My eyes open wide as I wake, panting. Some say that dreams have deeper meaning, that they are cries from our subconscious. I never put much stock in such ideas. But I feel strangely compelled to recount this one to my love, my Annabel. Shaking her gently, I wonder why her flesh has the chill of virgin snow. My thoughts are disrupted as reality hits me like a bolt of lightning and I scream.
She had rescued me from my nightmare, but she was too late. Blood was everywhere, the screams of pain still echoing in the room, our room. I began sobbing uncontrollably. What had I done? My one and only love, my Annabel, had been slain by my hand.
This has to be a dream. A nightmare within a nightmare. I’m going to wake up and she is going to be okay. I am going to tell her all about my journey through Hell, my victory over the Temptress, the Fiend. We are going to laugh together about how real dreams can feel, about how they can torment our minds so lucidly that we begin to think we are actually acting them out,
performing them in a theatre of our biggest fears.
The nightmare had won. Had the Temptress known all along what I was going to do? Is that why she teased me so? Is that why no matter what mistakes I had made along the way in that God forsaken house I was always given another opportunity? I was never in control. It was all a lie. The punishment for my sins was never to be for me to spend an eternity in Hell. It was to live without love in my life here on earth. The only thing I had ever truly loved was gone. My Annabel was gone. I could almost hear the Temptress, the Fiend, laughing. I never stood a chance.
I climbed to my feet, walked to the mirror, stared at my blood soaked clothes, my blood stained hands. I cried, I begged, I pleaded. But she wasn’t coming back. I had failed.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. I never saw the blade coming. I’m not so sure I even felt it enter my side. I would have opened my eyes to spy who had done this to me, but really what’s the point. It’s not like I didn’t already know. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to watch myself die.
What is it that Annabel had said before she left that night? It’s round and round and round we go? I better start paying closer attention before someone gets hurt.
Imprisoned beneath the world where the soulless dwell lies a place that the damned call home. A place where the virtuous hide in fear, a place we see only in our nightmares.
A place where the sun is silent.
