Cursed Breath
It seemed like a regular dream. Floating around the top of the room, seeing things but not experiencing them. Always detached, less emotional. Pictures don't invoke memories, textures don't register, colors faded.
It was a bedroom. Grayed out from the dream and the night. Very little light filtered in from the window. I knew this bedroom. I hated and loved this bedroom. My best moments had happened here, and my worst.
She lay on the bed. My best friend and, lately, my worst enemy. Her bedroom was a child's bedroom, unable to keep up with all the changes that come from entering adulthood. Old childhood pictures, trophies, stuffed animals. I knew their smell. They haunted me.
The light changed in the room and there was movement at the window. I should have been afraid. Why wasn't I afraid? I should scream. A man was crawling through the window just a few feet away from me and I couldn't scream. I have had that nightmare many times. Needing to scream, but I try and try and nothing comes out. He was in now. I still wasn't screaming.
Standing over the girl (woman) in the bed, I could see the evil planned in his eyes. It would be fast. Maybe she deserved it. I knew she suffered from so much regret and failure. I had fantasized about this very thing so many times before. Has fate aligned itself to meet my darkest desires?
The woman (girl) shifted in her sleep, unsettled, as if disagreeing with me. She wasn't just my worst enemy, she was also my best friend. Didn't she have dreams, even if they seemed so far away right now? Does she not deserve mercy for some distant spark of potential? Could I condemn my soul to an eternity of tormented night without one more chance of redemption?
His hands were reaching forward, grasping and trembling fingers were closing in. I drew in all my resolve, all of my strength, and I did what I have never been able to do in a nightmare before. I screamed.
It was enough. The man fell backward, frantically looking around until he saw me above. Paling, his breath stopped and he scrambled toward the window. The glass pane broke as he fell through it.
The sound of the glass breaking woke me up from my dream. No longer was I hovering around the room in a distant, emotionally-deadened state. I was in the bed. I didn't even sit up as my eyes opened. Staring at the ceiling of my childhood room, I breathed a cursed breath, the one almost stolen from me by a fateful psychopath. I guess some part of me still believed I had potential. That I could piece my life back together and stop being my own worst enemy. Maybe it was only in my dreams that I could be that person. The wind from the open and broken window blew across my face. I closed my eyes and chased my own redemption back into my dreams.
Once upon a time is such a cliche way to start a story, but here we are. We didn't know when we started out that we would break time itself. We didn't but we also did. That's the funny thing about breaking time...past, present, future all exist simultaneously. But we survived, we adapted, and we became something other.