Nightmare Diaries

In The Middle Night

The night wind greeted my skin gently, caressing my long hair with a touch without hers. My gaze began to blur, as if the wind tonight was forcing me to dive into dreamland.

My brain began to send signals to stretch itself, only my heart was reluctant to obey it. I still want to wait, waiting for a pair of angels who have always accompanied me since birth. They went somewhere, my mom and dad went after we had a special grilled meat made by my mom for dinner.

Hundreds of minutes passed, after two hours of standing on the balcony accompanied by a breeze. I finally heard the sound of a car moving slowly into the yard of the house. I rushed downstairs to greet my parents. From the terrace I could see my mother walking from the garage and my father walking from the opposite direction.

I immediately hugged the two of them, they welcomed my embrace warmly. We went into the house, my father asked me to sleep.

Of course I followed him and lay in bed, while my father was looking for a fairy tale book. My father always read fairy tales before going to bed, from the first thing I can remember from my childhood is my father who always read fairy tales before going to bed until now I am 14 years old.

Dad always read the same fairy tale, even now I can read and write. “Hansel and Gretel”, a fairy tale about two brothers kidnapped by a witch in an old house.

I used to think of it as an ordinary fairy tale, a fairy tale that even the point of its coma I had memorized out of my head. But two years ago, I knew that my father's version of the fairy tale was a little different.

Two years ago I started to understand that dad's fairy tales shouldn't be played to minors. But I don't care, I think maybe it's my father's way of teaching his son to be more wary of strangers, so that things don't happen that are not desirable.

Amidst the story of my vision began to blur, I began to enter the dream realm. A very strange dream, I was in a very dark and stuffy room like in the basement.

I tried to find a way out but I woke up and was in the same place, maybe I was having a lucid dream. I can't see or hear anything like I'm blind and deaf. But after that I heard a very loud sound.

The sound was heard several times, I ran to and fro to find the origin of the sound. I kept running and fell into a deep hole.

My eyes were wide open, my breath was hunting and I was flooded with sweat. I tried to normalize my breathing, after noticing the circumstances around me sighing in relief, I was in my room.

I glanced at the alarm clock, it displayed the same four numbers, at 00:00. I lowered my feet from the bed, just as I stood upright a voice sounded. The sound of impact was exactly as I had heard in the dream, but it was a bit faint.

My hair bristles, I try to vent myself to my parents' room. But just a step I swung my legs, again a strange sound.

This time it was not a clashing sound, it sounded like a very faint groaning sound. I couldn't move my body, as if my legs were fixated with a faint voice that came out of nowhere.

The moment I wanted to step back, the floor of my footrest trembled, very faint. Tonight was so quiet that any sound could be heard in my ears.

I took another step back, this time I didn't care about any sounds or vibrations. I continued to walk up to the living room, as I was going up the stairs to the second floor precisely my parents' room.

Another voice rang out again, the time I was already very tired.

"Oh my god, what else this time?" The sound of knocking on the door was very slow, even stranger because the knock sounded pitched. Like a beat to a short, repetitive song. Somehow the courage from which I ventured to get close to the door, maybe I lost my mind but now I am tired of all the terror tonight.

“Knock, Knockk Knockk.”

Two steps, the distance between me and the door. The sound of the pitched knocking stopped, but it was as if it did not let my heart rest.

I could hear the sound of the door lock being turned from the outside. I wish I could run or at least anyone please wake me up from this nightmare. I wish I could assume this was a nightmare, but everything I've been through is too real for a dream.

“CKLEK, CKLEK. NGIIITT”

Finished already, the door in front of me slowly opened. I turned my back but it was too late. A pair of black hands grabbed my body, my mouth smothered. Before the darkness swallowed me, there was a scream. I didn't have time to think about what it was, because maybe this is the end.

It was all dark again, this time I couldn't tell if it was a dream or not. Therefore I am not trying to find a way out of this stifling darkness.

Soon someone came in wearing a white coat and a stethoscope draped over his shoulder. The doctor? Thought. It was then that I realized I was in the hospital.

The doctor asked me about my condition and some other things like a doctor. Suddenly someone came in after knocking on the door and introduced himself as a policeman. I'm starting to worry, am I a kidnap victim? Then where are my parents?

After introducing himself, the police asked for some information from me. I find it strange because the questions are so confusing.

The cop told me a chronology I never imagined if it really existed. The policeman told me about a basement under my house, just under my room.

A woman was held captive for 14 years, during which time she had given birth several times because of receiving sexual violence from the person who held her, my father.

But the babies were never found, there were only bones that had been cut into pieces and buried in the backyard of the house. Like cooked beef and bones in the grave.

My dad visits the basement every 12 p.m., exactly when my mom and I are fast asleep. My mother had amnesia 14 years ago because of an accident, which is when my father locked up a daughter who was his own child.

My father did it because it turned out that the child was pregnant, the police said if he suspected my father as the mastermind of my mother's accident to cover up the crime that he was impregnating his own child.

And the woman never gave birth ‘normal’, because sometimes my father hit her stomach with a hammer or tied it with rubber tires and then pulled it tight.

It was a miracle because the woman was still alive even though it was a bit abnormal. Broken ankles, scratches and bruises all over the body, eyes that have not radiated the hue of life and clothes that are still filled with fresh blood.

When I heard his features when he was first discovered by the police, I wasn't sure it was still normal.

Not until there, I know the fact that I am not my mother's biological child. My real mother is a woman held captive under my own room,

I was the only child left alive to make my amnesiac mother believe that we were a happy family. And for 14 years, my mother and I lived in the engineering that my father had invented.

I felt nauseous after hearing all that, therefore I decided to walk the path in the hospital garden. My body feels weak, probably because of the dope effect.

I was sitting on a bench facing the hallway of the VIP ward, from a distance a patient sitting in a wheelchair could see. Slowly the wheelchair was pushed by the nurse towards me. The patient smiled, I recognized him very much, that smile. He was my father, his lips moving like he was saying something.

"GOOD SLEEP."

I goosebumps, the smile that used to warm my heart and make me feel safe is terrible. The wheelchair turned the other way, missing my sight.

But that smile kept spinning around in my head like a broken cassette. At that moment I realized something, how could I forget it. The chronology I had just heard was exactly like the fairy tale that my father read to me every night.

Life is a gift for some people, life also becomes a ‘punishment’ for some people. It all depends on how we look at the world and how we pit fate into life.

But has life not taught us many things? With life we can feel the beauty of childhood despite the cruel reality, we can feel happiness even though there is a painful lie, we can feel many things because we have life.

Shouldn't this life be celebrated? For all the things we have felt so far, for all the pain that has been replaced with gratitude, for all the cries that have been replaced with laughter and for the sun that has been willing to replace the rain so that we can smile for the rainbow.

By: _Savanna

Syifa. A