Prologue
It’s a forest
I was in a forest
A beautiful place with ambient temperature, the sounds of birds, cricket, and the trees moving are forming into some sort of traditional rhythm that I hadn’t heard in a very long time. It is soothing, calm, and relaxing. Something that I never felt for a decade, something that has long forgotten.
I continue to walk deeper into the woods, I don’t know where I’m heading but I’m not throwing away the peaceful opportunity I’m having right now, even if it’s means living in my own nightmares.
The sky broke like an egg into a full sunset above me and darkness is slowly enveloping the entire forest, a gust of cold night air swept past me which brought me back to my senses.
I’m in my white pajamas and barefoot as well and I am in the middle of nowhere.
The soothing sound of the forest stops, all I can hear is my heart pounding like a simile.
“Aya, you need to run” a voice suddenly calls out to me, I turn and scan the entire forest but there was not a single person I saw
“Who’s there?” I called out trying not to feel scared
“What do you want from me?”
“tell me!” I demand
Again silence, but then.....the whispering continues but this time it erupts into multiple voices, I was turning left, right to my front and back unfortunately not a single person is here except me.
From a soft whisper turns into a warning
“You need to move”
“Don’t let him catch you”
my leg instantly starts to make its own move, and the night turns even colder I was shivering and the voices are still following
“You are bound to him but you must not surrender yourself to him”
“Your destiny is not written by him but by you”
“you have to break it”
“save yourself”
And then as I was walking, I heard a tree branch snap, someone steps on it.
My panic grew and I pick up the pace to move even faster, I can hear it
someone is following from behind, the voices stop too
I was breathing hard, I grew anxious and scared, I don’t want to turn behind and see.
It might be the same person again from before but I still don’t want to know.
Just then, I trip on something and fell hard.
In just one snap, I woke up again full of sweats with heavy breathe on my bed
another night, another nightmare.
I turn to my left to check the time on my digital clock, it is only 4.30 am.
I move closer to the left to reach my drawer and took out my pen and notepad, I wrote down every single thing that I can remember from my dream.
Sadly, it has been a normal routine for me for over 10 years, I started having sleep disorder when I was only 12 years old right after my parents and I got into a car accident. It hit me so hard that I was experiencing traumas that led into sleepless nights, in the beginning, the doctor declared that it might be genetic, however, as I grew it became even worst and it will usually accompany an unanswered dream follow by voices and a figure.
Today, my nightmares and tragedy became a source of inspiration for my writing, so here it is a tragic story from a girl who lives in a modern dystopian world.
