"We only want what's best for you," Mom exclaimed. "Don't argue with us because we know better!"
"Your mother is right," Dad agreed, shaking his head in disapproval. Something in me snapped.
"You two never even went to college!" I countered. "What if I don't want what you two want for me? I want to follow my own path that I have chosen for myself!"
"What, you still want the lowlife job of a historian?" Dad asked. "How's that going to pay your bills?"
"We've had this discussion before," Mom added. "We would rather have you be something successful, like, maybe a doctor or a lawyer."
"I don't care!" Pure fury burrowed itself in my voice. I looked from my father to my mother and met their eyes. I knew that mine were filled with the steel I forced into them. After a few seconds of heated silence I said, "I can't wait until I make more money than Amelia who'll have twice as much student debt as my income."
"Don't talk about your younger sister like that!" Mom cried.
"What? She's freeloading for the time being. She should already have a job at her age, am I right?" My voice was calm and cold.
My parents remained silent, taken aback. "You, as an eighteen-year-old, should be more responsible with your future."
"I turn eighteen today and you already expect me to be a full grown adult?" I exclaimed. Then, in a quiet voice, I added, "Fine. Since I'm an adult, I don't have to listen to what you two have to say to me anymore." Without another word, I left to go on a drive.
The dreams are what calm me. They're a daily form of release from what lies the world whispers into my ears. In my ideas and my subconscious's philosophical stories I find peace, albeit a haunting kind.
I don't really trust the world I live in. However, it's all I have; it's all I know. My mind feels like it's obstructed in my waking life. I can't think clearly but at the same time I have thoughts that are perfectly clear.
My first dream was the morning after my eighteenth birthday. My parents and I had gotten in a huge fight the day before and I went on a long drive. I had no specific destination, but I must've fallen asleep in my car at a gas station or something because I began dreaming.
I was in a world of swirling, dark colors. It was a haunting image, but I wasn't afraid. I heard a mumbling voice, and felt something cold brushing against my right forearm. However, whenever I looked down, there was nothing but smooth flesh.
When I woke up after the first night I was in an unfamiliar place. It too felt like a dream, but I felt wholly conscious at the same time. The spot on my arm that was touched by the dream the night before felt cold, and I looked down to see a big fat "W" marked exactly where I felt it in my dream.
Over the next several days the peaceful nightmares and unfamiliar days' letters kept on appearing on my arm. Always in the same place. My whole life felt detached but it seemed like I had the inability to question it.
My waking life was scarier than my nightmares. I was in a world that looked like my own, but I knew it wasn't. It was like when you were younger and your hamster died, and when your parents tried getting you one that looked exactly like your dead one, you could immediately tell the differences. Everything seemed hazy, but at the same time I was able to perceive it.
The letters that appeared were in a weird order, and my brain had a hard time understanding what they were:
W, A, K, E, U, P
It seemed so simple, yet I couldn't memorize them. I constantly felt that I was in a dream.
I don't know how long I stayed in the world for until two letters at a time began appearing on my arm. And then I began feeling pain. At first it started in my left side. In my waking life I began to have a hard time functioning it. I had no way of knowing how long my days were, but I couldn't think too much at all. And then one morning I couldn't walk for a long time before I began to dream again.
U, P
Up. My brain processed that much. I recited it over and over in my head. What did it mean? I never thought about my family or my friends in this place. I was lonely, but I didn't call it that.
I was stuck laying down for the pain in my left had become too much for me to handle. I lifted my arm and read the black letters on it.
W, A, K, E
Wake? Wake what? I too kept it in my mind as I stared up into the too blue sky. The sky that had no birds, no planes, and no clouds. The sun was missing. Yet it was day. Where was I?
U, P
Up. I tried thinking. W, A, K, E, U, P. What's wakeup? I tried scrambling it and rearranging the letters into separate words but nothing--
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
"Wake up," a voice whispered into my ear. The first voice I had heard in so long. Where was I now?
I cracked my eyes open and oxygen entered my lungs. I felt my heartbeat boom into the room I was in. A woman, my mother, was next to my head. She looked up and a cry escaped from her mouth.
"Oh my God," she said into the room and her eyes filled with tears. Then she rushed out.
I was sitting in my hospital bed connected to a heart monitor and an IV drip. My whole left leg was covered in a cast and my left arm was covered in bandage. My parents, sister, and doctor were surrounding me. Dr. James had a laptop on an edge table and was typing on it furiously while my family talked to themselves.
After a few minutes of the doctor said, "You've been in a coma for three months due to a car accident. It was a medically-induced coma so that you wouldn't feel any pain, but due to complications you remained in it for so long," She was a pretty woman who seemed to be in her early thirties. "How did you wake up?"
Flashes of the black letters I had seen for the past. . . Three months. . . Flashed in my head. "I saw the black letters. Where did they come from?" My voice was hoarse from disuse.
She smiled. "You were, let's call it a guinea pig, in our latest psychological experiments regarding patients in comas." She turned the laptop so that the screen faced me. She played a video of me, comatose, with a long, white patch on my right forearm. There were wires coming out of it that were attached to my head. There was a man in a lab coat applying goop to the patch.
The person behind the camera said, "Day twenty-seven of Experiment-1B39: The patient has made no move or showed any signs that he is conscious to our efforts. Today we are trying the letter 'P'"
"Your mother and father were allowed only one message with a maximum of ten letters to give to you," Dr. James continued. "They chose 'Wake up'. Most families choose something significant or 'I love you' but they chose theirs because they wanted to be blunt." She looked at my family and they smiled at her. "You are only the second successful experiment out of one hundred comatose patients."
I remained silent. I was having a hard time trying to differ reality and whatever I had seen. Was I still in a coma? "Would you like me to explain the process of the experiment?" The doctor asked.
I shook my head. "No."
"Okay." She paused for a moment. Then she said, "Why don't you start by telling me what you saw?"
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