A dream where the shadow woke again.
I awoke with a knot in my throat, drenched in tears that felt older than my own memories. It was as though the night had wrung from me everything I had refused to feel, placing it in my hands, demanding I write before it vanished. I knew, as always, that only by giving it words could I be free.
In the dream, I returned to school, but it wasn’t the real building. It was a temple made of echoes, a stage where the bleakest years of my youth replayed themselves. The hallways were crowded with shadows bearing my name, laughter that had never included me, and silences heavier than cruelty itself. The people there weren’t quite who they’d been; they were phantoms wearing familiar faces, edges blurred, as if time had failed to pin them down.
Yet I was not the same girl.
My body shimmered, as though a golden light poured from my chest and spread around me. In the courtyard, an absurd swing hung from a hook in the sky, and I soared upon it without fear. I went so high that the clouds brushed my skin. There was something profoundly feminine in that flight, not flirtation, but wholeness. I wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t pretending. I simply was luminous and unapologetic.
As I swung higher, figures from the past began to gather. A woman appeared, carrying a small wooden puppet theater, pulling invisible strings that controlled dolls with our voices. For years, I had felt like one of those dolls, a voice without a body, a presence stripped of its right to speak. But in the dream, I saw myself step off that stage, cut the strings, and reclaim my voice.
Farther on, old classmates danced, weightless, joy holding them like invisible ropes. They smiled with the innocence they had never shown me, and still, something in me softened. I no longer sought their approval. Their energy now moved toward mine. For the first time, I was welcomed without begging for space.
Then he appeared, the man I once loved. His presence was gentle, like the scent of an old book you’ve loved too much. In the dream, he carried no wound, only a memory cleansed by time. I held him with quiet gratitude, thankful for the mark he’d left upon me. The moment felt like a truce between what I was and what I had become.
And it was that very light that woke the shadow.
Because dreams, like life, have a cruel way of summoning what we most fear.
From the crowd emerged the figure who had hurt me most. He didn’t walk; he glided. His shape was human, but his essence was reptilian. He wore the crooked smile of someone aware of his power, and his eyes gleamed with a cold, surgical light. In life, he had paralyzed me; in the dream, I was armed.
I held a knife that wasn’t mine, rage borrowed, inherited, accumulated, and a metal bat covered in thorns, forged from every sharp thought I had ever swallowed. I faced him with the courage I didn’t recognize in myself. I accused him. Exposed him. Pointed at him before everyone. I hurled every truth I had once buried in silence.
I struck him or tried to.
But he didn’t bleed.
He didn’t feel.
He was the embodiment of impunity itself.
Then he turned on me. He grew. His shadow stretched like a serpent devouring its prey. His words hit like blows, twisting the story, making me the guilty one. He returned the blame to me as easily as venom to a fang. He said I had wanted it, that I had created the opportunity, and that he had done nothing but read my desire. Each sentence warped his face further, each movement a reminder that some monsters don’t need excuses; they only need existence.
I ran. Barefoot, desperate, the ground of the dream burning beneath my feet.
Then others appeared, the ones who love me. My family. My mother. They surrounded me without touching, forming a barricade of bodies, cars, and open hands. A human wall of protection I had never known in real life. Their eyes brimmed with a love so vast it almost hurt to see it. For a moment, I believed I was safe.
But not even that wall could stop him.
The monster advanced, moving through them with an ancient force. No one could restrain him. He reached me, and inside that fragile sanctuary, the final battle began. I hit him, but he only grew. I screamed, but my voice shattered against his cold, scaled skin. It was like fighting fate itself.
When my strength failed, another woman appeared. Her hands trembled, but her eyes burned with the same rage I carried. She told me he had destroyed her daughter, leaving her broken forever. Her words were sharper than my blade. We stood together, two women bound by the same wound, ready to finish what neither of us could face awake.
But when we reached him, he was no longer a man. He had become something ancient and mythic, a creature half-human, half-serpent, with eyes older than fear itself. His tail coiled and uncoiled with the sinister grace of a predator who knows it cannot lose.
Even together, even with all the fury born of years of silence, we could not defeat him. He consumed the light, as he always had. And we were left standing there, breathless and trembling, knowing the battle was not over, only paused. It would return in another dream, another memory, another awakening.
Nel
Calgary, Nov 19, 2025, 4:36 am
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