She spins the purple plastic top on the flat palm of her hand. In the silence it makes a soft sound against her skin as it flutters across her palm. She can barely feel it as it dances across the plane of her hand, up and down the uneven muscles. It follows the crevasse lines of her hand, the lines that are supposed to tell you your future. Maybe if she’d read her palm it could have told her that he’d hurt her and she wouldn’t have had days like these.
She spins the top again and it hits the base of her thumb and it spins out of control across her hand and falls to the floor. She contemplates reaching for it but instead puts her head in her hands and cries until she slips into darkness.
***
She doesn’t want to dream but she does anyway. Nightmares. Always. They are never anything else. She dreams about him in short video clips of memories. No words and no sound but she knows exactly what he is saying. Maybe that’s what scares her the most. She screams soundlessly, wordlessly in her nightmares. She can’t even distinguish from the nightmares and the reality memories anymore. But he’s always there. Waiting for her in the darkness, smiling.
She also dreams of him. The person whose arms she loves to feel wrapped around her. She smiles in her sleep but it doesn’t last long. They’re always nightmares. She watches from above, a dismembered spirit. She screams silently as she hurts him, wishing that the nightmares would just go away. She screams because this could be real. She doesn’t know herself anymore.
She cries as her friends scream at her. She tires to tell them how much they mean to her but her mouth stays shut. They are disgusted with the creature that huddles on the floor. She doesn’t even know what she did to make them so mad.
They rip and tear at her flesh like hungry dogs. Long nails stripping her skin, slicing it into thousands of fluttering threads. Screaming, screaming, screaming… no sound. She knows the faces of her friends so well and she is terrified of anger she sees in them.
***
She wakes up swimming in her bedclothes, sheets wrapped around her legs like some sort of straightjacket. The wind has swept through her room, scattering everything. The moon shines outside smiling through her window. Light the candles. 1, 2, 3, candles on the windowsill. The fragrance wafts through the room calming her. If her parents knew she’d be dead in two seconds flat. They hate candles. But the flames calm her down after her nightmares. Nothing else ever does.
As soon as she can breathe again she blows out the candles, straining to see the now slight wind take away her candle smoke. Maybe this time there won’t be any nightmares.
***
She’s in her kitchen. Screaming at them. She can feel that rage in her building, mounting to something she cannot control. She’s always been able to control it to a point before but not this time.
She screams. They yell back. She finds something in her hand and throws it before it even registers what it is. The glass breaks on the wall behind them, shattering into a million glimmering shards, leaving a wet splatter across the wall. Another glass. She’s crying she’s so angry. She falls to the floor still screaming. She picks up a piece of glass and grips it tightly until scarlet drips down her arm. She doesn’t even feel as it slices her life. Oh so scared of this anger that she can’t control.
They take a step closer and she throws the shard at them. She can’t breathe she is so angry and so tired. So much weight against her chest and shoulders, it’s just too much.
***
She wakes up covered in her sweat. The time between the nightmare and waking up is always what scares her the most. Suspended in nothing but the dark. Listening to it breathe in and out as she waits for her mind to wake up from her nightmares. She’s always afraid that she won’t wake up. She rubs her eyes and sits up. Not even the flames can help her now.
***
Insomnia is a solace in the dark. Don’t close your eyes. She might stay here until the sun comes up, or maybe until she falls asleep again. Too many nights like this take their toll. If she’s tired enough she won’t even dream. No more nightmares… please…
She starts to sing softly. Just a song, there is a new one every night. Something new that she makes up as she chases away her dreams. Blink away the tears girl, the morning will come soon. She closes her eyes once more.
***
She isn’t dreaming when she wakes up to the singing. She looks outside to see a woman shining in the moonlight. The woman is singing one of her songs. Her songs, the ones she never remembers all the words to and no one else knows. Curious she gets out of bed and makes her way outside.

The woman looks like moonlight, sliver and white and oh so beautiful. The woman smiles and beckons to her. The woman holds out her hand and she takes it.
The woman points to the sky and as she watches hundreds of meteors streak across the sky.



“You always remember don’t you? Always, always, always. You fear so little and so much. That is what gives you the nightmares isn’t it?” The woman says in a voice that could only be described as feather whispers of silver. She nods at the woman.

“You didn’t deserve what happened to you. Nobody deserves that. But that is the way that he was made, he will always be like that. No god can change that. Just remember that the nightmares will fade in time. You have family and many friends that will teach you to dance in the moonlight again.”

She wraps her arms around the woman. She’s in tears. The woman hugs her back, swaying and rocking a little to calm the girl in her arms. She is still a child at heart and children’s hearts and minds break easy and heal slow.

“You think you’ll hurt them don’t you child? Remember and you will never hurt them. Just because of what happened to you doesn’t make you a monster. You’ll never hurt them, you are not like him. It’s just a phantom, a ghost of your mind… I’m so sorry that you are haunted child… You’ll be free of this place soon…”

The woman stays with her and sings to her until sunrise in her sad mournful voice. The woman fades with the rising of the sun leaving a woman who is a child and a child who is a woman crying as the sun rises to greet the day.