My eyes are drifting off into a pool of deep slumber where dreams await me. I feel the nighttime wash over me, and then there is the awaited blackness. A hazy image of a young girl sleeping appears in my view moments later. “It’s happening again,” I think to myself. As the image gets sheerer, the girl has woken up excited and cheerful. She takes out a soft, brand new looking teddy bear with a tailored suit, gold cufflinks and buttons, and a little silver monocle. She whispers to the bear, “Today’s going to be the day where everything is going change for me.” She smiles and with the bear in hand runs off somewhere. I snort at the child’s ludicrous thought.

I’m moved to hours later, at a birthday party. There are balloons of every color everywhere, a glass table festooned with décor only seen at a wedding, a cake that looks like the world’s best pastry maker had made it, and a medium sized box wrapped with miniature diamonds with a huge silky bow making look like the guest of honor. My eyes come across the petite girl once more. She is sobbing uncontrollably at the ornamented glass table as a woman and a man who is well in their early 30s and dressed as if they had an important business meeting to scurry to seem fuming at her.


“Why are you of all people so sad!” the mother exclaims, “You should be happy to have people come over to celebrate this “glorious” day! Besides, if you were going to do was whine and cry because your friends wanted to play with Sarah and you didn’t get what was on your list, your father and I would be at work instead of throwing this -- this stupid party, you ungrateful petty brat!”

A tear for sympathy rolls down my cheek for the child. I overhear Sarah and the girl’s backstabbing friends talking. “Wow. I feel truly dreadful,” says one of the friends. “Should we have gone back and celebrate with her?” another says. The girls all start commencing, but as soon as they planed to retreat to their poignant friend—

“No!” Sarah cries out. “You just can’t go back over to her side, just because you feel pity because her birthday isn’t going her way. That’s – that’s like joining one side of the war and then joining the other war because you feel sorry.” “So, we shouldn’t see if she is all right?” says the girl to Sarah’s left. “Right, because you’re my friends now, and since you’re my friends now I forbid all of you from associating with my low-life sister, agreed?”

I hear an unsure “agreed” from the so-called friends. “Pity on all of them,” I thought. As I open my tear-filled eyes, I myself in a different setting of the dream. It is has gray, murky clouds hanging to complement the eerie background filled with deep mist and rain, trees with branches that are long as Constrictor Boas, grass the color of the night sky as a bolt of lighting passes through, creatures that you wouldn’t think existing, a worn out merry-go-round with headless horses and a glossy, ice-colored lake that is possibly ten feet deep or more. “I know this place,” I say to myself, “But how?”

Then I remember I’m sleeping and dreams don’t end unless want to know the full story. So, I go along with it and it continues. I spot the little girl on the merry-go-round. Her waterfalls of pain and sorrow haven’t stopped falling down. The girl’s face was red and a handprint lay there. The long caramel hair that was tidy and put into a white bow seemed shorter and looked unkempt. The silky bow and pristine shoes were missing. Her once flourishing white dress was completely soaked and dull due to the heavy rain falling and her tears. She takes out her bear and beings talking through sobs.

“This was supposed to my special day, but now everything is ruined. My friends abandoned me for Sarah, Mother and Father absolutely despise me, I got nothing for my birthday – as if I get anything but a bedroom and food, and—and..” She utterly breaks down. I couldn’t just stand hiding like a coward and let suffer. If I would I could, but this – this is another of showing how defenseless and weak I am. I sit and cry along too. “I want this dream to stop,” I whisper. I can still hear her. The rain is falling harder and harder. My heart starts pumping rapidly, there’s a stroke of lightening and a rumble of thunder, and I don’t feel her presence and or hear her sobs. I open my eyes as a strike of lightening approaches me. I quickly shut my eyes and wait for it…



I sit up my bed. My heart’s pumping crazy fast and my breathing won’t slow down. I quickly scurry to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. “In, out, in, out, in, and out,” say in the shattered mirror. I go back to my bed and sit. I hear the thunder rumble outside. I see the lightening flash into the room. I close the curtains and lock my door to contain what happened, but what is there to contain? The recurring story of the girl I know nothing about has been has been haunting and replaying in my head ever since I was eight.

“This dream has been going on long enough. I’m just going to have to finish this once and for all,” I say to myself. With that, I lie in my bed and let the heavy rain knocking on the window drown me into the dream. It has paused where I left off. I let it continue.




The girl sobbing has halted and she gotten enough strength to open the diamond crusted gift. She puts it up to her ear and shakes it. She unwraps the bow, opens the box, and to her astonishment she’s holding a necklace with some type of a pendant in it. “Isn’t it marvelous, Teddy,” she says. She puts on the necklace and the most dumbfounded thing happens: her dress is now a pristine white and more flourished than ever, her hair – once unkempt, short, with no accessories, and caramel hair was tidy, long as if she was Rapunzel, braided with the bow in the middle with the addition of bangs, her socks were no longer muddy, shoes were back on her feet, and she looked happy.


But something changed about her during the superlative transformation. Her once caramel hair was now an icy-white and her energetic sapphire eyes were now hazel. The necklace turned into blood red and disintegrated into the little girl’s skin, sending chills up my spine. Shockingly, the girl drops the bear and stands still for a moment, with her eyes matching her hair looking in my direction. I close my eyes to prepare for the worst, but again, I’ve moved. I’m back the girl’s house where her hostile party guests are. I have a peculiar feeling this isn’t going to end very well.

“Oh look, girls,” Sarah says, “It’s our pathetic, birthday girl!” The girls and Sarah form a circle around the defenseless child. A girl says intimidating, “What are you going do? Cry, you stuck-up baby?” “Yeah, didn’t you get the point when we messed up your stupid hair and outfit,” another says. The threats and insults kept coming. I couldn’t take it anymore. “I have to help, I just have to,” I think. But before I could jump into action, the girls who were mocking her a few minutes ago where in immense pain. “My head! What’s—what’s going on….,”one says. “I can’t think is the room spinni--” One by one, the girls drop like flies. Struggling to not become like her ailing friends, Sarah says weakly, “Why are--are you doing this, we’re sisters…..” Sarah drops with a ferocious thud.


“I know,” says the girl in a chilling voice, “but sisters don’t treat each other like garbage.” She leaves the bloodcurdling scene emotionless. Then she moves on the festivity that would “change things around” for her less than lovely life. She glares at the table and I hear a chorus of glass breaking into millions of pieces, shards flying everywhere. Pop! Pop! Pop! The balloons have met their untimely demise. The cake explodes all over the place and on the house. The beautiful décor are melted into a pudding like state, falling onto the ground.

As I look around the place, it resembles a war zone. On the inside of the foul house, I see shadows and hear voices. “What’s in the world going on out there?!” says a low voice. Someone is getting up. They are coming to the back of the house. Oh no! It’s the father and mother! They look around to find their house soiled. I close my eyes to shut out what was going to happen next. “What the heck happened out here? What did you do to my --- our exquisite house! You how much this cost? A lot, your stupid unappreciative child!” exclaimed the father. The little girl is just standing there off into space, not listening to a word he says. The mother whispers something to the father and he storms off into the house slamming the door. The mother gets in the child’s face. Her hand goes up and starts to swing down---

But then, there is a grunt as if someone got the air knocked out of them. I look to see the mother lying motionless on the ground. She was blue, as if the Arctic wind had froze her to a blueberry Popsicle. Her eyes closed. The deed was done. She walked away from the destruction she caused to others that inflicted pain on her. As she was leaving the scene of the crime, she turns to face what was once her home. She flicks her hand. All of a sudden, BOOM! The house erupts into thousand pieces. I no longer see the father in the study. Or the mother lying motionless. Or Sarah and her betraying friends. Everything has vanished as if it never happened.

She turns around going to the ruined path. She once again stops. She turns in my direction so fast that I can’t hide, and says, “Do you remember now?” Before I could ask what she was talking about, she turns back to what she looked like in the park and falls into the ruins. Then it hits me. A wave understanding and confusing washes over me. The newspaper about the explosion, my guardians finding me in a pit, learning I had a parents and a sister, the reason why my hair is short, and why there is a necklace print around my neck. It all makes sense why couldn’t remember what happened on my birthday. It was me. It was me all long.

I shoot up out of bed. The nightmare maybe over, but it will haunt me as long as I walk on this earth…..