The parents were also forced to witness the death of their kids while in the state of shock, anger and sadness. Some would try to stop her, but she would prevail and they would end up being just another one of the dead bodies on the ground.
* * *
The dreams are always the same. The same people are in it, and the same crime is committed.
I thought about it as I took a casual stroll in town. Usually, I would just ignored the dream. But there was one particular reason why it stayed on my mind this time.
A poster in a store window caught my attention earlier in the day. In bright neon yellow colors, the words read: “Showing of Stand by Me tonight at seven o’ clock!” The poster also showed the location of the film showing. The field.
I wanted for this nightmare to be over. I wanted to wake up and realize that what I saw on the store window was just a part of a very vivid dream, but it wasn’t happening.
Everyone went on with their day preparing for tonight, while I walked around, holding in a dark secret. What was I going to do? Should I go or stay at home where I’d be safe?
* * *
I looked around at everyone—the laughing children, the busy parents and the rebellious teenagers. Their lives could be taken away tonight. If I didn’t at least try to stop it, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
I glanced at my watch. It was 6:45 p.m., and I had made my decision. With an exasperated sigh, I made my way to the field, trying to think about anything but the dream.
“Hey, Eliza!” A voice shouted out. I turned to see one of my friends from school, Eden, walking towards me. “Woah, you look like you saw a deformed duckling.”
“You make no sense.” I chuckled, trying my best to look not so concerned or aware of an impending doom. I admit, I sound a little over dramatic. But I just have a feeling that this dream I’ve had for the past few weeks was a warning for tonight.
It was up to me to stop my dream from turning into reality.
“I’m just saying you look a little worried, that’s all. Did you rob a store or something?” she joked, giving me a scrutinizing look.
“I’m okay, just lost some sleep last night,” I reassured her, and she seemed fine with my answer.
“Eden, we found a spot over here.” One of her friends rushed up to her, nearly out of breath. Eden waved goodbye before running off with her friend.
Taking off my flip flops, I walked across the grass. The smell of fresh grass soothed my worries until I found myself at the same exact spot where I sat in my dream. I plopped myself down and got ready for the movie to start.
Deja vu hit me like slap on the face when I saw everyone setting down their blankets across the field. People sat in the same place they did in my dream, but one person was missing—the little girl. Heck that gave me relief. I was happy to see she wasn't here.
Come to think of it, I never saw that girl around town at all. Then again, I don’t really look at everyone when I was out and about.
I lay back on the ground, enjoying the feeling of fresh grass against my skin. Closing my eyes, I pretended I was somewhere else, like a fantasy world. It made all my worries wither away until they were nonexistent.
The sound of someone’s feet crunching against the grass snapped me out of my peaceful state of mind. I looked up and saw a little girl walking past me to a spot ten feet in front of me. Same outfit, same girl, same spot... same everything.
She began to stare at the boy sitting near her. My heart raced, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. It was like I was the chosen hero and here I was, having to make a difficult decision.
The girl looked too innocent and unsuspecting to be a cold-blooded, murderous beast. That’s what made her the perfect killer.
The movie started and she stared hard at the boy. When she got up, my hands began to shake. Whether it was from being scared or from an adrenaline rush, I wasn’t sure.
Everyone stared at the little girl whose shadow was blocking the screen. The girl looked back at me and my heart came to a complete stop. I stood up and started running towards the little girl, knowing very well I had to stop her before innocent lives were taken away.
I tackled her to the ground, then wrapped my arms around her puny neck and tried to choke the life out of her. She scratched and began to fight back. Bystanders tried to force me off of her, not knowing how much of a danger she was to everyone.
After a few more minutes of struggling, her eyes turned lifeless. She stopped fighting back and her body went limp.
Two men pulled me off the dead girl and I let them. People all around me starting screaming, some were calling 911.
“What’s wrong with you?” A woman yelled at me. She was so close to me, but her voice seemed so distant. “How could you kill my little girl?” Tears fell from her face.
“She was getting up—” I paused, recalling everything that just happened. “She was going to kill everyone.” The words that came out of my mouth sounded absurd and ridiculous.
“She was getting up to walk to a spot I found for us.” The mother’s voice shook as her words turned into whimpers and pleas for her daughter to come back.
An innocent little girl. I took her life away. I looked around at everyone who was standing around me. They all stared at me with disgust, but it was the expression in the mother’s eyes that hurt me the most. She was so upset, she couldn’t even hold herself up. She collapsed to the ground, holding her little girl tight.
When the prophecy in my dream told me to stop a monster, I didn’t know that monster would be me.
Memories
Sometimes memories are all you have.
Today was different. I still looked the same, everything was in the same exact place and my family acted the same way they did every day. Dad left for work, mom was in the living room folding the laundry and my brother Samuel played video games in his room.
But something was off. Maybe it was me? Did I do something different or did I just forget to brush my teeth? I breathed into my palm and quickly smelled my breath. Nope, it smelled like our minty fresh toothpaste.
I forgot something, but I couldn’t even come close to pinpointing what it was at the moment. It felt like my brain was scratching and biting at the sides of my head, trying to gnaw its way out.
I was getting close, I just knew it. I had to remember. My brain seemed to be on a mental block, so finding out what it was that I forgot is going to be more difficult than I thought.
As if I knew what was going to happen, I looked towards my younger brother’s room at the same exact moment he called for me. “Lynda!” his high-pitched voice filled the hallway I was standing in.
I walked into my brother’s bedroom and saw him staring at the television that was only a mere feet away. “You’re going to ruin your eyes being so close to the TV,” I remarked, but his eyes still didn’t look away from the big box of entertainment. I never understood people’s the fascination with television sets. I personally liked more quiet pastimes. A good book was entertainment enough for me.
“Whatever,” he mumbled. “Look, I’m going for my highest score of all time. I can’t stop now or I’ll lose my concentration and ruin my hard work.” Why was he telling me this?
“And how is this important to me?”
“I need you to do my chores.”
“Ha! You wish.” I left his room as soon as he started begging me to do what he asked. Samuel walked out of after me. Well, more like stomped after me. “You suck,” he muttered as he pushed past me in the hall.
“It’s not that bad, just chill out.” Talk about déjà vu hitting me as hard as a tsunami. Where have I said this? It seemed too familiar. Maybe a past argument I had? Something weird was going on.
“My reputation is now going to be at stake.” What reputation is an eleven-year-old going to have? I thought it was a joke when he said that, but the seriousness of his voice begged to differ. For a second, it sounded as if he was on the verge of tears.
 
; “If something as little as a video game is going to ruin your reputation, then you should really re-think your life choices.” I made it a point to use air quotations when saying the word ‘reputation’.
With no response except letting a big huff of air out, he stormed off to the kitchen to do the dishes. I wasn’t a bad sister for not doing his chores, nor was I lazy. I just wanted to teach him that he couldn’t always get his way in life.
I checked my watch and realized it was the perfect time for a nap.
Weariness hit me even harder just thinking about how much I longed to be in my bed right now. I headed off to my room, getting ready to take a rest and maybe clear up the forgetfulness I seemed to be having recently.
My eyelids shut as a faint voice whispered to me. Remember… Then, I drifted off to sleep.
I shot up from my bed, feeling as tired as I was when I fell asleep. It was already 5:35 p.m. Four hours of sleep and it didn’t help me feel better whatsoever.
Now, the urgency to remember was more powerful than ever… or maybe it’s just the headache I’m having. I stumbled out of my room, more irritated than I had ever been in my life.
The loud shooting noises and cars screeching that echoed from my brother's room didn’t help anything. I just wanted peace and quiet. “Turn it down!” I yelled, slamming my fist against his door. In response, he turned up the volume of his TV. This only spiked the anger I was feeling towards my brother at the moment.
There was too much damn noise.
My mother was vacuuming the living room. I swear this house was a deathtrap for my headache. My ears were on high alert and every single noise it could hear sounded ten times louder in my head.
The clock ticked louder than ever. The vacuum also got louder and somehow my brother's video games overpowered all of the other noises. My hands shook—whether it was because I was furious or because it was cold in the house, I wasn’t sure.
But then I noticed I was grinding my teeth as well, so I knew everything I was feeling was result of my not-so-peppy mood.
Before my head could process what I was doing, I made my way to Samuel’s room, fists ready to put a pounding on someone. I burst through the door and said in a voice that made me start to question my sanity, “You have one more chance to turn it down.”
He didn’t seem to be fazed by me at all because he just turned up the volume some more. “No.” Sam turned back to his game, ignoring my existence.
In the corner of his room was a signed baseball bat from one of his favorite players. I picked it up and walked up behind him.
He had no idea what was coming to him, and it just made it a little more bittersweet. I wanted him to acknowledge that I was there, but I didn’t want him to stand and runaway before he got what was coming to him.
I held the bat high. “If only you would have listened.” The words slipped out of my mouth in a whisper. I swung the bat and hit him hard on the head. I thought my anger would fade away after the first swing. But with every hit, his screams got louder and this made me angrier. “Why won’t you just shut up!” I screamed as I swung the bat again and again.
His yelps and cries for help were blocked out by his game. By the time his cries died down, I was no longer infuriated. Then he went silent, and blood spilled from his wounds, nose and mouth.
I turned his game off, leaving his lifeless body on the ground. I made my way out of his room and walked into the kitchen to scrub the blood off of me. Mom wasn’t in the living room anymore.
Everything was quiet. That’s all I wanted.
A cry came from my brother’s room. But it wasn’t Samuel’s voice, it was my mother’s. When it registered in my mind that she had found her dead son, I had to react quickly. “Please come back.” She sounded helpless and devastated. It wasn’t a big deal though.
A knife that my mom used to cut vegetables was in the sink. It was as if it wanted me to use it. It was fate… fate wanted me to do this.
With the knife in hand, I made my way to my traumatized mother who was crying over my dead brother’s body. I entered in the room as quietly as possible, but she turned and saw me walking in.
With a grin on my face, I hid the knife behind my back. “What happened mother?” A horrified expression came across her face, but it was soon replaced by anger—the kind of anger I felt earlier.
She could now understand my pain. She got up, releasing Sam from her arms, and charged at me. Not a hesitation went through me before I raised the knife so she would run right into it. The knife stabbed through her smoothly. As smooth as silk, I would describe it.
I let go of the knife, letting her bleed out on the floor where her son lost his life. She wasn’t dying quick enough, and I couldn’t have that. She tried to take the knife out, covering up her wound. But before she could, I grabbed it and stabbed her in the throat. Then, I left her to die.
Hours passed. No noise came from anywhere in the house, and I felt relaxed.
I remembered dad coming home to see what had happened. The look on his face was great, it made me feel like I was on top of the world.
Then all of a sudden, I woke up. Was it all a dream? I looked around the room, I wasn’t in my house anymore. I was in a room. A small one. It was cleaner than any room I’ve seen before.
I was in a hospital. A psychiatric hospital. Well, that’s what it said on the band around my wrist. For the second time in my life, I felt at peace. I was home. It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory.
The memory of how I broke free from the place I called hell. They say memories are all you have and I’m glad I have this one.
Believe
Jeff was always told that if you believe something, it’ll come true. But maybe some things are better left as figments of the imagination.
I don’t know why I came back or why I was sitting on this bench at the park, which held so many bad memories for me. This was my tormentors’ hang-out spot. It’s been ten years, let it go. That’s something my sister would say to me, if she could just hear the thoughts that went on in my head.
She didn’t know what it was like to be taunted by the same people every day, to be pushed into walls and tripped every time someone had a chance to. Just because she was accepted by the “popular” kids, didn’t mean that gave me immunity from all the teasing and bullying.
“Jeff,” my sister’s voice stopped me from continuing to talk to myself in my head. “We shouldn’t be here.” She gave me a concerned look. It was the same expression she always gave me during our high school days.
“Why, Carilyn?” I looked at her, dumbfounded. I knew exactly why she didn’t want me here, but playing dumb would make her say it and that’s what I wanted.
“You know why.” She gave me an annoyed look. “Bad things happened here. Standing here isn’t going to change the past.”
“Maybe I can’t change the past, but I can alter the future.”
My sister stared at me, her eyes full of questions. “I can make them believe me at the reunion,” I said.
Reunion. Just thinking about it made me nervous. I had to have confidence in my plan because if I didn’t, then it won’t work. I would make them believe me once and for all.
“This is exactly why you got picked on.” The words stung a little, but I pushed it away. It wasn’t something she hadn’t said before. I probably heard that phrase a hundred times from freshman year all the way to senior year. “How in the hell are you going to convince anyone that you’re a demon when you know damn well that you aren’t?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, sis. I am a demon, and soon you will see. Everyone that picked on me will see the truth.” It took a while, but I figured that they were too scared to see the truth. By “they”, I mean everyone who didn’t believe me. So, pretty much everyone at my old high school.
My sister was so naive. Or maybe she was just hiding the fact that she’s terrified of her brother being something that isn’t human. I would be on edge too if my sibling was something that wasn??
?t human. But at least I’d believe them, unlike Carilyn.
She shook her head and sat on the bench next to me. The entire place was quiet. I looked around the park I spent my childhood and teenage years. Almost everything was rusted, no one bothered to take care of the place. It was a death trap for children. One scrape from something there and next thing you know, a kid would have infection that will turn into a flesh-eating virus.
Maybe that was an exaggeration, but maybe it wasn’t.
Now that I thought about it, nothing that happened here to me was in any way good. I remember having my face shoved into the sandbox for more than ten seconds. I inhaled and choked on small bits of sand and dirt. The taste of the horrible mixture was still in my mouth and throat, as if it just happened.
“Can’t we just leave for the reunion already? It started ten minutes ago,” Carilyn asked, impatience clear in her tone.
“You can go. I have to do something.” I couldn’t care less if she stayed here with me or not.
She gave me an uncertain look, but she didn’t move. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Why? Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“I’m just worried about you.”
“Why now?” I looked over at her. “You never cared for my safety in high school. You let them torment me, you let them beat the hell out of me.”
She looked like she was stuck in a flashback, remembering everything that happened to me. “I talked to them. I asked them to stop,” she said, tears brimming in eyes. “You act like I’m the one who was bullying you.” One tear. Two tears. Three tears. I counted them as they spilled from her eyes. She started sniffling shortly after tears fell down her face.
“You still hung out with them! You were on their side the whole time. Never once did you step in as they turned my face into their own personal punching bag.” I began to breathe hard, anger and hurt intertwined into one horrible emotion as I spoke. “You might as well had been punching me too.” I could feel the blood pumping through my veins. My heart was beating fast and my hands were shaking.