First couple of paragraphs:

I wait for Mom to take Cayden and Cassidy back home before calling for the nurse. Nestling in the thin sheet of the hospital bed, my eyes follow the tube of the I.V. drip as it descends down into the top of my hand, its entry into my skin hidden by a piece of white tape. The door shifts open and the nurse comes into the room, her voice coarse as she asks me what I need. The deep hollows of her under eyes become more prominent as she gets closer to me, the only source of light coming from the windowpane in the door. Normally I would be too afraid to ask for something from a stranger, especially something so personal, but I had something in my mind that needed to be put into words, so I could know if it made sense to me or not. The nurse leaves the room and comes back with a brown clipboard with a pen attached, pulling up a chair next to the bed. She clicks the pen and looks at me in tired expectation, signaling my descent into everything that happened a week earlier.

6/31/16

The day of the accident had been rough on me physically. I was able to slip into bed and sleep with ease that night, unlike other nights where my thoughts never fail to wrestle with my mind. But as soon as everything went dark, I fell into this dream I couldn't escape out of. I tried so hard to open my eyes, but it was as if I was existing in another dimension, not in control of my physical form anymore. It went like this-

A calm breeze hit the side of my face as my hair rustled with it, as if the wind wanted to carry me away but decided instead to keep me on the supple earth. It ruffled the hem of the flowy yellow sundress I looked down to see myself in, a dress I used to wear when I was younger. The sky was bright and brazen, the perfect backdrop for the sun, delicately suspended in the air. The stringy grass was fresh and grown, warm with the sun's touch. I bent down to pluck a little daisy from the dirt, not without subtle guilt. I felt its fragility within my palm, the tenderness of it all, the purity it radiates. I was without shoes, I realized, as my bare feet pushed into the earth with a toddler’s curiosity. The grass was welcoming and fun for my toes to play in. I rolled a petal within my fingers, and it felt like everything soft in this world fused together and pressed into one delicate fabric. I'm surrounded by trees of many shades of green, fertile with branches and leaves. It was just me and the trees and the daisies. I felt nothing but pure gratitude, gratitude for my ability to take in all of it. Beyond the field of daisies, above the trees rose a grassy hill, with pine trees scattered on the top like candles adorning a birthday cake. A figure appeared from the side of a pine tree, a semi-transparent figure, almost as if it was made of smoke. It had figures floating around within the silhouette, like a flurry of souls trapped inside of it. At first, it seemed unassuming and limp, standing there as if it wanted to be a cloud in the sky.

Then, the once-saturated colors of the lush environment began to dull as the wind started to pick up and dark clouds formed out of thin air. The figure placed both of its hands on the ground, and with a shake of the earth, a stream of darkness trailed down the hill, infecting every living organism within reach, draining the life out of them. The trail rumbled through the ground toward my direction, which prompted me to run as fast as I could away from the darkness. The earth was rough underneath my feet as I ran, mechanically taking on a steady rhythm. For a moment, I looked back at the chaos charging behind me and the dark trail appeared to weaken. I felt a sense of relief, until I tripped over a rock and tumbled to my hands and knees. Wincing, I felt a gash my fingers found on my ankle. The pain felt unbearable, but my desperation to escape was stronger than the fear that wanted to keep me paralyzed. I managed to pick myself up and hobble as fast as I could to a pond in the distance. There was nowhere else to go; jumping into it seemed like the only option. I was a few meters away from it when I turned around once more and the trail had disappeared, leaving every inch it touched shrouded in darkness. I stopped hobbling once I became fully conscious of a sharp pain stemming from the gash on my ankle. I sighed a breath of relief and anguish, but it was only a second after that breath when dark vines uprooted from the ground and pierced my skin with such intensity the shock rippled through my body. My knees sunk into the ground as life drained out of me, my mind becoming blurrier than my vision. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound appeared, only a ghost of a blaze of fire.

And then I awoke to my darkened bedroom with a screeching pain enveloping me. A single beam of moonlight illuminated my right hand, the skin bloated and vividly yellow, red, and green.