CHAPTER 1
Katerina:
The night it happened was the night the nightmares started to rack my brain. They told me that it was from the head trauma. They told me it would pass as I healed and my memory returned but my memory only seemed to worsen when I tried to remember what exactly happened that night. My sleeping mind didn’t seem to have a problem filling in the gaps. My mind played games with me until I woke up screaming, my clothes drenched in sweat and a sentence ingrained in my mind. We’ve been looking for you. Over and over again, my dreams replay a scenario so unreal, so farfetched that it made me sound crazy. Something large hit the car, or the car hit something large. We rolled, I can't remember how many times but it landed on its roof. I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds before coming around again, blood dripping from my head and pain becoming more and more intense as I found myself dangling from my seat. I released the seatbelt to drop down, broken glass burying itself into my flesh and cutting me open. I hurt and sobs escaped my mouth as I crawled my way out the wreck. That's where things start to get weird. My parents were already outside the car. They didn’t appear injured, they didn’t appear broken like me. No, they stood together facing the dark with weapons drawn. I’d never seen them with weapons before. These weapons glowed like they were lit with the sun and out from the darkness came monsters larger than a man. But my parents didn’t falter, they didn’t back down. They started advancing, and my father… he started glowing in the same unnaturally bright light as the swords, he shone like a star in the night. They started fighting with inhuman speed that made it hard to follow them. And the monsters, they looked like hounds from hell. Monstrous wolves that snarled and went for blood. I had struggled to my knees, watching in horror as first my mother fell, the sword in her hand dropping and losing its light before disintegrating. Then my father, torn apart like a doll, the light dying an instant death. The beasts made sure that not a limb stayed in place as I knelt paralyzed. I didn’t know how long I watched or when exactly the beasts disappeared back into the night but at some point all I could hear were my own uneven sobs racking through my body. That's when I heard footsteps over the glass. That's when a man dressed in a combat uniform like he was from the military came walking around the front of the car blocking the view of my disembodied parents. He knelt down on one knee, his face close to mine. It was a blurry mess, his image disfigured and out of focus. He seemed to be scanning my face as if searching for something. He lifted a hand and tucked a bloodied strand of hair behind my ear like he was a lover or a friend. I focused on his mouth, it seemed to be the only thing clearer than day. He smiled like an angel, but instinct told me that he was evil itself.
What is wrong with me? I spoke into the air between us, more to myself as my limbs became heavier and heavier.
We’ve been looking for you. We’ve been looking for you. We’ve been looking for you. Over and over again my dreams replay those words in my head like it desperately doesn’t want me to forget. I don’t know what happened after that. The last thing I always seemed to remember before I woke up was his head snapping to the side like he had heard something that I didn’t. My ear had begun ringing by then, my vision blurring as the feeling of nausea accompanied me into the darkness of my own mind. My parents had been disembodied which I was told wasn’t abnormal for such a terrible accident, especially when they did not have seatbelts on and were thrown from the vehicle as it rolled, possibly even over them. There were no swords recovered. There are no wolves, nevermind ones as large as horses, in that part of the country. There was only me, the sole survivor with a mind as warped as the car had been. The lucky one. But I didn’t feel lucky. I felt haunted. I felt watched. I felt alone. First in the hospital where people explained away what I knew couldn’t possibly be real but that I couldn’t forget. Then in the foster home that I stayed in for a week before I was told that I had somewhere to go. To a family that I knew nothing about.
