Day 33

  Copyright © 2018 by Aisha Graham

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval system without the express written permission of the publisher. Reviewers may use brief quotations.

  Printed in the United States of America

  eBook ISBN 978-1-54394-446-4

  First Printing, 2018

  Cover Designed by Aisha Graham of Art by Aisha

  For Dalila, for inspiring Mommy to follow her dreams.

  Table of Contents

  Day 1

  Day 2

  Day 4

  Day 5

  Day 7

  Day 9

  Day 10

  Day 17

  Day 18

  Day 19

  Day 20

  Day 21

  Day 22

  Day 23

  Day 24

  Day 25

  Day 26

  Day 27

  Day 28

  Day 29

  Day 30

  Day 31

  Day 33

  DAY 1

  NORMALLY, the autumn weather in southern Virginia was uncomfortably brisk, but on this night in early November, the air was unusually warm. The breathing pattern of the little girl at the bottom of the well was thick and heavy, just as the raindrops, as she was exhausted from screaming for help. She floated with the increasing height of the water, praying that maybe, just maybe, the rain would push her to the brim of the bricks and she could climb to safety. Mold grew in between large brown blocks, stacked and sealed with dark gray concrete.

  Leaves and sticks floated alongside her small, frail body. Mud infused braids lie atop the water, moving to the rhythm of her small hands splashing against the surface, as she tread the rising sea levels. The little girl’s brown skin shined in the moonlight, damp with precipitation and perspiration. The contaminated water was irritating the irises of her almond shaped eyes. Loose hairs glued themselves to her forehead and dripped more water, adding blurriness to her vision.

  She wore a bright red dress, which now appeared to be a deep burgundy, tainted from the stains of the surrounding foliage. Red ribbons had slipped from the ends of her pig tails and floated alongside her weak body. The little girl struggled to keep her small chin upward and created waves with her limbs.

  For miles and miles, there was only darkness and silhouettes of willow trees surrounding the well. The little girl’s tears grew to match that of the raindrops, which would either take her under or lift her higher. Her tonsils were sore and her throat grew tenderer with each screech. Panic ensued in her heart, mind, and soul. Who would save this little girl? How did she get there in the first place? She kicked and clawed, holding onto the grooves between the well’s bricks, but nothing worked.

  An old lady with long, coarse, gray plaited hair, dragged a white, long-sleeved, linen gown through the fallen leaves and thick mud as she gracefully glided toward the well. The plaits hung down the back of her dress, past her buttocks, as if they were accessories to her outfit. She was a beam of light in the middle of the black storm’s eye. The elderly woman placed her palms on the edge of the well and the sharpness of the bricks adorned her soft skin with scrapes and scratches.

  As the old lady slowly bent her body, her stomach leaned against the fold of the well and she could see the little girl gasping for, what seemed to be, her last breath. The little girl recognized this face, although it was much older than she was accustomed to. Wrinkles were inlaid between each shadow. Bags accompanied her welcoming, innocent eyes and deep creases formed around her grin. Veins covered her pale, brown hands along with liver spots and even more wrinkles than her face.

  “Help me! Mom, help me! Please”, the little girl struggled to push loud sounds from a hoarse esophagus. She reached her left hand and continued treading with the right. The left side of her face lowered itself to the meet water as she stretched to touch the worn woman.

  “I cannot save you, you’ll have to save yourself.” The old lady straightened her fading, thin frame, turned away with military precision, and disappeared into the willow trees. The little girl continued to scream for help, repeatedly echoing her weakened cries through the darkness.

  Evita shot straight up into a 90-degree angle, panting for air and grabbing her heart. Her satin sheets were soaked in salt water, while fear filled the air in abundance. Evita looked around her pitch-black bedroom, lit barely by a full moon sneaking through a crack in her blue, lace curtains. There was no well, no woods, no little girl, and the old lady’s features slowly dissipated from her memory.

  After catching her breath, Evita turned to the right to the check the time. The digital clock atop her cream colored wooden nightstand read 3:33 AM; Evita had a little less than two hours before her day would begin. She wiped the remaining droplets from her brow and patted the sheets to make sure her sweat hadn’t spread over to her boyfriend’s side of the bed. To the left of her moist body, her boyfriend, Brennan, lie stoically, unbothered, and dry. His large, light brown, muscular vessel was limp and cozied underneath his portion of the dry sheets.

  Evita thought to wake Brennan for comfort, but quickly realized solitude was really what she needed in this moment. Her gray, cotton pajama short set was damp and clung to her thin body for dear life. Her deep brown skin glistened under the beads of sweat that formed on her arms and legs. The coils of her hair were shrunken from the humidity and were snug upon her scalp. Evita quietly shifted her legs over the right edge of the bed and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen to make tea.

  While retrieving the pot for boiling water, Evita opened the cabinet next to the stove and her dream notebook fell from behind the door. She realized she should document what she’d just seen. Evita slammed the notebook on the kitchen counter, grabbed a red ink pen from the junk drawer, and shuffled to find the last clean page.

  Evita scribbled the remnants of what she could remember of her dark dream. As she wrote, she remembered the little girl’s features to be vaguely familiar, but was unsure of whether she knew this person in real life. The boiling water began to feverishly bubble in the background, distracting Evita’s thoughts. She rushed to turn off the flames, as the loud sound of her boyfriend’s footsteps approaching the kitchen almost caused for alarm. Evita was already shaken up a bit, and nearly jumped out of her skin as Brennan approached her.

  “What in the world are you doing? You’re writing again?” Brennan wiped crust from his empty eyes and carelessly nudged Evita as he walked past her into the kitchen.

  “I had another dream”, Evita blankly responded after catching her breath.

  “You need to see someone, you’re crazy.” Brennan grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, slammed the door, and walked toward the stairs without even making eye contact with Evita.

  Normally, Brennan’s comment would get under Evita’s skin, but she realized her unsympathetic boyfriend may actually be right for a change. Evita had been having vividly detailed dreams and even darker nightmares at least once every night since she turned 26 on the 19th of February. They all seemed to fit a similar pattern, except for the most recent imagery.

  Most times, Evita’s dreams were happy memories of her and her mother, Vivian, during her early years of childhood. Usually the dreams were a bit “off course”, full of images, places, and people she’d never before seen in real-life. The settings were usually in scenic places, prairies, and wooded areas. Trees and grass were always filled with bright green pigments. If the sky was blue, it pierced her brain at the remembrance, and when it was dark, it sent shivers down her spine. She could still smell the air or feel the rain drops long after she opened her eyes and the d
read she felt at the view of dark shadows followed her throughout the day.

  Every morning, Evita would wake up and record her dreams, including any details she could remember. Most of the key points were never pieced together into complete story lines. She researched dream definitions and although keywords helped with overall themes, her dreams seemed to be something to which other people would never be able to relate. Evita could find no way to suppress the images and she was beginning to worry. She hadn’t been sleeping regularly and was always startled from her sleep at ungodly hours. Even her waking moments began to create a bit of apprehension.

  The open office space was filled with shuffling feet and shuffling papers. Fluorescent lighting shone down on coffee stains embedded in the dark gray carpet. Off-white cubicles seemed to stretch for acres, from end to end, leaving space for people to walk past the tinted glass windows. Men shouted last year’s basketball stats across the room and argued about the current football trades, while loudly typing on their laptop keyboards. Ringing blazed through the air as stories came through to the Slam Magazine’s office at lightning speed.

  Evita’s neck curved downward, with her left hand palming her forehead and her right hand, barely holding a number 2 pencil with a broken tip. Her legs jiggled nervously in her tan slacks as her brown heel clicked against the wheel on the bottom of her desk chair.

  “Vee, Vee!” Evita’s coworker, Donald, started with a whisper and ended with a piercing shout that nearly gave Evita a heart attack. She gasped for air again, similar to the way she did a few hours ago in her sweaty bed.

  “What, Don?” Evita’s aggravation was just as loud as Donald had been in her ear. He noticed bags under Evita’s eyes, but not ones of sleepiness, more so of tears. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes.” Evita rudely snatched an article from Donald’s hands. It was about a point guard who broke his ankle ice skating in the off-season and was two days late for publication. He offered to come back later at a better time, but Evita was the type to get the hard work over with. She planned to rest her eyes at her desk, in peace, during lunch.

  Donald sat behind Evita on the countertop inside her cubicle, hunching in the distance over her shoulder as she reviewed his work. He could tell she wasn’t in the best of moods, but Evita made it clear she valued her professional distance and he wasn’t able to pry into her business as he did with everyone else in the office. He tried getting a feel for what she was dealing with without asking direct questions, but she refused to fall for it.

  Evita was always very closed off and had only a few friends. At this stage in her life, most of her confidants were comprised of old college classmates who’d she text every now and then or check in with on social media, but only one of her friends, Kasha, was allowed in close quarters. Evita had been confiding in Kasha since Vivian’s death when she was 13 years old and that was the only person who knew anything in depth about Evita’s life.

  There was a running joke around the Slam office of how “mysterious” Evita was. Not only was she quiet and reserved, but she was the only female editor at the east-coast region’s office. There weren’t any family pictures at her desk, not even one of her beloved mother. There was no evidence of any pets, and definitely no photos of her boyfriend. Her coworkers most likely had no idea she even had a boyfriend.

  No one knew where Evita lived, or where she’d come from. With all of these dreams of her mother, even Evita began questioning the latter, knowing there was something deeper to the images that flooded her conscience. Donald noticed he was being ignored and hopped down from the counter, patted Evita’s back and began walking out of the cubicle. Evita whispered his name and signaled for him to return. Donald reluctantly walked back into her cubicle, knowing something peculiar was up.

  “Do you know any—”, Evita hesitated. She planned earlier that morning to ask Donald if he knew anyone she could talk to about the dreams she’d been having. He was the friendliest man she had the pleasure of dealing with at Slam, but also the nosiest. Deep down, Evita worried that her question would spread through the office like wild fire. It was taboo for her family to talk about mental health and therapists, hell, any type of personal issue for that matter. Evita had become accustomed to visiting the church to erase any sad or angry memories. God was the only answer to any question she ever had, and Evita’s reverend of a father made it clear he agreed with this approach, and this approach only.

  Evita’s father was well known throughout their hometown as Reverend Thomas; the stern, tall and stalky, gray-haired man who didn’t take any shit from anyone. His frown lines had become permanently implemented on his low, espresso tinted, forehead, and contoured the upper side of his thick eyebrows. Some would say he was God-fearing, Evita would say fear-instilling.

  When Evita’s mother passed away, rather than sending Evita to counseling, or providing some sort of comfort himself, The Reverend sent her to the church for six days a week, immediately after school and early on Sunday mornings. Her only free day to roam was Saturday, and even then, she spent most days in the house or the yard, smothered by her step-mother Clarice while her father did only God knew what.

  Evita would spend an hour doing her homework in the church’s office with Georgia, The Reverend’s trusty assistant. Afterwards, she was forced to be a part of all of the church’s weekly events. She was an alto in the children’s choir and was forced to sit in on the rehearsals of the adults. She attended bible study classes and even taught the sessions for the elementary school children in the neighborhood.

  Evita shadowed the church’s accountant and served the clergy members their refreshments during the Friday night meetings. Bake sales and fundraising events were all set up and taken down by an overworked, teenage Evita. She washed the choir robes and was asked to help tidy the back offices on most occasions. After her chores were complete, she’d return home around 7:30 at night to eat a lukewarm dinner prepared by her step-mother. She’d finally get some rest before waking up to do it all over again the next day.

  Now that Evita was having these reoccurring dreams, her father’s voice echoed from her pineal gland begging her to attend his next service, which she hadn’t done since she moved out of his house at 18. Donald raised his right eyebrow in suspicion of what exactly Evita was looking for.

  “Do you know any therapists?” she asked.

  “Oh! You scared me”, Donald exhaled with relief and laughed. “Yeah, I know a couple in the area actually. My sister, Dia, went to one a few years back.”

  “What was wrong, if you don’t mind me asking?” Evita needed a little reassurance that she wasn’t a lone wolf in this situation. She worried that she might really be crazy, proving her egotistical boyfriend right. What if she ended up in an asylum with her hands tied behind her back, or something? She didn’t want this to reach a point where she was hallucinating in her waking life.

  “Just postpartum depression”, he said it as if it was no big deal, “she’s fine now.”

  Donald checked his phone for the time and explained he had to head to a meeting with his supervisor. Donald promised to send the therapists’ contact information as soon as the meeting ended.

  “Don’t feel weird about this”, he placed his hand on Evita’s upper back, “eventually everyone needs someone to talk to.” He flashed a smile and dashed down the hallway. Evita returned to editing the article, barely keeping her eyes open.

  DAY 2

  EVITA’S breath was heavy, she was panting along with the rhythm of her stomps as she jogged down the paved trail in the woods behind her Washington, D.C. neighborhood. The only stress-reliever she really had was running, but this time it felt different. There was something chasing her that she couldn’t see, but its presence was felt very strongly.

  Left, right, left, right; her feet slammed against the hardened tar, and with every step, came more fear that she’d be grabbed from behind. Her thighs jiggled from underneath her gray spandex shorts and her scalp felt
the strong winds buzzing in between her thick strands of hair. The sun had almost set and the sky fell dark gray, illuminating even darker clouds. Evita contemplated going home, but each foot step was more addictive than the last. She needed to run away from it all; the dreams, her job, her boyfriend, her past.

  As the sky grew darker, her anxiety grew exponentially. “Go home”, she mumbled to herself, but she refused to do so. Her pace became faster and her stomps became louder, her heartbeat gained more momentum. The trees swayed and the leaves were noisy, almost annoying in volume. The force of the wind against her body was comforting; she didn’t feel so alone with the air hugging her shoulders.

  The trail curved back and forth and she turned each corner so sharply that she almost touched the ground. Evita couldn’t shake the feeling that something was behind her. She continued running while simultaneously turning her head to check her surroundings. As she turned to face her forward path, there she was, the little girl from the well, standing in arms reach. Her braids were soaked and she held her drenched red ribbons in her left hand. The burgundy dress was marinated in mud and tears covered the little girls face in streams.

  “Help me!” she screamed as she stood facing Evita. Evita woke up, even more terrified than the night before. Brennan lie snoring heavily in thunderous tones. Evita patted herself to ensure she was definitely present in her home, and not in the woods, not near a well. Her mind however, was somewhere it had never been before. She checked the time and it was 3:33, again. Now she was struggling through déjà vu as well. She slowly climbed out of the bed and decided to get ready for work.

  Today, the lights were literally blazing through Evita’s pupils and no amount of coffee would suffice. She tapped her foot incessantly and read the same sentence five different times in a row. Donald knocked on her cubicle wall, snapping her from her trance.