I had babbled in tongue. My room was papered in the pages of the holy bible.
But then, one day, a year or so after the failure of an exorcism— it stopped. My body no longer burned. I was no longer in pain.
I was ten when the dream began. Playing on repeat. The flames there, but just hot enough to heat my palms. To make me sweat, but I could function. I never spoke a word of this to my mother, afraid she’d take me back to Bailee and it would make the pain return.
I’m afraid I’ll never forget that pain. I’m also afraid that I’ll never meet him, whoever he is. Maybe, he is the Devil taking over my soul.
But somehow, I don’t think so.
