Every night I relive that moment in my life when everything seemed to fall apart. When everything ended. When my parents died.
The scene flashes through my mind nearly in slow motion. Each shocking, grisly moment of their death plays in my head like a film, in constant loop.
I wasn�t there at the accident. But I remember the police showing up at my grandparent�s house late that Tuesday night. I was told to wait in the living room with Margaret, who was 3. Just a little baby.
I don�t know why I didn�t stay there, playing with my trucks, with an old TV show playing in the background. I don�t know why I had to disobey my grandmother and follow her and the police officer into the kitchen.
I think I might have known something was wrong. Because even as my grandmother broke down in tears, and as the police officer kept talking, repeating words like �fire� and �accident� and �wet roads�, I just stood there. Stock still, watching the scene unfold.
But that�s not what I dream about.
No, my mind contorts my parent�s death and plays it over and over in my head.
I�ve had the nightmares for most of my life. The same thing happens every time.
My parents are driving home from parent teacher night at my school. It had been raining, so the roads were wet, and I can hear my mum telling my dad to be careful and slow down around corners. I can hear him laughing off her warning. They�re happy. My mother is massaging my father�s neck as he drives, and they�re listening to Billie Holiday on the radio.
But then my father takes the next corner a little too fast. The tyres screech a little, and the car sort of slides across the road. It stops and rights itself, and my mother breathes a sigh of relief. She tells my father to slow down, again. It�s not that he didn�t listen. He�s just not a patient man, doesn�t like to be nagged. He tells her not to worry, that he knows what he�s doing.
But neither of them saw the other car. They didn�t see it weaving back and forth over the road, it�s driver drunk. My father didn�t see the car until it was too late. He tried to swerve, to reef the car over onto the shoulder of the road to avoid a head on collision. Instead of easing off onto the dirt, the car slide, as if it were on ice, and ploughed straight into a tree.
The car burst into flames. Bright red and orange flames, licking at the twisted metal of the car. Creeping from under the hood into the car, engulfing my parents. My mother and father. The fire covered them like a blanket, smothering them in its heat.
In the dreams, I can hear my mother�s screams. So vividly, like I�m sitting in the backseat.
This time is no different. I�ve woken up, breathing heavily, my body feels as though it�s pinned to the mattress with excessive force.
It takes a little while to get my breathing back to normal, for my eyes to focus in the dark, for my mind to convince me I�m not there, that I�m in my bed, tucked beneath my blankets, listening to the sound of my pounding heartbeat.
I take in a deep breath and look around. Everything is the same. Walls in the same place, my current book on the nightstand, eye glasses resting on top.
Everything, down to the aching need in my heart, is still there.
