stories-of-undetermined-quality

[stories-of-undetermined-quality]

It guarded a pool of water ringed by painted stones. A totem in the shape of a bird of some kind.

And it was beautiful.

The intricate details involved were far too complex to have been sculpted by one of the river heralds or one of the shamans of the so-called Empire of the Sun. It was too perfect to possibly have been crafted by sentient hands.

But it did radiate the power of the sun. Of that there was no doubt. It literally glowed with some power of fire and it seemed to he made of blackened stone.

I couldn't resist. Not caring how much water I disturbed, or if there was anything in it for that matter, and was filled with an overwhelming urge to have this artifact at any cost.

The moment I touched the totem, the fire that leaked from the seams erupted with new fervor. Panicking, I stumbled backward and watched as the totem crumbled to ash. The ash then began to float on its own, reassembling itself into the shape of a massive bird. Soon, I stood in the presence of the most magnificent monster I'd ever lain my eyes on. It's very existence was aflame with life. It's very essence seemed to deny death its victory. It flapped its wings as it regarded me, and the warm air that was moved by its magnificent wingspan made me sweat bullets.

After a time it shrieked and flew away. My knees buckled and I inhaled deeply for the first time in minutes as my brain tried to process the ancient wonder I just helped reenter this world. I remembered every note in that shriek and every emotion in its distant calls.

Maybe I could make use of it later. After all, I always had a knack for imitating birds' calls.

MTG Flash Fan Fiction Prompt

Thank you to everyone who participated in this week’s Flash Fan Fiction fun times. It was great getting to read all your stories and see your creativity shine. I hope you are enjoying writing them as much as I am enjoying reading them.

The prompt for our next MTG Flash Fan Fic is *drum roll*…

…Rekindling Phoenix!

We want to see your take on what’s going on in this beautiful card. What is the context? Where did the Phoenix come from? What inspires you about this legendary creature?

Don’t forget to tag your post with #MTG Flash Fan Fic so we’re able to find it, and be sure to follow the guidelines laid out in our fan content policy if you would like us to potentially reblog it next Friday. And remember, flash fiction means short (1,000 words or less).

Have fun everyone! We can’t wait to see what you create.

[stories-of-undetermined-quality]

“Three Decisions”

Regret. That was what I felt after each decision I redid. I thought it would be simple. Just change my most shameful moments and my life will be so much better as a result. The butterfly effect, it turns out, is painfully real.

I had always been transfixed with the fairy tales I was told when I was young. Knights in shining armor saving the princess taken hostage by a dragon who wished to add her to his hoard. Genies in lamps granting three wishes to those that rubbed the lamp. Two children wandering through a forest happen upon a house made of candy. I think witches were involved in that one. I can never remember. Naturally, when I found one of those old lamps I thought it would be funny to rub it. What could it hurt? How could I have known that there was a genie in it?

The genie was nothing like anything that’s been described. Not that I’ve read, at any rate. Its skin glistened a fiery orange and his eyes a vibrant green. He offered me not three wishes, but three rewrites of my history. Three decisions of my choice that I get to choose to do differently. I wouldn’t describe myself as reflective. I don’t often dwell on decisions that have been made. There were, however, some choices that I feel I could have made differently and my life would have been better as a result. So I accepted.

It asked me to describe the first decision I wish to have corrected. That one was easy. As a child, I owned some collectible toys. Today, those toys sell on the market at thousands of dollars. I had sold them at a garage sale when I was ten years old for a meager ten dollars total. I always wondered how different things would have been if I hadn’t made that stupid of a decision.

I described this to the genie. It nodded, its eyes flashed, and suddenly everything changed. I was now in my childhood bedroom at the age of ten. There was a cardboard box on my bed that was labeled “Garage Sale.” Inside the box were those collectible figures. I removed them from the box and placed them in one of the drawers of my desk. I also took the liberty of stashing some of my baseball cards in there too, knowing the value that those spiked to in the future. With a smug grin, I felt accomplished.

What happened next was what preceded the immense regret I have come to know. I’m not sure what I expected, but as soon as I closed that desk drawer, I was suddenly in a much more dilapidated version of my house. I was also my real age. It was the present again. The genie existed quietly in the corner of my room while I looked around. I was confused. My parents loved this house. They paid for it in its entirety, and after I moved out my room became a guest room that was easily the nicest room in the house. This room looked like it had been through hell and was making its way back. My bed and its sheets looked to have been the scratching pots of some feral beast, and my desk had gathered webs and a thick layer of dust. Tentatively, I opened the drawer that I had put the collectibles on. Empty. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Maybe I had already sold them. The much more pressing matter was the state of the house I had grown up in.

I rushed out the door and down the stairs. The rest of the house seemed just as dilapidated, but everything belonged to my parents. Family portraits still hung in the hallways, my mom’s fine china still rested in that special cabinet, and the television set from when I was a child still sat in the living room but with a smashed screen. Looking out the windows I noticed that the rest of the neighborhood hadn’t fair all that well either. With immense confusion, I located the genie, who had been existing right outside my line of vision this entire time, and asked what happened.

Just like when I had been offered the wishes, the answer came in the form of an idea. A thought planted within my mind in such a way that I simultaneously thought I came up with it on my own and also knew that it had put it there. Those extra dollars did a lot, and so did that decision of yours. That one act of greed planted the desire within yourself to be much less giving. As a result, you removed more toys from the box. Due to that result, less tables were full during the garage sale. Less people came. Less things were sold. Less money was made. Less money meant that your parents couldn’t quite meet their next mortgage payment. Not being able to pay the mortgage payment… I resisted the urge to scream as the weight of that idea began to overload my mind as memories of what was, what is, and what never can be again overlapped within my mind. It was horrifying the exactness through which the chain of events was explained while at the same time the corresponding memory flashed through my head with each flap of the proverbial butterfly’s wings. It boiled down to the fact that those toys cost this entire neighborhood its liveliness. My parents grew sick as they sold their precious belongings to try and scrape by. They died in hospital beds, all of the money I made from the toys having been sunk into the costs of the tests and treatments as the cancers that they both had fought through in the timeline I had known claimed their lives. Such a tiny act of greed cost me my family, my house, my friends, my neighborhood, and my future.

I screamed at the genie. Take it back. Take the decision back. I want to use my next redo to take that decision back. The genie’s reply was like a searing pain through my thoughts. I do not appreciate when those who receive my gifts feel sorry for what they have chosen. As a result, I do not offer the option of reverting to an original timeline. I’m not sure what I expected. This was a genie, and genies were known for their underhanded gifts. I should’ve known. Genies were never to be trusted. I told it that I didn’t want the two other decisions. I simply wanted to go home. What home? That question hit me exactly as hard as the genie probably wanted it to. Sifting through my new memories, I realized that I was homeless. I had nothing except myself. If the genie had a mouth, I would have surely heard his laughter. Bitterly, I thought through the sequence of events that I had suffered through. If I couldn’t save my neighborhood, I could at least save myself. I knew just what to change. I described this to the genie, and suddenly I was in the living room, not even a year ago, staring dumbfounded at a check in my hand from the collector that I had sold my figures and baseball cards to. I wasted no time in rushing to the bank and putting it into my bank account. I went to the hospital where my parents lie in their hospital beds that night and waited. Eventually, there was a flash, and I was in an alley in a city I did not recognize. There was money in my hand that was buried in my coat pocket. A man in a hood was saying something, and I only was able to make out what he was saying at the end. You got the cash? I looked at him funny. Cash for what?

For the drugs, of course. My face became at that moment the epitome of disgust. I didn’t do drugs. The hesitation seemed to anger the dealer considerably. Come on, man. It’s our usual deal! Don’t you dare back out on me. I need your money! I insisted to him that I didn’t do drugs. He made vague sounds of outrage, stabbed me with the knife he was carrying, and made off with the wad of cash that was in my pocket. The genie sat in the shadows as all of this happened. I looked at him and the answer to the question appeared before I even formed the words to ask. You may have the money, but you lost your parents. Turns out, you cannot cope with loss all that well. It seems that you can deduce the rest. My next thoughts were hate directed at the genie, and I can’t with a clear conscience say that I was particularly proud of the words I used at that moment. I used every remark of profanity, every insult, and every threat that I had at my disposal as if those words held much meaning to an immortal being.

I eventually ran out of strength and ideas for insult. As silence dominated the alleyway, broken only by the occasional drip of water on pipes or the innocent whisper of the wind, I felt something well up in my chest, and suddenly I began to laugh. The laughter grew in intensity as my confusion grew, almost as if I was finding humor in my own inability to understand what was so funny. The laughs echoed through the city, assaulting my ears with a robotic version of my voice. The laughs weren’t mine. I knew that much. I deduced that it must’ve been the genie. He was laughing through me. As I came to this realization, this phantom humor died down and the searing pain in my side returned with the fury of an ignored lover.

I began to wrack my mind for a way out of this situation. I had one more decision to correct. Maybe there was a cliché answer to this predicament. As I weighed my options, one was so much more appealing than the rest. An option that would not only save my life, but the lives of my parents and surely return the life to my neighborhood. I explained this to the genie, and suddenly I stood in a shrouded alleyway. The same as the one I first met the genie. The lamp sat upon its silk cushion, displayed for anyone dumb enough to provoke the power within. This time, instead of rubbing the lamp, I noticed that there was a garbage fire blazing in an old oil drum just outside the alleyway. I learned at what heat that the lamp melts that day. As the spell on the lamp broke, wisps of golden smoke swirled into the air and escaped into the night. I realized as I watched this that I had been holding my breath, and let out the most satisfying exhale I had released in a while. I pulled out my phone and dialed my parents’ number only to be greeted by their voicemail. It was the voicemail I remembered from before all of this. My mind was riddled with memories of false timelines, and I was too tired to think much more of the voicemail other than they would surely be asleep. I began to stroll along the sidewalk in no particular direction. Surely, I could just call them tomorrow.

[stories-of-undetermined-quality]

"Forever"

Forever will I regret the choices I’ve made. The path I’ve taken. Choosing to walk a road of shadows and claiming to be basking in the light. I knew it was there all along, that shadow that haunted my dreams. I just couldn’t let it go.

It started when she got sick. I was overprotective. A worrywort. She lingered on death’s doorstep for so long, a victim of some sickness that the doctors couldn’t understand.

She got worse faster than the doctors could make her better. The coughing. The wretching. The blemishes. This sickness tore her apart and left a husk of a human being in its wake. I couldn’t bear losing her.

So I dug deep. I ravaged the library, the academy. Searching for an answer to this impossible question. Desperately grasping lose threads of an idea. A solution.

I, unfortunately, found what I was looking for.

It was an incantation. A dark whisper to forces best left untouched. It was described as a means to reach into the underworld and bring a soul kicking and screaming back to its mortal vessel.

I learned the hard way what consequences would follow. They followed a very precise pattern.

At first, it worked. Like a dream. She came back, and the plague had left her. I was elated. The dark means justified by the satisfactory ends. I enjoyed a happy few weeks with her.

The second consequence was her befoulment. The perversion of the woman I loved. At first her eyes seemed paler. They eventually glassed over. She began acting strangely, too. She craved meat. Lots of it. I thought it was just a weird side effect of the incantation. I didn’t think too much of it. At least, not at first.

The third consequence was the voices. I heard whispering around corners and witnessed shouting in the far beyond on lonely nights when she was in one of her moods.

The fourth consequence woke me in the middle of the night. She started craving my flesh, and attacked me in my sleep. She only scratched me up a little, but the knife I put into her brain ensured that our little love story had come to its end.

The fifth consequence was spoken through the lifeless corpse of the one I had loved. Eyes glowing, smoke billowing from every orifice. You messed with forces you didn’t understand. it spoke. Power like this doesn’t come without a price. When will you pay yours? I burned her body the next day.

The sixth consequence sealed my fate. I woke up having lost a couple of days. It was dark. I was scared. Not because of the darkness. Not because of the unknown. I was scared because I would be paying my price. The ultimate price. Forever.

[stories-of-undetermined-quality]

"Don't Judge a Kid by His Smile"

After greeting countless different imaginary friends conjured up by my classmates and the kids on my street, I had becomes almost numb to the thought that it might not be normal. Which is why the only remarkable memory of being able to do so was when I was approaching the age that this ability was stolen from me.

I was walking along the sidewalk on my way to school, my almost eight-year-old mind wandering from thought to thought, silently greeting various imaginary friends with my eyes that I saw walking alongside other kids who were also taking their morning stroll to class. It wasn’t strange to me, and the kids had always played along with my ability to see something they thought they had made up. Today was also the day I saw the most peculiar imaginary friend.

It had no skin, muscle, or any other flesh to decorate its skeleton, and it wore a flowing, black robe. It accompanied a rather chipper-looking child closing in on his teens, by the looks of it, and I couldn’t help but stop and stare. I was fascinated by this creature. It was unlike anything I had seen so far in my life. Curiosity siezing control of my judgment, I crossed the street to walk next to the child and his odd imaginary friend.

I began keeping pace with the preteen, trying to work up the courage to talk to him. It didn’t help that his imaginary friend was so much more unnerving up close.

I eventually mustered, “Hiya! My name’s George! What’s yours?” The kid seemed startled that I had addressed him. He flinched, dropping his smile. He eventually stammered out, “M-My name’s Kyle.”

“Who’s your friend, Kyle?” I asked, gestering vaguely in the skeleton’s direction. The figure seemed to notice that I was looking at it at this point.

Kyle looked around in slight confusion. “What friend?” he asked.

Indicating the rather large, robed figure, I clarified, “I can see other kids’ invisible friends. Yours is…different from the rest of them.” Kyle took a sparing look at who I was pointing to, a hint of fear seemed to sneak into his expression.

He stopped walking, stooped to match my height, and whispered, “You can see it too?”

While I thought the question had an odd tone to it, it was a question I got often, though usually a child would use “him” or “her” to refer to their imaginary friend. I nodded in reply, a bit too startled to speak up an answer.

“You have to help me,” Kyle whispered. “It won’t go away.”

I stared at him for a moment. Was this not a creation of his own imagination? I had a sinking feeling, and I regretted the question as soon as it passed my lips.

“It’s not your imaginary friend, is it?” I asked. I was vaguely aware that the skeleton was staring intently at me, towering to twice Kyle’s height.

Kyle shook his head, then said, “It ate my imaginary friend.” He then turned and kept walking, leaving me shocked and unable to form a coherent thought. I eventually snapped out of it and caught up with him. He had readopted his façade of a smile, only dropping ever so slightly upon realizing I was still walking beside him.

I didn’t have many friends, which I attribute to being part of the reason why I can see the false friends of other people, so I hadn’t expect a “Sure.” to be the answer to my question of, “Do you want to hang out after school today?”

School was as boring as my eight-year-old mind could describe. My mind was fixed solely on hanging out with Kyle this afternoon. I waited for him on the steps that led to the main entrance of my school: a building with two floors, two wings, a playground, and a rather modest parking lot. The week before Thanksgiving, when the grandparents came to school to have a Thanksgiving lunch with their grandchildren, was usually quite cramped.

After what seemed like an hour waiting on Kyle, the local sheriff pulled up to the school and stepped out. His car’s lights were flashing, and he rushed to the back of the school. Curious, I followed, only to be greeted by Kyle lying dead on the ground, that thing that was following him stooped low to the ground, observing him.

Instead of screaming, like I’m sure any other kid would have, I instead was intrigued by the figure. I assumed a child’s imaginary friend disappeared if the child died.

And how had I not noticed the black, feathery wings before?

[stories-of-undetermined-quality]

"Terrors of the Night"

I have no memories of a paradise. This world I dread, this world I fear, this realm of unspeakable horror. It baffles me that others call this paradise.

I lie awake in bed, trying to drown out the sound of my alarm clock’s urgent beeping. Ever since I was ten years old, my nights have been far more mentally taxing than my waking moments. I was told by my parents, after I experienced my first nightmare, that these dreams could be controlled. Blink, and you have an axe. Breathe, and you become a dragon. Speak, and the world obeys. I was told that it was the most glorious thing to experience, to wave a hand and reshape an entire landscape.

I was given three rules: 1. Do not expect to be able to use your powers from the world of dreams in the waking world. 2. Do not sleep for more than 8 hours at a time. 3. Do not, under any circumstance, put your own life on the line within the world of dreams.

When I asked later in life the meaning of the rules and the repercussions for breaking them, I was met with odd stares and uneasy misdirections. Nobody cared enough to question the rules. They enjoyed dreaming too much.

To shape an entire world for one’s own purpose, be it pure or putred, was the topic of conversation daily. Some friends of mine fulfilled their own lustful desires. Others made this realm into a punching bag to vent their waking woes. Others still practice creativity and hone their imagination to better perfect the art that they’ve taken as their trade.

I never understood this. I never had the control to become a dreamscaper like some claim themselves to be. Yes, I had control, but it took effort and concentration, and my subconscious mind kept me busy with other things. I could conjure weapons, or will into existence a vessel of transportation. Hell, I could manifest minor control over various elements of nature, but I had very limited control over the world of dreams beyond that. Mostly because a world was conjured for me of the darkest and most twisted imagination that I felt less sane every day and often used self-induced insomnia as a means to give myself solace from the horrors that haunted me at night.

I learned quite quickly how little sleep I needed to live, and how to function with chronic sleep deprivation. Many that I talked to didn’t understand. They were confused as to why I avoided such a paradise, and didn’t believe me when I tried to explain what I suffered every night. I eventually just dodged the subject altogether if it ever came up. That is, for a while at least. My breaking point happened on the night before my eighteenth birthday.

I allowed myself some sleep that night in an effort to actually be able to function the next day, but I learned quickly how big of a mistake that was.

I stood on a wooden raft in the middle of the dark ocean that sealocked the only continent I’ve known to exist within this realm. My instinct was to keep still. To make as little noise as possible. Should any sound other than the rising and falling of the waves and creaking of the bindings that held the raft together be heard, then my world would become hell. I knew this ocean all too well. I knew what was contained within. There was the occasional normal fauna. A school of fish, the common shark, and even a blue whale are reasonable finds within these waters. None of these were a fortunate find, however. Something that lurks within this realm seems to like to fool me into letting my guard down before twisting my surroundings into horror-filled perversions of the human imagination.

Today, the fish showed up. They circled the raft in a vortex that seemed baffling for a natural phenomenon, but this was my nightmare, and that left me uneasy. I recognized what was going on when the raft started to rotate due to the current being created by the school of thousands of fish. Focusing a great deal of my energy, I concentrated on the air around me. I sensed the static electricity around me rising, and with a flick of the wrist, a bolt of lightning struck from the grey cloudless sky and ripped through the school of fish, killing or dispersing them. The whirlpool created by the fish then sucked my raft away and I plunged into the deep. Focusing more of my energy, I enhanced my vision and modified my breathing so that I could see and breathe underwater. The swirling current made it impossible to orient myself, but I was able to spot the fin of a shark nearby. Not having many other options, I willed the shark to swim by me, and I grabbed the creature’s dorsal fin as he swam out of the whirlpool. As I did so, something sharp grazed my right arm, opening a wound and spilling a bit of my blood into the waters. This made holding on to the shark much harder as it entered a feeding frenzy. It shook violently, trying to tear at my flesh. As I began to lose the grip, I saw a whale in the distance in front of what most would mistake as a cave.

Panic gripping me, I willed as much control over the situation as I could. The blood cleared from the water and the shark stopped thrashing about, and I willed it to swim as fast as possible towards the shore. The creature’s mouth took up even more of my field of vision as the whale was swallowed whole. I closed my eyes tight, trying to will myself awake.

I sat upright, awake in bed. My heart was racing, and I was sweating profusely. Breathing heavily, I looked around my room. Everything seemed to be in place. Did it work? Was I actually awake? I shakily got out of bed and walked to the door. Beyond it was the hallway I expected. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I had more power than I thought.

I went back to bed, laying awake, staring at the ceiling. This was too much, I thought. I shouldn’t have to live in fear of falling asleep, knowing I’ll be locked in a world of horrors until my tormentor, whomever he is, decides to release me.

I decide that I need more information. Surely someone out there knows what’s going on. I reach over to my night stand to grab my phone to start doing some research.

My phone isn’t there.

The night stand melts away, as does the rest of my furniture, and the walls shift to a dark room lit by a single fixture. I sit in the middle of the room, under a spotlight, and I hear a low growl from the darkness. I begin to shake a little. As the growling seems to recede into the darkness, I brace myself for the scare. The torture. The attack. Something.

I jerked my eyes awake. Light is filtering through my bedroom window. It feels like I’m awake, but that last scare left me uncertain. I hear my mother calling from the kitchen, telling me to wake up.

I shakily get out of bed. I look out my window and see what should be there: my backyard. It felt real, and I was more certain that I had actually woken up, but there was still some doubt. I stumbled with weak knees into the kitchen. My mother saw me and looked concerned.

“Did you have another nightmare? You look pale.” she asked. I only nodded. I could barely even hear her over the sound of my own breathing and the pounding in my chest. After thinking, I realized that I probably wasn’t going to know for certain if I was awake any time soon. I had no tells. No signs to tell me this isn’t the doing of the demon that haunts me while I sleep. I finally croaked out a sentence.

“I don’t suppose you could prove that I’m awake?” I sighed.

“What do you mean, Jack?” she replied with a tinge of concern mixed with a hint disbelief.

“Nothing, nevermind.” I decided to say. My mother gave me an odd look and hesitantly returned to making breakfast. I felt exhausted, and it felt like it took all I had to remain on my feet. I wanted to sleep. So badly. But I didn’t want to close my eyes from the fear that opening them would mean more fear-fueled horror shows. With a sigh and a slight whimper, I got ready to face the day. Awake or not, I might as well hope for the best.

Since it was Saturday, assuming I was awake, I only had a couple of errands to run before I could do whatever I wanted. Again, assuming.

Looking back on that day, the errands I ran were a bit of a blur, but I do remember very specific occurrences.

The most vivid memory I have of that day was at the grocery store. As I was checking out at the cashier, I looked up to see a twisted ghoul take the place of the clerk. I blinked once, and it was gone, but it left an impression. At that point, I began to question my own sanity.

The entire day, in fact, seemed to be a foggy existence. I couldn’t think straight, and I felt like I was on autopilot. It wasn’t until I got home that my head started to clear.

“Welcome home, honey!” my mother called from the den. I heard five other voices chatting idly. One of them was my best friend, Sam. She was the only one who would listen to me without thinking, at least out loud, that I was insane. Maybe I was insane. Maybe she was insane for listening. I didn’t care.

There was a party celebrating my birthday. I had trouble appreciating it due to my mind being plagued with rampant worries and fears. I was dreading going to sleep tonight. I was dreading not getting any sleep at all. I was dreading the dark in general. My friends would ask me what was wrong, and I would dodge the question. They would persist, I would insist that I was fine. It was a system built on lies. They pretended to care, I pretended to be fine. It worked.

We had cake. I opened presents. I remember genuine appreciation for having people in my life that cared about me, or at least pretended to. The night wore on, and I’d like to say that I enjoyed myself. I don’t remember a smile, but I remember being distracted enough that I didn’t dwell on my demons.

But still, night came.

I stood in a dark, silent room. My heart was racing, and I was sweating bullets. I don’t remember how I got here. My breaths were shallow and shaky, and my body refused to stop shivering though I wasn’t even cold. The demonic wails of my deepest fears howled beyond the door, leeching on my sanity as I tried desperately to calm myself.

Crossing my arms closely against my chest, I looked to the wall opposite the door. Featureless with no windows, the wall was like everything else in this world: blank and malleable. I close my eyes for a moment, and reopen them to a glass wall overlooking a city highrise. I stood in what looked to be the thirtieth floor of one of the taller buildings in the city, and with a marvelous view of this realm. To my left was the coast: leading to a dark sea that was teeming with leviathans that could swallow entire continents. To my right were the wastes: where misshapen titans stomped around, moaning with every breath and driving the listener mad. The howls came from beyond the wall as well as from behind the door now, and I saw the streets were like pulsing tides of horrors I had no name for, and the height I was at made me feel weak.

I’ve heard rumors about death in this world. They say that it kills a part of you in the conscious world. Or that you cease to be able to experience this world. Most couldn’t understand the terrors I faced every night here and were concerned as to why I would think of offing myself within. But they didn’t know. How could they? They were blind to my suffering.

With a deep breath, I placed a shaking hand against the glass, and it dislodged from the wall and fell away, crashing seconds later to the streets with a sickening sound that I wished to never hear again. The sounds grew in volume, and the smell returned. The smell alone almost pushed me from the edge, but I was determined to end it. Without a second thought, I leaned into the fall with closed eyes, letting the breeze on my face and whistling of the wind be my last experience here. I felt a sharp pain, then nothing, and then I gasped, awake in my own bed. I looked at my alarm clock: it read 2:30 AM. I sighed.

Maybe I can actually rest for once.

I had a dreamless sleep that night. I remember drifting off and then suddenly being woken up by the light drifting into my bedroom through the window. I remember a smile creeping across my face as I woke up.

I had an average day that day. I went to work, and nothing eventful happened. I rejoiced in the blandness of that day.

I saw Sam on that day. She noticed that I was unusually happy, and asked what had happened. I explained that I ended my dreams forever. I expected her to be happy for me.

She wasn’t.

“What do you mean you killed yourself in your dreams?! Didn’t your parents tell you never to do that?” she asked. I was confused.

“What was I supposed to do? You of all people would have understood what I’ve been going through.”

“There’s a reason they tell you not to, Jack.” Sam said. I remember asking her to elaborate, but she wouldn’t. That was the last time we talked, but at the time I didn’t realize. I was too high on my own relief and happiness. When I went to bed that night, I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face.

I wasn’t even bothered by the figure standing over me when I closed my eyes.