Dark Dream

• Julia De Vries, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2016

Aura stared at the ground, the bright, green blades of grass rippling like the ocean on a calm summer’s day. Other children crowded around her, shoving and chasing each other, their laughter almost deafening, but she was silent.

She watched their shadows follow their every move, blending into larger blurs of scattered trees and buildings, weaving into themselves like threads in a living tapestry.

But her thread was gone.

And nobody noticed as she walked away, the sunlight passing through her body onto the unshadowed ground beneath her.

Silently she entered the trees at the edge of the field, quietly slipping away. The gentle trickling of the creek gave her something to hold onto as everything she thought she knew disappeared, washed away in a current too strong for her to fight.

Where was her shadow?

She looked down at her body, seeing nothing remarkably different. She pinched her skin – solid. Veins still ran under her pale skin, and her long, chocolate hair drifted past her in the breeze. Around her, the tall trees still swayed, the birds still flew, the bees still buzzed and the children on the field still played; nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

She’d lost a part of herself.

She was different; she was alone.

And while the others laughed and played, Aura sank to the ground and cried.

Alone.

***

Aura’s arms felt stiff and sore, crossed over each other, her head had cut of her circulation as she slept. Not for long, but long enough.

She slowly raised her head and yawned, blinking with heavy lids as she looked around the classroom, her ears taking in the non-stop chattering, laughing and faint traces of music leaking from headphones. Normal.

She lifted her hand and looked down at her book, letting out a sigh she hadn’t known she’d been holding when she saw the shadow of her hand moving across the page.

Everything was normal.

“She’s doing it again.” Aura heard her friend let out a disgusted sigh and followed her gaze.

She looked at the girl at the end of the table; watched as she slowly slipped a sewing pin into the skin across her hand and then pulled it upwards, severing the skin that stretched across. Blood trickled out, drying quickly in the summer’s heat.

But Aura didn’t concentrate on her hands. She looked at the girl’s eyes, eyes leaking loneliness and depression. Her back, hunched over slightly, angled away from her classmates, classmates who teased her for being a loner, who teased her for rarely coming to school, who didn’t realize their teasing was the reason she cried herself to sleep every night.

Aura had done the same once too. Harassed and ridiculed a girl whose name she didn’t even know.

She rose up and walked over to the girl, ignoring her classmates leering comments. She sat down in the spare seat next to the girl and introduced herself.

Hope sparkled in the girl’s eyes.