The winds blew high, pushing me across the carpeted floor. I screamed as the darkness enclosed me, seeing only red lights in my rest. Soon, I felt nudging and pushing on my body. The voices stirred in my head as I slowly came back to reality. 

“Marie?! Oh my god!”

“Is she okay?!”

“Shut the fuck up, she’s coming through!”

“Why in the hell did she pass out near the entrance of the theater?”

“Maybe she tripped on something, or maybe lack of energy?”

I shook my head as I positioned myself upright, examining the area, and seeing that my family along with some of the staff members were checking up on me. The vision was a bit blurry but soon came to pass when I was met with a warm embrace from Fritz. 

“W-Woah! Fritz! Hey buddy!” I embraced him back, confused about why everyone was patrolling around me like it was some type of police investigation that you’d watch on ABC or Dateline. My mother checked my forehead if it was warm or not, Louise had a face of disapproving stares on her, while my father had a panic attack outside.

My mother lifted me in her arms and she carried me back to the car, cushioning my body on the back of the car in the extra back seats. I felt lightheaded as soon as I was laid to rest. I still couldn’t get that vision out of my head of what I saw before I even entered the theater. I glanced at the top of the car, watching as when the car moved, my body swayed along with most of the car; being in the back meant you could feel and have more sudden movements than before.

I felt restrained, feeling the cold air of the car blow against my face…

I couldn’t even open my eyes…

They slowly closed…

Into a tired sleeping state…

“Marie dear, Dr. Cunningham Bunseby is here to check up on you.” I heard my mother’s voice ring through the back of my mind.

Cunningham Bunseby was a friend of my mother; he was not a well-known doctor, but he always took care of me and my family when something terrible happened. He had bright orange hair; he had somewhat of a lovely smirk on him when something inside him felt good, he wasn’t dashing in any way but for the time, he was a devilishly nice guy.

“She’s doing fine, she just probably suffered from a heat stroke.” He spoke.

“Heat stroke? This is a first, my little Marie has never gotten heat stroke before!” My mother complained. As they continued to talk, I began to zone out, listening to some imaginary scenario that just popped into my head.

 For all I knew, I could just see black walls fade in as I was no longer focusing on the world around me, I just saw what people could’ve seen within their dreams. It’s a random moment where you close your eyes, you see these lights and images that you don’t even know what it means yet you try to interpret them anyway. I could see images of a boy; a young boy who was galloping through the rose fields. He seemed so.. Happy. My heart warmed seeing the young boy smile and prance around like a beautiful reindeer. Then, I saw another man in the doorway; he looked like he was yelling at the boy to get inside and the boy complied.

I then saw something off when I was still in the image processing. The boy was playing with what looked like a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or the SNES for short) only for him to hear crashes and screams from one of the rooms.

I just followed the boy as he ran farther and farther towards the door, only to see what I assumed to be his brother as 6 heads sprouted from his neck and his back was hunched; I could see the terror on the little boy face as his brother pleaded for help, but just when the boy was about to say something, two other people walked in.

One of them looked pregnant while the other looked like a stern man; The boy was taken away from his brother as the pregnant lady, who I presumed to be his mother, held him close when I saw why she did that when the ear of the brother fell off landing near my feet.

“Oh, my god…” I said under my breath.

Just when I was about to see what would happen next, I heard Bunseby’s voice again as it rang in my head... His voice repeated my name for an uncomfortably long time.

“Marie? Marie, are you okay kiddo? Marie Maier Stahlbaum?”

“Marie! Oh, my poor baby!” My mother’s voice was heard as I groaned, moving between the soft comfortable pillows of my bed. I soon awoke feeling the warm embrace of the blankets. Bunseby felt my forehead and he sighed, “She’s feeling a bit warm. Might have a fever, I suggest that she has bed rest for the next day.”

I heard the sighs of my mother as she got out a small music box for me to rest peacefully; it opened playing the Swan Lake Waltz, it sounded majestic and calming but I didn’t want to fall asleep. Soon, I heard a baby meow from below my bed. Coming out from under my bed was Pavlova, meowing cutely. He jumped on my bed, purring on my face.

“Pavlova..” I spoke tiredly, feeling his soft fur on his face. I scratched his chin, chuckling a bit when he slept on my stomach. After a while though, I began to doze off slowly into a sleeping state again. I yawned before shutting my eyes, remembering…

Something in the past loomed in my dreams…

Like a forbidden memory..

“What happened?” I yawned as I felt my head, it pained my head just touching it from my head. I look at a nearby mirror, seeing a bandage wrapped around my head along with my right arm being bandaged up. I wondered what was going on, why I was in my room, but those questions flew away like birds of a feather. Soon enough, Fritz walked in the room and smiled, he held a box of Reese's Chocolates as he entered the room. “Hey Marie,” he said with a smile, “I bought some chocolates at FRISTO. I ate 2 of them because I couldn’t hold myself together when it came to Reese’s.”

I held my laughter a bit, of course when it came to candy, Fritz would take his fair share. But still, I dozed out of the sights. Staring at the ceiling, I could just feel someone’s hand on my forehead for then I eyed the person who was doing that; it was Cunningham Bunseby doing his daily checkup on me. I didn’t remember what he did distinctly but soon enough, he finished the checkup. “Your daughter suffered a lot of blood loss, did she do anything randomly stupid last night?”

My mother answered, “She was by the toy cabinet last night, I saw her on the floor while her nutcracker was in her hand. I don’t know what else you want me to say, maybe it fell and she slipped and crashed her arm in the toy cabinet along with her head!”

Hearing about my nutcracker, I suddenly snapped out of zoning out. I exclaimed, “My nutcracker! There was a fight, no like a war! Mice and Toys fighting each other!” But mother pressed her hand on my face, pushing me back down towards my pillow. She silenced me but soon enough, Mr. Bunseby spoke up, “Oh dear, she might’ve been hallucinating because of the blood loss. She’ll have to be on bed rest..”

Rest…

Rest…

I awoke from that somewhat forbidden memory, gobstopped on what I remembered from the past.

That was honestly pure bullshittery that I just remembered there. I sat up, staring at a random poster in my room that said, “Imagination is just an Illusion, Reality is the real vision. Focus on Reality.” I couldn’t hold my head properly after reading those words a couple of times.

“Mein Ficking-Kopf.."* I spoke silently from my breath, holding my head as if I needed to brace it like it was the last thing worth having before my death in hell. I guess my mother heard this and she exclaimed, “Marie! Achte auf deine Sprache!”**

“Mutter! Bitte nicht jetzt!”***

“Du solltest Bettruhe halten, Marie Stahlbaum! Leg dich hin und ruh dich aus!”**** and that was the last words of the matter before my mother left me in my room.

Of course, we’d have our arguments mostly in German but sometimes, we have arguments in English. Some say that if you know English, you can learn German much faster! I tested out that theory but it seemed like a faulty report, unless you had Duolingo. Then you’d have a weird cute yet terrifying green bird staring into the deep abyss of your soul as you try your best to learn German in the quickest way possible, soon to become a freaking internet trend!

Hey.

I didn’t say that 2018 was a good year nor a bad year.

It’s mediocre in some way.

But I digress, I’d usually be in my room reading history books, animation how-to’s, hell, even the Dork Diaries. Those were the legitimate peak of my childhood right there.

I could even imagine myself being in Nikki’s shoes if I wanted to, being the dork in a friend group who has a crush on some boy who probably doesn’t know her sometimes. My life would be like total heaven, but like I said, I digress.

Life isn’t always going to be puppies and rainbows for me, more like a sad taste of reality hitting me in the crotch like a softball at 60mph. Nothing but annoying sisters, overexcited brothers, parents who don’t believe your own POV’s of how you saw everything, it just honestly sucks.

I glance at the calendar right beside by my bed, looking at the dates.

DECEMBER 16th 2018.

7 more days until absolute torture at Drosselmeiers. I slam my head down on the pillow, trying to rest until I hear a voice ring around my head.

THE CLOCK STRIKES TWELVE ON THE 23RD DAY, YOU MUST PREPARE GODDAUGHTER, EXPECT GREATNESS FROM A POSSESSION YOU LOST ON THE 25TH OF DECEMBER

YOU ARE SOON TO DISCOVER A WORLD OF MAGIC AND FAME ON THE DAY OF CHRISTMAS BEWARE OF FIERY FLAMES

I LEAVE YOU GODDAUGHTER, I WILL SEE YOU SOON ON THE 23RD OF DECEMBER AT HALF-STRUCK NOON!

I awoke just after hearing that almost the entire night, soon to look at the clock as it showed the time - 11:50pm I spoke under my breath. “God fucking damn it.”

* “My Fucking Head”

** “Marie! Watch Your Language!”

*** “Mother, please not now!”

**** “You should be on bed rest, Marie Stahlbaum! Lie down and rest!”