A New Night

Journey to the Nightmare Lands

I woke with the highest degree of physical feeling that I could remember. The fibers of my sheets brushed against my skin with almost a warm energy. I stretched and felt my muscles tighten and my joints pop comfortably. A gentle red glow passed through my closed eyelids, lightly encrusted from a long night of sleep. I could feel rays of sun on my face.

I opened my eyes and fluttered them a few times, wetting them comfortably while the world around me came into focus. A white room, blankets, a brown bed frame, and a poster of a superhero in black with horns.

Finally, I lifted the sheets to see me.

I was in a small pale body, an adolescent human child clothed in pajamas. It was soft … covered in a good number of freckles. Brown ringlets rested messily on my shoulders and pillow. But it wasn’t enough—I needed to look in a mirror! I almost sat up to get out of bed, but an unexpected sound startled me. I threw my blankets over myself as my door creaked open.

A three-year-old child entered, wearing white shorts and a bright orange shirt. Her skin was a warm brown, and her black hair was thicker than mine. Her most prominent features were her cheeks—bubbly and pink.

I recognized her … this was Emeli. She was my adopted sister.

Emeli smiled and said my name, “Dimitry!”

Seeing her made me feel happy for the first time in what had felt like forever.

Somehow, I knew that the rest of my family was gone from the house. I remembered my name, her name, and all of their names! The information did not flood in all at once—rather, it was just there when I reached for it. It felt the opposite of when I had woken up in the … in the cave? No, what in the world was I talking about? I wondered why my brain had gone to caves and guessed I had likely had a dream about being in one. Neat.

It was also nice when I woke up like this. The house was quiet. My parents were both at work, and my brothers were at school. I did not attend the same school; I had very much pushed to do my schooling at home. Being in a school with all those other children and strict teachers … it made me anxious. So, instead, I did my schooling on a computer. I knew I probably wouldn’t see the rest of my family until late evening.

But … I preferred it that way. Like with the idea of school, the idea of my biological family made me feel anxious—and I tried purposefully not to think of why. Likewise, I helped Emeli with her schooling at home. We were kindred spirits in that sense; I liked to think that she took after me. However, her tantrums at school for me to come to get her were more legitimate by far.

Instead of feeling the sort of anxiety I did, she was actively disliked. Her teachers all commented with disdain on how much she spoke. In fact, she was especially good at speaking for her age. But everyone else—including my parents and siblings—regarded her with disdain for this. It was only a neighbor’s begging for her safety that my family had even taken her in.

I didn’t mind, however. Her talking was soft and filled with joy that someone was listening to her—even when she spoke about utter nonsense. So, at first, I had simply allowed her to tag along with me. It hadn’t been long before I needed to cook and prepare her meals, take her to preschool, and spend more time with her than anyone. After an entire year passed, I felt something that I could only describe as parental.

“Dimitry, are you awake?” Emeli asked in Spanish, with her heavy Bolivian accent

“Nope,” I replied, also in Spanish, and threw my cover over my head.

“Yes, you are,” Emeli said. I heard a mischievous pseudo-angry tone from her as she whined. “You’re awake; I know you’re awake.”

“No, I’m not awake; I’m still fast asleep,” I said with a smile that felt nice on my face.

“You just said something, so you have to be awake,” Emeli said, sounding pleased with her own reasoning.

“Or...” I said, sticking my finger outside the covers and pointing it toward the ceiling. “I am sleep-talking.”

“You’re not sleep-talking!” Emeli whined. She grabbed onto my finger and began to shake it up and down. Then, she began to pull with all her weight and popped my finger, much to my surprise. “I want you to play with me!”

“Alright,” I said and laughed groggily into my pillow. “Now get out of here and let me change clothes.”

“Promise you won’t go back to sleep?” Emeli asked.

“Promise,” I said, extending my hand in a ‘promise’ handshake. Emeli shook my hand, shook it, and then turned to walk back to the door. When she did, I took a smaller pillow and gently tossed it so that it bounced off her head.

Emeli squealed with laughter and then ran out the door. She shut it behind her and shouted something about how mean I was.

When I was alone, I threw off the covers. I groggily looked around and then spotted myself in the mirror. The face that looked back was thin with sharp features, except for round cheeks with small splotches of acne. My eyes were brown, as was my tangled hair.

I stood there for a moment, stunned by confusing feelings, and let out a heavy sigh. My face and body, they seemed kind of … off. Objectively, I thought I looked pretty normal, but there was something about me that seemed alien. I had asked my mother about this once, and she’d just given me strange looks. Maybe everybody felt that their reflection was off—perhaps the feelings would just go away. Either way, there wasn’t exactly anything I could do about it.

I forced myself to look away and searched my closet for something to wear. Most of the items had been bought by my parents, styled like the manakins in a boy’s clothing store. It all made me feel nauseous. I quickly decided on my regular outfit—an oversized, sleeveless hoodie that hung well below my shorts.

My stomach grumbled, and I remembered that I needed to get some breakfast for the both of us. From there, it would be like any other day. I could taste the food I cooked, feel the heat from the sun, and hear every shout and note of music that played throughout the day. Then, I would go to sleep.

-O-

I woke the following day to an explosive sound I didn’t recognize. It startled me, and I did not dare move from my bed for a few minutes. My heart raced, and I felt unable to move. Had one of my parents gotten angry and broken something again?

I heard the sound of water trickling outside my room. In confusion, I lowered my feet from the bed and found them ankle-deep in ice-cold water. A shiver went up my spine at the unexpected coldness, especially in the middle of summer.

With some difficulty, I opened my bedroom door and stepped into the kitchen. A rapidly moving stream was leaking in from the sliding glass kitchen door. Had a pipe broken? There had been floods recently, but to have gotten through the sliding glass doors so quickly was weird.

I studied the foggy glass door, and it took my groggy brain several seconds to understand what I saw. The glass door was not foggy but misty, and the water outside had risen to the level of my knees!

Another explosion seemed to come from the sky and rocked the ground—throwing me onto my back into the water. The glass door shattered. A mixture of glass shards and water rushed to the height of my knees while I barely managed to stand back up.

I grabbed onto the kitchen counter to keep from being knocked down again by the current. Then, a wave—like something I would expect from the beach at high tide—rolled through the shattered doorway. The water that remained after was at the level of my chest and neck!

Again, nobody was home, so there was nobody to call for help, and I just stood there petrified from cold and fear. Except, there was one other person there …

“Emeli!” I screamed as loudly as I could.

I doggy-paddled in the water that was already too deep for me to touch the kitchen floor. I slowly reached the door that separated the rest of the house from the kitchen. I opened the door handle and spilled into the living room along with the water. When I managed to stand again, I realized that this had lowered the water back to the level of my neck. Now, I could hear screaming in the adjacent bathroom.

“Dimitry! Help me! Ayudame! Dimitry!” Emeli screamed from the other side of the door. I could only barely hear her over the noise of yet another explosion.

“Emeli!” I screamed back. I pulled at the door, but it wouldn’t budge! For a full minute, I kept pulling for all I was worth, bracing my feet against the wall. Finally, I looked up and saw a crack in the doorframe that reached straight into the ceiling—which was now tremendously warped. The door was wedged in place!

I began to beat both fists into the door. Maybe if it had been a flimsy plywood door, I could have punched a hole through it. But this one had been made by hand, out of solid pieces of wood much denser than my small fists could damage. I couldn’t stop, though. I screamed and hit the door until my fists dripped blood into the water. Soon, the water rose so that I could no longer stand.

It was then that I realized I could no longer hear Emeli’s screams.

“Emeli!” I screamed again. I kept swimming, clawing at the top of the door until my nails were broken and bleeding.

Then, I felt massive arms pulling me against my will.

I screamed, though it came out more like a hoarse and unintelligible whine that let too much water down my throat. “No, let me go!” I managed between coughs and retching.

A man was screaming something at me, something in Spanish, but I couldn’t hear a thing over the water and the explosions. I could only feel my exhausted and trembling body being pulled through the water until I was out the kitchen door. Then I felt myself put into a small fishing boat with yet a third person.

The man then pulled himself into the boat. It was Carlos … my neighbor. The other woman was his mother—Maria-Elena. The elderly lady grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me into a tight hug so that I couldn’t see anything except for the worn fabric of her clothes. She began singing a little chant typically used to soothe infants and small children.

All I could do was tremble as the earthquake died down and the waters continued to rise.