Chapter Fifty-Two
Thomas’ Point of View:
I tumble out of bed and kiss the floor in the process.
“Well, good morning to you too,” I thought wryly.
Faintly, I register hitting my head against the steel cup I put on my bedside table, obviously displaced by the violent rocking.
The rocking stops for a moment and I hurry to the window, grabbing the frame as a precaution, so I don’t fall and splatter my sleep-addled brain into Mum’s precious garden.
The sight that greets me is a mad mess. Our gate is twisted on the left, splattered with a liquid I dare not look closer at, for fear of what it could be.
Penny’s Penny, the local shop that sells the best pies and juice around here, is a jumbled mess of metal and wires down the far-right end of the street. Someone is running towards it, yelling furiously.
A closer look reveals Mary, the store owner’s daughter, in a flustered state. She’s yelling something over and over, hysterically; something indecipherable to me from where I am standing.
My eyes widened with alarm when I saw her reach for the jumble of tin that used to be her mother’s snack shop but was thrown back with heavy force as the rocking started again.
This time, I am still panicking, our house is stable. Unconsciously, I reach for the pendant I always wear on my neck and gasp at the heat it’s emitting.
Then suddenly, as I look down at the pendant, a force grabs me and throws me to the ground. The force pins me down, and weirdly, it seems to come from within me.
As I sink into oblivion, I hear the words Fiona repeating, as if she were right by my ear now, “Fight, Mother, fight!”
I gasped and opened my eyes, my heart racing a mile a minute. The familiar aura of my room calms me, and I breathe in the soothing smell of the scented candle Mum insists I light in my room every night.
Unconsciously, I reach for my pendant and drop it almost immediately, remembering my dream.
Or rather, my most recent dream, taking into cognizance the fact that I’ve been having such crazy dreams consistently for the past week, every single night. I sit up and fumble around my pillow for my glasses and place them on my face.
Then I looked around my surroundings as if to reassure myself that it was indeed a dream, and nothing was broken or destroyed.
The steel cup lies undisturbed on my table where I have placed it for use during my frequent midnight need for water.
My little glass globe is on my reading table and my favorite framed picture, which I had noticed lying in a shard of glass in my dream, is in its place.
I reach for it now with my left hand while my right reaches, unconsciously, for my pendant again.
My best friend, Amber, says it’s my official ticket now to reach for my pendant as an emotional prop, with an emphasis on the prop whenever she says it.
I’m about to start drowning in my usual pool of nostalgia that I feel whenever I pick up this picture when I’m struck by the distinct feeling that I’m missing something very important.
Mrs. Johnson! I think, putting away the picture frame and stumbling out of bed in a manner akin to that in my dream.
I rushed to the window and threw open the blinds, leaving the soft lights of dawn in my room.
Down the streets, Penny’s stands safe and I heave a deep sigh of relief, feeling temporarily at ease before the peculiar feeling rises within me again.
I suppose I could chalk it up to the dreams I’ve been having, but somehow, I know it has little to do with them.
Ever since my 9th birthday, I’ve was afraid; anticipation, and a feeling of premonition of a terrible disaster swirling in my gut at random moments, unreasonably.
Something tells me I need to tell someone, to warn someone, because even though I don’t understand it yet, it’s true.
But I’m not ready to be called crazy and that would be exactly what I’m asking for if I told anyone that I’ve been having recurring dreams about earthquakes every time I close my eyes.
My family and friends might pity-believe me, and right after I suggest a therapist, that’s if they don’t try to have me committed. I can only imagine the gossip fodder at school.
“Thomas finally read her way to madness”, they would whisper to each other, over lunch, at games, and even in the bathroom. Fred will certainly have a field day with his only obstacle to being class valedictorian gone.
Then that’s not just me being subject to ridicule. My best friends, Amber and Gold, will bear the brunt of my predictions.
Then, maybe crazy lady Mirabel will finally have someone as a companion, during her magic society meetings that she founded, hosts, and attends alone.
Visualizing myself in the ball skirts Mirabel sometimes wears almost lifts me out of my fuzz as I laugh, despite myself. This is a pretty broad and far-fetched conclusion to make, obviously, but the pessimist in me is a chronic over-thinker.
Right now, though, as I have done every morning since I started having dreams of doom, I reassure myself that my dreams are a result of a combination of my extra love for movies and my super overthinking abilities.
I tell myself audibly that dreams are the result of a combination of repressed memories, they could be my way of interpreting external stimuli, and so on; that death, of all things, is the least possible natural disaster here and that I’m fine, I’m safe.
Of course, this part of my daily “affirmations” often set me back as the devil’s advocate in my head and reminds me constantly that the fact that I’m fine doesn’t mean I would continue to be safe.
Then I work on squashing the voice all over again. I go on with this for a few minutes before I go about my regular morning routine while trying to ignore the persistent voice in my head saying, “Nice job lying to yourself.”