Prologue
992 Words
A man screamed along with the deafening sounds of panic roaring propellers. “We got pulse! She’s back with us!”
Cold winds that strike upon the door opened. Yvanna felt the ground beneath her shaking again. She wish it was another nightmare, but the drizzles that fell on her aching body said that it was real.
Noisy sounds, disturbing lights―it made her felt like in tossed and twisted in a vortex. She heard Lyn sobbing and mumbling. Cursing herself, cursing on her.
She begged silently for the tortures to be ended soon, but the typically strong disinfectant smells that was soaking through her nose made it even worse. She felt nauseous, yet the surrounding was getting warmer and warmer. She’s getting sleepier.
“Sorry ma’am but you can’t go.” Says a woman.
She heard the door closed, then all the muffled sounds started getting further and further as she fell deeper into the dark.
At the edge of the consciousness, in between the sanity, she found herself flew in the thin air full of glowing dust―like fireflies, they’re scattered then gathered again as they swayed. She was one of them. Drifted by the streams to the infinity.
They were like human lanterns. Their bodies shine like there was a candle inside. Dimmed and brightened again. Unsteady, but never vanished. Only she, who has no light.
She asked herself where they were leaded to. A man speaks in her mind, “they are going to be born.”
His voices echoed clearly but far away. Yvanna gasped, then found herself stood in the middle of a pitch-dark room. Slowly, footsteps came from afar. It was getting closer and closer. She followed it blindly until it stooped right in front of her. Still, she saw nothing, only his voice was heard.
“Who are you?”
“Me? Forget who I am. Do you know who you are?”
His voice not echoing any more as if he really was there, in front of her. But when she reached out her hand, the world around her crumbles apart.
“I’m Yvanna… Yes, Yvanna.” She said, but the figure she saw at the mention of her name wasn’t hers.
She fell, before she could say a single thing. Uncontrollably following the streams of sweet airs. She couldn’t resist the temptation, as if it was not enough to breathe. She couldn’t let go, until she saw a line―a very wide line in between the vast bright sky, and the greenest land.
There, she stood at the giant stone gate, glancing to those glowing dusts passing through below. They disappeared as they are bursting out to the thin air.
As she stared at her body, which looks like a transparent grey shell, fragments of memories replaying inside her mind; the second she smelled those burns, and the panic which turned into desperation when she knew something was wrong with the car―all repeating in a slower motion. Until she saw fires, until everything that filled her sights were all red, then finally black with only the smell of blood left.
When she thought it was over, she found herself afloat beyond the edge of the huge stone gate. She startled when she glanced down. Even angels would die if fall from that height, she thought―that she couldn’t see the end of it. At the very moment, she knew she’d fall again, like it was just about time the man released her from his unseen grasps.
She was right. Some other noises and pictures start appearing as it happened; her first cry, her mother’s first cry when she held her for the first time, her father’s kisses and their warm embraces when they blessed her—she saw it all like recalling yesterday, before she found herself curls up in the water.
She felt cramped, but warm. Mother’s womb indeed the most comfortable place, she thought. But then millions of broken pictures she never saw before dragged her into the hollow.
Mother’s love, baby’s cry, and the blessing offered by the whole world—they were all moving around like a storm. When she realized, her entire being has completely gone into a complete nothingness.
No more sounds, no colours, no movement—nothing. It felt like she was just lay there, like an abandoned thing blindly waiting for the unknown under the cycles of dark and bright that have been come and go like forever.
It should’ve been only another nightmare, she thought. But these winds, and the familiar fragrance of morning mists, which blended with sweet scents of the incenses―
‘Dammit!!’
A familiar view she has been seeing for these past three weeks greet her again as she opened her eyes.
Atherre, a world aside to the known one, her hideaway whenever she felt tired of reality―who could believe, that it actually real, and not just her imagination?
Yvanna frowned, at loss. Once again, trying to go back to where it began.
As a child, she was often accompanied by the same nightmares which severely troubled her for years, while there is nothing wrong with her childhood―if the case was child abuse, or any unhappy memories, for she was the happiest child, growing up in such beautiful family and a healthy environment―until there comes the day her parent died.
It marked time when she started her magical journey. She was around seven at that time, when she finds a way to bring her parent back alive. In her dream, she created their images, their homes, and their happy moments.
Living in her own delusion, she knew it wasn’t right that she even seek help from professional as she has been very depending on it. But she couldn’t stop, and still likes to do it―hiding in her secret world whenever she felt tired of reality.
- Writer
