“For the Nightmare to die…”

The incident that started it all.

Year: 2,100. It seems that the world has made much progress; the rebuilding of the earth after that fateful day. Much progress is still left to be made.

           

            On a cool October night, my love softly lays her head upon her pillow and gazes out to the world beyond her window.  She hears the sound of the silent night, the bright stars faintly twinkling through the cloudy night sky, that somehow still have the power to be so visible. Visions of all the peaceful things in life run through her head, while down the hall her two oldest children are arguing over God knows what. (Although these days it seems that God has lost his divinity. This is because he is seen as a major reason why, after that tragic day, the survivors still couldn’t set aside their religious differences and come together. Instead they blamed each other and separated even more). Eventually, the house does fall quiet and the pretty lady is able to quickly fall asleep. In her deep slumber she sees her usual, reoccurring visions.

            In her dream, she saw my face, the face of a person she used to see every night for the past twenty years of her life.  She saw my curious silver eyes, my stern facial expression, my bulging arm and leg muscles. She sees my black hair that goes midway down, through my shoulders, which is sometimes pulled into a small ponytail. My face held residence to two scars, one on each cheek. In her sleep, she murmurs, “I guess that’s what most of the men who work for the Stardusk police look like, a very stressful job.” Don’t get her wrong though, she is aware that women work there too, but most of them don’t do the heavy-duty work.

            Even though she wanted to see all the events in her life that she shared with me, any thing at all; her visions were clouded by that single event that changed everything. It was not when we first meet, not when we got married, not our first, second, or third child being born, none of those. What she saw was a most horrific event, an unbelievable moment that took me away from her.

           

            The day was July 4^th, 2099, which happens to be only a year three months ago. The woman of the house, Kiara, was in the kitchen making dinner for our family; she was making sure I didn’t go to bed hungry. Her three kids were in the family room fighting over the TV, when there are five other ones in the house and each of them have their own TV in their rooms. That thought went through Kiara’s mind, but didn’t even cross our children’s. While she was washing the dishes, a deafening noise came piercing though the walls of the house. She could feel vibrations through the floors that carried up the walls. Kiara told her eldest daughter, Kaosa, to turn the channel to channel seven, which was the official news channel of Stardusk Town.

The news’s anchor lady reported, “Sirens from the police station have been sounded off.” The lady was wearing a red suit with a white shirt underneath, long wavy black hair tied back into a ponytail, was running towards the building. The views could see that the smoke was rising from the police station.

“As you can see, part of the east wing of the police station is on fire, but the cause of it remains unknown”.

            There are two wings to the police station, the east wing and the north wing. The police station, however, is part of a much bigger structure. The “Main Building” of Stardusk Town contained the Town Hall, Stardusk Prison and Research Center. Each of these buildings was connected by the Central Building. The upper floors of the central building are the Stardusk Hospital. To the north of central is the “Town Hall Building” which contains a north, west and east wings. To the south of central is the “Research Center” that only has a south wing. To the west of central lies the prison that only has a north wing and last but not least the police station lies to the east of central. The police station is a very big structure compared to the other parts of the building. This wasn’t because the town had a high crime rate; it is because they had to protect the farmlands surrounding this town and the smaller town just to the north of this one.

            The reporter on the television was still running the station when an outburst of flames aroused from the building.

“The fire in the east wing looks about five stories high now. We do not know if people are still in the station but firefighters are already on the scene. They are trying their best to douse the fire, but it is rising quickly”.

Kiara starred at the TV, wide-eyed and her jaw clenched together. Her husband, Kloud (I), worked in the East Wing. Kaosa let out a big gasp, always being her dramatic self. Kuri didn’t want to look at the TV and hid behind her mother’s leg, while Kayasu intensely watched the news, keeping his composure. He was trying to hear more information before they jumped to any conclusions.

            People came running out of the building, luckily none of them were on fire, and in fact none of them looked harmed by the fire. The fire though, became more and more contained by the second. The Stardusk firefighters have a sly swiftness to them when it comes to putting out fires. While the fire was dying down, out of the smoke blurry figures were arising.

“It looks like there are some survivors coming from the East Wing!” As the reporter lady headed towards the building, the camera began to zoom in closer.

Shrieks from the crowd set the mood for the next sight; all of Stardusk Town did witness.  Some high-ranking police officers began shooting at the black figures coming out of the smoke. Looking at the TV Screen, Kiara realized that the figures didn’t look normal; the shape of them looked human, but all she could see was an outline of a person, maybe, with bright, glowing eyes.

            The figures were shot down within a couple of seconds, and laid there burning in the fire.

                             

“This sight is way to gruesome, we’ll have to cut to a commercial.” Beep…the TV screen went blue with the words “Standby” flashing across the screen and another message came up on the screen, telling the residents to stay inside their houses.

            For the rest of that night the whole family stayed up, hoping they would not get a call from the police station. In the early days of the following week, the family did indeed receive a phone call and a knock on their door.

“Kiara we are sorry to inform you that your husband, Kloud, was one of the victims in the East Wing explosion last week. We were able to identify him by the two scars on his face; the fire from the explosions seemed not to touch his body. He died from smoke inhalation. Not many men were as valiant as he was.” This police officer was one of the many who admired him greatly. Kiara sobbed hysterically, both in her dream of the memory and in her sleep. She didn’t know how to respond to this but with her first reaction, her instinct…tears.

Just the week before she had got on Kaosa’s a*s about her getting her school work done, made him lunch and told me, “Have a good day, see ya when you get home.” And the painful words to her now, “I love you”.  Now I am gone and this scene, the night of his death, replays constantly in her head and in her dreams.

 

            A year and three months later she still doesn’t know why the explosion happened, or at least, didn’t like the explanation the news gave.

“The explosion was caused by faulty electrical wiring. Some wires were exposed, making a fire when sparks contacted paper and leaking gasoline from tanks in one of the utility closets.”

It sounds pretty plausible, but Kiara was still uneasy.  She still wants to know why I had to die, why I was working so late, and why she kept seeing that day over and over again in her head, along with other dreams. These dreams contained things she has and hasn’t seen before. Are they memories or visions she wonders. Maybe even things she was going to see, like premonitions or things she wasn’t supposed to see. All she knew is that they just kept coming back. At times she would feel a presence, watching her sleep, standing over her bed, waiting for her to wake up. She was convinced that it may be my spirit haunting her, but sometimes she would feel more than one.

            When Kiara gets up in the morning, she stretches, yawns, and cracks her neck. She slowly sits up in her bed, swings her legs, one by one, over the side of the bed, and stretches out the rest of her body. She stands up and heads over to the window that is directly in front of her. When Kiara opens the window, she sees a morning sky, without a cloud in sight and splashes of pink, purple, and blue. In front of the window is a small coffee table with family pictures placed on it. The first is of my wife and me on our wedding day, both so young, both so vibrant. She wore her mother’s wedding dress, another painful memory. It was a strapless long dress with four big feathers placed along the sides of her hip, each one getting longer as it becomes closer to the ground and a veil with a crystal glow and sparkle to it.  I just wore a standard tuxedo.  The next picture was of our three children, taken about two years ago.

            Kiara began to cry and giggle a little, “Kayasu looks so much like his father, except for those facial tattoos. Why did I let him get those again?” Kaosa looked like a spitting image of Kiara, while Kuri looked like both of us. The last picture she looked at was of her parents and of my parents. Looking at all those pictures brought up childhood memories, a childhood we grew through together.

           

            Both Kiara and Kloud didn’t grow up in Stardusk Town, but grew up in the farmlands surrounding it. In the farmlands there was a house every fourth of a mile and most of the farms contained the main house, a big barn, crops and a bunch of animals enclosed by a white picket fence, except for one farm.  This one farm was the wealthiest of all of them, so wealthy that it was called “The Estate” of the farmlands.  It was as big as an old southern plantation, of course no slaves though. This estate was sprawled over 3 acres, with the main house being a 3-story white mansion.  From the outside a person could see two chimneys, one on each side of the house, and the base of the house was covered in blue flowers. Behind the house there was a variety of crops; vegetables and fruits. There were apples, peaches, grapes, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, spinach, and any other crop you can think of. The owners, being Kiara’s parents, sold half of their crops to the small town to the north and to the City of Rivera, while the other half was used to help support Stardusk Town and their family. The owner’s of this grand estate are named Melody Oron, Kiara’s mother, and Joseph Oron, who is her father. Kiara, though, was not an only child. She has a brother and his name is Genesis.

 

            Melody was a tall woman, 5’10”, with deep purple eyes, dark brown hair that is always up in a bun.  She wears her rectangular shaped glasses all day, sometimes she falls asleep with them on. Most days she would wear sundresses, her favorite was a blue dress with green flowers that was strapless and goes down just her knees. She is a slim woman with no butt and a small chest with a tan to her skin tone, and of course she wears every piece of jewelry she owns, but still was wholesome with her simple wooden sandals. 

 

            Joseph was a very tall man, 6’, with brown eyes and light brown hair that was short and spiked up. His hair was not in the style of a Mohawk tough. His hair had really short strands of hair spiked up. He has a beauty mark on his cheek to the right of his mouth that is right below the right corner of his right eye, if you drew lines on his face it would be where they intersect. His skin is a ghostly pale color from wearing a long coat, pants, and shoes all the time. The only body parts on him that were slightly darker were his hands and his face. They had a peach tone to them. Like his wife, he is a thin man, but does have some arm muscle. The one feature that made him stand out from most people is that he always wore a monocle over his left eye and had a slightly big gash over the left one, a result of a childhood accident working on the farm…with animals. The children of the farmlands were either scared of him or were curious to hear his tale, usually told as a tall-tale.  

           

As for Kiara’s brother, Genesis, when he stopped growing he measured to be about 5’8½”. He must have inherited genes from one of his grandparents because he was born with red hair, not orange hair, that people called “red hair” or “heads”, but RED hair. What is also very weird about him is that he was born with yellow eyes, a dark yellow (not as bright as cat’s eyes). His favorite colors were very noticeable in what colors he wore, if you can call them colors. He always wears a black coat with silver chains hanging across his chest from metal loops. On the back of his coat is an “X” made out of two belts, both silver. Underneath the coat he wore baggy dark silver jeans, that weren’t that noticeable since his coat was so long, and a black undershirt. On his feet he wore black boots with the stitching forming the word “Seoul”, pronounced “Soul”, the shoe brand. Genesis’s hair was short, but long for a guy. The front was parted more to the right and swoops to both sides (bangs), while the rest of his hair fluffy with strands bent inward and outward. In the farmlands, all the girls wanted to get to know Genesis; he was the stud of the countryside.

           

Even though Genesis could get any girl he wanted, there was only one girl who he loved and that girl’s name was, Hope Ilias. Hope was another yellow-eyed girl but she had black hair with blonde highlights. Genesis loved her freckles on her cheeks, her dimples that would appear every time she smiled, “and oh, when she smiled, she could light up the darkest room” Genesis would tell Kiara. Genesis would always pick fruit, the cleanest tastiest ones he could find and gave them to her. If one of her belongings broke, he would be the first one to help her fix them and when she felt under the weather, he would make his special soup (chicken herbs and noodles in broth) to cheer her up. Kiara was always amused by those two, but she was the same way with Kloud. The four of them, along with a boy named Krad were inseparable until that one fateful day.

 

            On this day in 2071, Melody went with Hope’s father, Dorian Ilias, to Stardusk Town to deliver their monthly produce. During this time, Stardusk Town was going through a major food shortage crisis due to the City of Rivera polluting some of the soil used to grow food, mainly in the western and southern parts of the farmlands. About 50% of the crops were not safe to eat and for the unfortunate people who ate some of them were stricken with sickness for long periods of time or died from disease.

            When Melody and Dorian made it to the main market, a massive crowd of people came towards them demanding for food. The owner of the market told them, “Remain calm and you will get your share of food”.

But the crowd was becoming restless. The owner was trying to give the food to the children and officers first, but everyone else was too famished. They started swarming the market in search of food and raiding the truck that held the rest of the food supply. Beforehand, Melody and Dorian were about to drive off, but it was too late.

“We want food now!” One man yells.

“Yeah!” a group of others say back and the mayhem continues.

            The people stormed the market, getting any scrap of food they could find, good or bad quality. Outside the square, the truck has been stopped by a group of thirty men and women who proceeded to tip the truck over with Melody and Dorian still in it. Melody and Dorian managed to escape through the driver side’s door, but they were in more danger outside the truck than inside. On top of the truck, neither Melody nor Dorian could keep their balance and both fell into the crowd, on separate sides of the truck.

“Get all the food! Leave no crumbs behind!” A woman commanded from atop that shaky truck.

            Within a couple hours, the Stardusk police had the riot under control, arrested about 100 people and got about another 100 people to the hospital. Melody and Dorian were among those people. The next day, Dorian woke up in the hospital, but Melody did not. She went into a coma and this began Joseph’s and Dorian’s ugly relationship. Dorian brought Melody back to her house so she could recover at home or at the very least, die at home. Joseph hated Hope’s father, for not making sure she was alright and protecting her.

“You’re despicable! You can’t even handle a simple delivery to town and make it back safely! You should have never taken that long to drive away.  I can’t believe I trusted you with my duty, my wife!”

Dorian just looked at him, with a sense of grief on his face.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

Dorian just turned around and left the house trying to hold back tears.

“You go ahead and run away then, I bet that’s what you did then too! Always running away aren’t ya?” Joseph yelled as he followed him to the door. When he received no response, he stormed back into the house and slammed the door.

            Kiara and Genesis had seen the whole scene unfold. They were sitting on the couch in the room next to the entry hall. Joseph turns to them and sternly states, “You are not to see or talk to anyone in that family ever again. Don’t even look at them. Do you hear me? Ever again!”

He grabbed one of Genesis’s arms and the opposite arm of Kiara’s. He stared at them deep in the eyes and too fueled to wait for an answer; he went to his room and locked himself in.

 

            That happened when Kiara was eight years old and Stardusk Town has changed drastically since those days, which is a very good thing. Eventually her father did remarry when he knew his wife wasn’t coming out of the coma. He placed her body in an oxygen chamber and there it sat in a locked and empty room in their house.  Joseph still hates Hope’s father to this day, even in death. Kiara and Genesis defied their father’s wish and still kept in touch with Hope, but eventually they lost contact with her. None of us knew why but from what we heard was that she and her father had moved to the far side of the farmlands because their crops were failing. I guess their soil lost its richness.

            Kiara brings her head out of her distant memories and begins to get ready for another day without me there.

“Maybe this is how father felt when he lost my mother. I’m not angry like he was though. I’m just…lost”. Kiara says out loud to herself while scratching her head and heading towards the bathroom. She can get really carried away with her thoughts because she was oblivious to the fact that it is two o’clock in the morning and the sun is nowhere in sight.