The piercing shriek that escaped my lips reverberated through the room, abruptly rousing me from my fitful slumber. Immediately, I shot up in bed, yelling, but the echoes of my outcry were absorbed by the stifling darkness enveloping the room. I couldn't quite tell if it was the nightmare that awakened me, or the reality I was now facing - my entire body was covered in a layer of cold sweat while uncontrollable sobs convulsively shook me. Desperate for a comforting presence, I reached out instinctively, longing for my mother's reassuring touch, but I grasped nothing but empty air.
That awful, reoccurring nightmare had held me, hostage, once again. The atrocities of the dream kept repeating in my head and my heart pounded as if trying to escape the confines of my chest. A splitting headach
