Marina had a very strange disease, or at least that was what she dubbed it as. She had forgotten the last time she slept peacefully through the night. It never happened in the daytime. However, every time she fell into a slumber, in the dead of the night, she saw herself getting stabbed by a stranger. She never saw who it was. She never managed to get a glimpse of that person's face. But the person had something shiny in their hand. It glittered under the moonlight while she cried in pain. And she said something. She was sure she was screaming something.
At one point, the nightmare broke, and she found herself drenched in her sweat and panting like she had been deprived of air for a long time. Her head was ringing and pounding, and the memories from the dream were gone.
Marina went to many doctors and psychiatrists. Everyone pointed at someone, and her mother never took the risk of missing out on the perfect diagnosis. Her mother never gave up, but she did. She braced herself. She will be living with these memories of an unknown tragedy. Sometimes she wondered if they were a foretelling of her future. Was she going to die like this? That was another thing to worry about then.
She lived away from her family, in a bustling city, far away from her hometown. She had a job at a newspaper publishing company. Her main work focused on editing, but she sometimes did photography and wrote short columns. Photography and art were her passion. She created her own vlogging site. Her works were famous, but she was not. That was something she was glad for.
It was her birthday. Her friends arranged a small surprise gathering in a cafe overlooking the central park. One of her friends gave her a vintage box. She fell in love with the box itself, she joked. He had a hobby of collecting vintage items. "Well, open up!" her friend pushed. Marina carefully unhooked the tiny notch.
Inside was a circular hoop, decorated with reddish strings and beads, with some dangling decorations and feathers. It was a dreamcatcher. Marina saw many such her life, yet something felt strangely haunting and mesmerizing about this particular one. She knew they won't work to chase away her bad dreams but she was very moved by the thoughtful gesture.
Doesn't matter if it worked or not, it was a beauty worth treasuring.
*****
That night, the same dream repeated. She stared into the sleeping city. Two in the morning. She saw the dark roads and tall skyscrapers sleeping while she sat awake. She looked over at her desk and saw the presents her friend had given her. Among them was the brown and decorated box. She brought out the dreamcatcher and placed it at the upper rail of her window. The dreamcatcher danced to the mild flow of wind. She went back to her bed to admire it from afar. Soon her body relaxed and she fell into another slumber, for the second time.
Marina saw herself sitting on a cushion, a large one. She didn't remember having one. Before her were a lot of objects, but one was a shining silver plate that reflected her face. She stared at the beauty with no eye bags or dull skin, with shiny hazel hair and greenish eyes. Strangely enough, that beauty was also staring back at her, with the same expression of awe and amazement.
Then it clicked. It was Marina. But she never remembered being so beautiful.Perhaps it would have been how she looked if she didn't have any nightmares every night. She looked down, and it was not her clothes as well. She was wearing a white dress, very plain and boring. She identified the objects before her as makeup items. It was hard to relate as they were in a very different shape from what she is used to using.
She tried to explore the life of this version of herself a little more. But before long, she found herself sitting on her old messy bed in her messy room. The morning light was pouring from the window. The clock before her read eleven o'clock. She was late for her work, but she couldn't believe she hadn't had the same nightmare again.