Winter's Nightmare

Hello, hello! Something new today.  I joined a writer's website, Absolute Write, and from there, a blog chain.  The idea is that we all write a post on a topic, and then share! 

The topic is "Winter's Nightmare", as my regular readers can imagine, only one thing came to my mind.  Try as I might I couldn't shake it.  So I decided to take one of my experiences in healing from child abuse and fictionalize it.  So this is fiction, a first for me, but yes, it is based on my own experiences.  I have to tell you, branching out into fiction was fun, but nerve-racking.  I needed a few friends to read this and assure me that it was ok, before I could dare to post it on my blog.  Special thanks to them!  After my post, you will find a list talented writers and their Winter's Nightmares, be sure to stop in and visit them!  

And here we go...


Winter's Nightmare

She was only a child, and yet she haunted my dreams as if she had had a lifetime to learn the art of it.  Waking did little to mute the sounds of her crying.  Still I did not want to help her.  I wanted her to go away.  You may think me cruel, but it was not cruelty that stopped me. It was fear; I was terrified of her.

I sought the assistance of an advisor.  I wanted him to help me silence her.  He encouraged me to rescue her.  I listened reluctantly.  He gently assured me that I could help her.  I disagreed.  He said helping her would help me as well. I didn’t care.  When I felt alone, he suggested that she must feel the same.  I could see her in my mind, sitting with her knees to her chest, her head down and her long dark hair falling over her face.  The site of her filled me with such pain and fear that I instinctively recoiled. How could one so small and hurt, terrorize me so?  My advisor was patient.  He didn’t push.  One day I agreed to try.  Looking back, I still cannot say if it was his gentle urgings, or her nighttime hauntings that changed my mind.

Once the decision was made, he wasted no time in taking me to the entrance of the cave.  I had visited there only in my dreams.  The lifeless desert and sharp crags of rocks surrounding the cave mirrored what I felt inside.  With no sheltering trees, a chill wind pulled at the edges of my cloak. Reflexively I pulled it tighter around me whether from the cold, fear or both, I cannot say.  My advisor seemed not to feel the wind, he simply nodded to the entrance of the cave.  I held my breath for a moment, then released it.  My head ached, and I was nauseous, but I stepped inside.  The darkness poured over me like a waterfall.  Seeking reassurance, I turned back towards the entrance, and my advisor, but there was only blackness.  Other options removed, I took a step, so small it can really not be called a step, deeper into the cave. 

That was when I saw him.  His green eyes shone in the darkness, but beyond that it was difficult to make out his face or the shape of his head.  I thought he might be a dragon, and yet that might only be the lying whisper of the darkness itself.  Darkness and I were well acquainted.  I had heard his lies and believed them on many occasions.  I felt myself being inexplicably drawn inwards, the direction I did not want to go, as if he was inhaling and I, with the air, was being pulled in.

“Come,” he breathed for truly it seemed more like a breath than a word.  “Come closer.”  His words wrapped themselves around me.  I felt the pulling sensation magnified.  I didn’t answer.  I couldn’t.  My body had turned to clay.  My mouth seemed filled with sand.

He stared at me, his gaze unwavering.  “She’s mine,” he hissed.

Ancestors forgive me, but I reached deep within and with all the strength I could find I shook my head, “She’s not real. She’s not real. I don’t have to rescue her because she’s not real.”  My head was throbbing now.  My thoughts churned.  I thought I was losing my mind.  I cried and tried to grasp on to one thread of reality before it was all snatched from me.

“LIzbell, come back,”   It was my advisor’s voice.  Each word, like a firefly, brought light into the cave.  The grip of the words and the hot breath loosened, the green eyes started to recede.  He hissed at me again, beckoning me to stay, calling me back.  I struggled against him determined to follow the firefly words.  I pushed forward, he pulled me back.  I fought now with strength that I hadn’t known I had earlier.  And slowly, slowly, I made my way out of the cave.  The cold wind once again tore at my cloak.  The sun was bright, and my headache was gone.

Advisor was there.  I stood before him with my head bowed ashamed.  “I failed.”

“No, you did well,” he said gentle as always. “This is a long journey, and you have just begun.”

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