I remember about 10 years ago, I was only 7. And I remember memories and nightmares of a life that wasn’t mine starting. My mother tried taking me to therapy, but they found nothing wrong with me.
Skip forward 5 years or so, and I finally cracked after having a last bad dream. It was about this little girl, laughing, who was chasing me with a scary, unrecognisable weapon that might have been a cross between a saw, gun and sword, and also made of birch with blue and magenta feathers. She had an awful looking scar over her eyebrow. I wanted to investigate. So I did something absolutely stupid…
I ran away. I knew my parents would never allow me to go out and try to find out on my own, but I did. I ran with the decent amount of money I had saved up, and ran out the front door.
I stayed at a camp for the night. I didn’t have a tent, so I used a pretty big blanket that I had sewn together to turn into a sleeping bag. I was paranoid that someone would take my stuff, so I put those in the sloppily sewn blanket.
I was asleep. Everything was quiet, except the fire crackling and wind hurtling. Besides that, everything almost felt too quiet.
I woke up to the forest above me. That’s not so bad, I thought. Birds were chirping, the bushes were rustling, and I felt a wave of calm. That is, until I remembered the dream. I froze. I could hear my heart…thu-thump…thu-thump…thu-thump…as I remembered it in full detail. This never happened before. Usually it was just obnoxious, scary dreams, but in this one I had died. I was killed. I felt the pain of dying, so much stress coursing through your nerves until it all stopped in it’s tracks and you were free. No…in dreams you can’t feel, I thought. You can only feel if it’s real.
I spent the next few minutes contemplating my dreamed death. That was until I blacked out. When I woke up, a scary-looking woman walked up to me. She had a birch mask with blue and magenta dyed hawk feathers, rocks and sharp shells. Just like the weapon in my dream, I thought. “Mosuquen.” she said. ”I think you got the wrong person. My name isn’t Mosuquen.” I retorted, though I knew by what I gathered I should not have sassed her. “Liar!” she roared. I only just noticed her mask didn’t have eye holes. All it had was a crude design of one. “Mosuquen, I have found you.“ And she held up that weapon she saw in her dream.
“Who are you?!” I got the urge to scream, to be back in my mom’s arms. Stupid I was, rejecting a good childhood when I could’ve lived normally. “I am…” She took off her mask. I, just now, realised who she was. ”Deniya.” The name seemed familiar. Now, I had an idea of who she was…the same girl in my blasted dream. “But that won’t matter si-“ She stopped mid sentence to look at me. “You’re not Mosuquen. You have his Presence, though. Who are you?!” “Uh-uh- Hailey..” I stuttered. She suddenly gasped before grinning an evil smirk and holding out her weapon…and slitting my throat only slightly.
“Make one move and it’s over.”