This was the worst dream of her short life.
She’d had the dream before, over and over.
She was falling, forever falling.
She always woke up in terror, sometimes screaming, sometimes too scared even to whisper.
She always woke before she hit the ground. If she didn’t, it would be too late. There would be no screaming, not even a whisper. Because she’d be dead. Killed by her dream.
She always knew this was how she would die one day. One night.
She would fall asleep, then fall while asleep, then die.
It was far worse than a nightmare because it had happened.
Or almost happened.
It was her earliest memory.
But over the years, she’d grown more and more uncertain where memory ended and unreality began.
She remembered that the devil had tried to kill her, to throw her from the top of a high building. She was saved by her father, and instead he became the victim. He was the one who was hurled down through the clouds, down to the ground far below.
Her father was killed, that much was true. She was brought up by her mother, and she was still young when her mother also died. Since then, she’d been alone in the world.
And the world had always been trying to kill her.
Perhaps the recurring dream was a premonition of her ultimate fate.
Because she was falling.
Falling an impossible distance.
This time she was wide awake.
This time would be the last time.
Because this time it would kill her.