deirdreams-blog - Tumblr blog

deirdreams-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Lost || Drabble

Laughter echoed in the small room. Deirdre sat with her mother and sister, cutting out tree shaped bits of dough and putting them on the a cookie sheet.

“Here!” Hallie said, attempting to hang an ornament on the lowest branch of the tree. She dropped it, and the glittering ball bounced across the floor. Hallie’s giggle cut through the soft sound of the carols that emanated from the radio in the corner of the room, and drew Deirdre’s lips upward into a smile. The youngster sprang after the bouncing ornament like a cat, shrieking with joy.

“The oven is ready,” her mother said from behind her, rushing toward the toddler to collect her and keep her from damaging the tree, which she was now helplessly tangled in.

Deirdre put the last of the cookies on the sheet and turned smoothly to set them in the oven, and expertly twisted the timer. She then moved over to the table to finish decorating the last batch. These ones were Santa.

Later, the candles began to burn low, and Hallie slept in her teeny bed in the corner of Deirdre’s room. The young woman blew out the candles, and plumped her own pillows. She could hear her mother outside putting the last of the cookies into tins, and setting some on a plate for “Shan Clah”, as little Hallie called him. Deirdre chuckled, and slid under her blankets.

It felt like mere minutes when she was awakened by a whimpering. Her sister was troubled, and Deirdre didn’t know what to make of it yet. The small child cried softly and repeated a conversation that Deirdre vaguely remembered from three months ago. Her brow wrinkled. How could a child so small remember something that clearly? Even Deirdre herself couldn’t recall it without the prompting of her little sister’s nightmares.

She picked the child up. “Shhhh,” she cooed, “shhh it’s alright.” She returned to her bed and curled up with her sister in her arms, effortlessly and immediately drifting into sleep. In an instant she saw what her sister was recalling.

Everything was vivid and dramatized in the girl’s mind. Colors were brighter, structures were larger, and sounds were louder. Hallie was in her mother’s arms, and a stranger was looming over her. Both her mother and the stranger laughed, and then the stranger was holding Hallie. She began to cry, she didn’t know this person, didn’t like this person. The stranger made a soft sound, trying to comfort her, and the adults laughed again.

“Hallie,” Deirdre said softly, and the girl turned to her. She held out her arms, and took the child. She rocked her gently, and the memories of the adults melted into a small garden. A fountain gurgled softly nearby. Deirdre began to sing a lullaby to her sister, and continued to rock her. Soothing calm filled the entire scene, and in the bedroom where they both lay the small child relaxed, and the tears stopped flowing from her eyes. A blissful smile drew across her sleeping features, and her breathing evened out. The dream melted once more, and Deirdre tucked her sister into her own bed. Her sleeping figure echoed the dream, pulling the blankets up over the both of them, and she let the dream trickle off, but the sound of her lullaby continued in Hallie’s head until morning.

When the child awoke, she was alone in the bed. Her eyes cast around the room for her sister, but could see no trace of her. She began to cry until her mother awoke, and rushed in to collect her.

Deirdre awoke with a start. She blinked into the sudden brightness, shielding her face from the warmth. Birds sang around her, and the fountain she had conjured up in her sister’s dream gurgled merrily to her left. She looked around, utterly confused. “Hello?” she called out.

Nothing answered her. She scrambled to her feet and began to run, but her own fear turned the garden into a haunting maze. For days she ran, calling her sister’s name.

“Hallie!”

Finally, she stopped. A figure stood before her, crying, clad tightly in a red coat, her own ginger hair lost under a blue hat.

Deirdre slowed, the garden melting around her, falling apart and being replaced by scenes too rapid for her to discern. But the girl remained, and a car blazed in front of her.

The girl continued to cry, sobbing loudly and clutching a bag to her chest. Deirdre recognized it as her mother’s favorite handbag. Deirdre looked at the girl’s face, tipping her chin up to look into her eyes.

“Hallie...?”

The girl looked into her eyes. She shrank away, confused. Deirdre’s heart sank.

Hallie didn’t recognize her. She tried to twist the dream into something, to stop the car from burning behind her, to stop the wail of the sirens, but she was powerless.

She began to cry, She looked back at the fire and saw her mother’s form, limp in the front seat. She screamed. She shut her eyes and tried to block it out, but Hallie’s memory was stronger than she was.

Then everything froze. Her own voice lifted from a distant place down the road. Her own voice, singing the lullaby she had sung to her sister every night for two years. She looked back at Hallie, and saw that the girl was now sitting in the snow, mouthing along to the words, curled up around herself.

Then, as swiftly as it had come, it was gone.

Deirdre sat in a meadow and waited. It felt like it was only minutes, but when she found her sister again she could tell it had been months. Deirdre couldn’t stop the memory, and was appalled at the conditions her sister was subjected to. She held her, she sang to her, she stroked her hair. She lost track of time, but she watched the girl grow, and did everything she could to comfort her.

She was waiting one day, sitting on a stone bench in an empty park, eyes closed. She felt a jolt, and found herself in a room. White, sterile. She looked down at her sister on the gurney, and saw only terror and confusion.

And then she was ripped away. Torn off like an old band-aid, and tossed into the ocean. The waves crashed around her. Winds buffeted her, lightning ignited her senses, and rain poured into her very soul. She was pushed and pulled through the current, and she could feel her essence being ripped into pieces. She tried to cling to her sister’s consciousness, but it was gone, and the more she tried to hold on the more it hurt.

She woke up on the beach. Finally she could feel the passage of time. Every agonizing second. She sat still, motionless for 4 years. She kept her eyes closed, and she searched. Fruitlessly she scoured the dreams of everyone on earth, jumping through them like stepping stones across a river. She looked for traces of the lost girl, methodically sifting through everyone she’d ever known like she was searching for gold in the pan.

Nothing.

She opened her eyes and anger ripped through her like another burst of lightning. She flopped back into the sand and lay there for another year.

Then, unbidden, she came.

It was the same scene. The girl cried. The girl clutched the bag. The lullaby played in the distance.

But something was different. Deirdre could feel the weight of all the times this memory had played through her sister’s mind, could feel every agonizing moment that she had tried to wrap her mind around this night.

And all she could feel was guilt.

Deirdre stood motionless, looking at her sister. She had more control now, and began to feed off of Hallie’s thoughts to create a dreamscape. Shadows rose up, looming high as mountains. Whispers began to fill the air, drowning out the singing voice. The fire crackled louder, the volume growing until it sounded like bombs going off in her head.

Deirdre was riding down the road in the passenger seat. She was talking, she never stopped talking. She looked over at her mother. Her weary eyes peered over the steering wheel into the mist, exhaustion evident in every pinched muscle of her face. The girl grew indignant, and wailed that her mother wasn’t listening. She demanded attention, began to cry. Her mother glanced over, trying to muster up a smile and a nod.

It was that moment that cost everything.

Immediately, Deirdre was flung out of the car, and was again staring helplessly at the flaming vehicle.

It played. Again and again, on loop. She couldn’t change it, couldn’t control the nightmare, because the nightmare wasn’t a dream. It was real. It had happened.

She looked again at her sister, crying in her blue hat, and felt an agonizing hatred blossom inside her. How long had she sat wasting away in this dream trying to console her sister, when it was her sister who had committed the crime? Deirdre was trapped helpless in a dream, and Hallie had murdered her mother.

She screamed, shutting her eyes tightly to block out the nightmare.

When she opened her eyes, she was home.

#drabble #backstory #you guys better buckle the fuck up #i'm gonna take you on a wild ride

2 notes · View notes