The First Nightmare
471 Words
The bedroom felt enormous.
Elena had never grasped what people meant by "oppressive luxury." Now she understood. The bed could fit six people. The sheets were made of Egyptian cotton. The bathroom featured heated floors and a shower with twelve jets.
She hated it all.
She couldn’t sleep.
It wasn't just the strange room. It was the photograph. It was Damian's eyes. It was the word fiancée.
At 2:17 AM, exhaustion took over.
She fell asleep holding the locket tightly in her fist.
---
The hallway stretched on. It felt endless. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
She was running. Barefoot. The tiles felt cold against her feet. Her hospital gown flapped behind her.
"Lena."
The voice was male. Familiar. Wrong.
"Lena, come back. It's not safe."
She recognized that voice. She loved that voice. But she kept running.
A door appeared at the end of the hall. White. With a gold handle.
"Don't open it," the voice pleaded. "Please. Not yet. You're not ready."
She reached for the handle anyway.
Her hand grazed the gold.
The door swung open.
Inside was fire. A room engulfed in flames. A figure moved within the flames. A woman screamed—
---
Elena jolted awake, screaming.
The sound tore from her throat before she could stop it. It was raw, animalistic. The kind of scream that came from somewhere deeper than memory.
The door burst open.
Damian stood in the doorway. Barefoot. Wearing a black t-shirt. A gun in his hand.
He lowered it when he saw her.
"The door," he said. "You saw the door."
Elena couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. The fire lingered behind her eyes.
Damian crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t try to comfort her.
"The door is real," he said quietly. "What’s behind it is also real. But you're not ready to remember yet."
"Then when?" Elena's voice cracked. "When will I be ready?"
"Hopefully never." He looked at her. His winter-storm eyes had softened, just slightly. "The last time you remembered, you tried to kill yourself."
Elena stopped breathing.
"I found you," Damian continued. "In the bathtub. With a razor blade. You were smiling. You said, 'Now I won’t have to remember anymore.'"
"That’s not—" She couldn’t finish the thought.
"I know." He stood up. "That’s why I erased your memory. Not because I wanted to. But because you begged me to."
He walked to the door and paused.
"There’s tea in the kitchen. Chamomile. You used to drink it after nightmares."
"Damian."
He turned.
"Why did you bring me back?"
A long pause followed.
"Because I'm selfish," he said. "And because running out of time makes cowards of us all."
Then he was gone.
Elena sat in the dark until dawn.
She didn’t drink the tea.
- Writer
