Staring into a candle, the flame flickering before my face, it wouldn’t gut out for a while maybe an hour or so, I still had time, time to think. Is that was I really wanted? Time to think, time to ponder, to wonder in my own thoughts, to think about my life, good and bad, and this veritable hell I had been put into. Sure I had thought they were bad at the time, they had ransacked our town. Destroyed everything I had ever known.

I couldn’t see through the smoke that was bellowing from the buildings, nothing looked familiar in the dark, smoky night. They were back the fear we had harbored for years was not enough to keep them away, there they were swooping down on us, devouring our town. I had watched as they took my sister, she died before my eyes, my mother where was she? She was gone to I’m sure if I had looked I could have found her mangled body somewhere, and my father, I had no father. My mother was my true mother but she wouldn’t speak of my father, wouldn’t speak of him at all, ever. My sister was my step father’s child. I didn’t know where my step father was and could have carried less weather he was dead or alive at this point, he didn’t like me I didn’t like him, a mutual hate.

I couldn’t head back towards our home the way was blocked by the dead and the dying. The burnt and the still burning. It was like walking through hell, and seeing everyone you’ve ever known suffering, dying in front of you, and there is nothing you can do about it. No way you can change it. I ran instead into the center of it. I didn’t want to be the only one left. I didn’t want to have to carry this secret on my conscious for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to have to wonder why me. I felt as though I were floating over it, as nothing seemed to touch me and every time I thought someone would they veered off, and my mind would scream with relief. I suppose I didn’t really want to die no not then.”

“NO, I don’t want to think about that not that night,” I screamed out into the darkness, the nothingness, there was no one there to hear it. I pulled away from the light then, pulling myself into the corner pushing away from the light, I could feel the cold, wet stone against my back. I closed my eyes trying to block it out I didn’t want to think about that, not now, not ever, never, never, never and I fell into a fitfull sleep trying not to think.

Thinking when sleeping is hard to avoid, and not thinking when something is painful to you it’s hard to suppress, and although you may be ably to avoid thinking about it with great difficulty during your waking hours, if it’s so ingrained in your mind and so painful, there is no way to avoid it in sleep. And it hurts, but it pulls you in and it won’t let you wake up. I don’t know what controls when things get stuck in your mind but I hope they are wreathing in hell, because that’s what these memories are for me. In my waking hours my dreams haunt me and in my dreams my memories haunt me. In the dark the things I try to avoid leap out of the empty spaces and pull me in.

I ran, tripping and stumbling over the debris. I fell and didn’t move I just laid there, trying to lose myself, wishing for it to end. But it wouldn’t and the screams surrounded me, killing me but only on the inside. I couldn’t take it anymore it was too much.
I woke up in a cold sweat in the dark. I thought I was back there I thought I was back on that street, back in that pain. I fought the fear, I fought against it hard. I came back to reality, not that reality is too much better. It’s still better then the past. I realized that my candle had gone out, and I was still afraid of sleep.