A Dream Nobody Should Ever Have.

Last night put me through at least ten levels of hell, if not more. Amongst everything else that happened, I was hoping the sleeping world would've provided some sort of escape. It did not.

My night terrors flared up and left me unable to move and breathe. Worse still, they kicked in right after Daddy left for work, leaving me alone to fight them off. Instead of just a 10-minute deal, I was tormented for 2 hours in a dream nobody should ever have.

Lately I've been having a repeating location in my dreams. A strange hotelesque apartment complex in which there are no working lights but electricity. Candles light the place, and I share the room with somebody... the person varies from dream to dream.

Anyway.

The dream I had started off here in this little room, where I woke up alone. I lit the candles and set the alarm for some weird time... I can't recall. I went into the main area of the apartment, where Mama and Mike usually were, and found it empty. Looked down into the backyard, and the pets were gone. I knocked on other doors but the place was deserted, and I'd been abandoned.

I walked around the large field that made up the front yard, and saw what looked like Shelby standing on the other side, just staring at me. I waved at her and she waved back, but a car passed by between us and she was gone. I ran to the location, but there was nothing there except for crushed grass, as if somebody had been standing there.

I heard talking and whirled around, seeing the apartment building suddenly inhabited and bustling. I walked in that direction, but the closer I got, the more dilapidated the building became, and the fewer the people I saw. Finally, I returned to the complex and found it falling to pieces and me alone again... as if decades upon decades had passed. But I was still young.

I found a strange looking copper stone in the front of the place, which I walked over and read. It said something like, "In honor of those lost in the disaster of 2008. No survivors were ever found in this building." It meant either I was a ghost, or I was the sole survivor that was never found. Regardless, it meant that everybody in my family was gone.

I walked into the apartment and lit all the candles, sitting in my little room, completely unsure of what to do. I heard weird rumbles of thunder outside, and the building started shaking. I went outside and saw my boyfriend standing there, almost as if he'd appeared out of nowhere.

"A storm's coming," he said, really calmly. It was almost robotic. I walked over and looked up as a huge funnel, larger than anything I've ever seen before, started falling from the sky.

I ran back towards the apartment building, but the storm devoured it. I grabbed onto the sidewalk for some reason and held on, but he just stood out in the middle of the field, just as I'd found him. I wanted to go to him, but things started battering me and finally rendered me unconscious.

I woke up sometime later and he was gone, no signs of him left to be seen. The building in front of me was completely destroyed, and I was laying in the middle of the field, where I eventually had landed in the storm, bleeding from many wounds but alive. I got up and looked around, but found I was blind in my right eye. There was nothing. Nothing in front, behind, or around me. But then, an ambulance siren. It raced down the field, and I ran weakly after it.

Just out of the range of my vision was the apartment complex, standing tall despite minor damage. And there was my family and my boyfriend, standing around something laying in the front yard of the complex.

"Why was she outside in the first place?" Mama asked in a sobbing voice. "She knew better than that."

"We don't know," one of the ambulance drivers said somberly. "But she's the only fatality in all of this."

So there I was, a ghost, forever meant to wander the empty fields alone... never to recover from my injuries... never to regain my vision in my right eye and never to lose the horrid limp. I was standing in front of everybody, but no one saw me there.

Just a ghost.

That's all I'd ever amount to be.