She was no longer completely sure that it had happened at all. Her dreams had moved in and altered the details, added touches and glimpses, shaded her memories a darker hue. It made no practical difference. All memories were altered with time, not just the ones you never managed to leave behind.
Thankfully they never seeped through into her waking hours. Still, she could always tell when she’d had the nightmare. She’d wake with her head buried in the pillow, struggling to breathe, wet from sweat or tears or the river itself, a strange ringing in her ears as if they too remembered.
She was driving, someone else’s car. Her sister’s? Driving down a highway. Every few seconds her eyes would flick up and to the side, scanning the area for danger, glancing up at the two children in the back seat. Her nieces. They sat there turning pages in their books, idly singing a lullaby.
It was coming through the radio too, a simple tune. Familiar. In the dream she doesn’t find it strange that such music pipes out. It’s the second last thing her dreams ever allow her to hear.
The last sound was only a second later. Looking back up from the radio to see a lone, pale figure standing in the middle of the road. Staring right through her. She wrenches the wheel to the side and the tires scream in protest and whip the car sideways. That was the last sound she recognised, though she could never fully separate the scream of the eviscerating rubber from that of the girls in the back seat. The next moment a shockwave of water crashes over them, shattering the passenger side window, tearing red burns in the side of her face.
She had no scars, no physical scars, but they could heal couldn’t they? Not like the other ones, the ones that stayed within you.
Was it her dazed brain which slowed everything down, or her heightened reactions, the adrenaline pumping into her heart that made the next few moments shift past frame by frame? Unlock the belt, push open the door. Water rushing over her. Turning around to see the girls wrapped in each other, eyes staring in panic. A trickle of red running from her niece’s ear. Water washing it away as it surged up and over their heads. An arm grabbing her, demanding she pull out of the wreck, not listening to her pull back, not allowing her to disentangle the children.
The sunlight warm through the water, then gone again the next instant as she pulled away and dove back down, only to be caught again and dragged out. Numbness. The world around her spinning, trying to catch back up to normal speed.
Sitting on the bank, staring at the calm surface of the river. Hands over her ears, not allowing any further sound in. No-one else around her was wet – who had pulled her out? Maybe there had never been anyone else. Maybe it had just been her, deciding to save herself and let the others drown. She could see the same thoughts reflected back at her from everyone’s eyes.
Then much later, lying in bed. Her sister next to her, shaking her, screaming at her. Not being able to hear a thing. Some things are taken away from us for a reason.
