She Who Plays in Death's Arms

Chapter 1

I didn’t fully exist where I stood. I was nothing but a spectator, aimless in the middle of these quakes. Or what I thought were quakes. It was her heart thundering erratically, roaring its possessor and marking her captive. I watched her sit in a dark corner in the midst of an empty apartment. She held bruises of her old self-made scars, her weaknesses surfacing and her ease slip into depression on the head of her wrists, arms and her boney legs. The vision got vaguer and further elusive near her features, as the woman sobbed holding what resembled a blanket -the same kind used to wrap in newborns- The thing carried a single metal tag, where the cursive letters read 'Rosevelt' gracefully across. Unfortunately, its usage was inadequate in this woman's situation.  She knew she was making the right decision, none of her family was right. None of them knew how it felt. They were liars, hypocrites hiding in the rear of what presented them serenity with the audacity to tell her it was okay to not have hers. She had not been decieved by her memories. She knew it deep inside and it wasn’t because of any depression-caused symptoms her fool doctor could make go away with pills and drugs.

She stood up, tall on her feet. The image went fuzzier and swiftly cleared as her tumbling steps took her closer to her end. She reached an unlocked wide window and with barely any strength left in her, she opened it still clutching the tiny blanket. Her hands trembled over and over, giving her yet another eagerness for relief. She kissed the piece of cloth and placed it close to her heart, just the way it was supposed to be held. Her eyes closed in an indication of finality and her face was lastly clear, but not for long, because as she climbed over that window, and let her body loose keen for liberation -of the seclusion haunting her spirit the past months- she was gone. She fell and fell, challenging the wind, her mind set stern of meeting that coverlet's past owner in her afterlife, if the priests were in fact sincere. The noise of her heart and her breathing entangled the sounds of roughly cut wind into rackets loudening and swelling. She was close and it all went foggy. It was overwhelming. That was it for her, but all she could do was smile in release.

My eyes flung open, and my throat hauled out a short-breathed gasp, followed by a not-so-foreign variable pants. All I saw was my brown ceiling, and all I heard was the booming sadistic alarm clock, buzzing nonstop no matter how much effort I gave in mentally shutting it down. I turned to my side feeling the ache in my back and shut it dead at last. My eyes still were adjusting to the light and color after the nightmare. Yes, that's all it was, just a habitual dream, apart from the fact my visions weren’t very common.  I'm not normal. And not in the way a teen drama queen would put it, because they don’t have what I have. They don’t have dreams of people dying, at least not every single night of their lives. And if maybe they did? Those visions didn’t come true. My most recent dream of that woman was the clearest of all, because for the first time, the face of the person dying was crystal clear but merely for a second.

"Val, wake up! Wake up," my twelve year old little sister's high-pitched voice came around before her arms did but I, still alarmed because of the dream, didn’t respond well.

"Another bad one huh. What was it this time?" Rhea asked with an eyebrow raised. She never took me too serious, and I never wanted her to. She was aware I had nightmares a lot, but never twigged why I was so terrified of myself afterwards, why I deemed myself a monster for the fact I've seen people die ever since I was born. I believed they were just that, dreams. That is, until I connected the dots from my research, the news and other sources of my numerous inquiries. The people I see die; actually die, precisely like how I see it. Except I never spot enough of them to take any action, and even if I could recognize them, I held a minute shattering part of me that didn’t want to, the part that wouldn’t allow me to change destiny or fate and let them meet their demise instead. It's always been fuzzy pictures and images and never until now, has it been so apparent. The more I grew the more my relationship with death did too.