Lions Haunt My Dreams

"From the time of my first memories, my dreams were filled with lions-fierce, impossibly huge monsters with fiery manes and eyes black and cold as a starless night." (Sphinx's Princess) I was four at that time and even then I knew these dreams weren't normal. Weren't real. Heck, I didn't even know these monsters were lions. But I was still terrified.

These dreams were all the same: I would be playing in the garden along with my family when suddenly the grass beneath my hands would turn into water in the darkest pit of the ocean. I would sink into the water, drowning as the cries of my family were muffled by the lapping water against my ears; I was torn away from the safety of my family. And no matter how hard I try to fight it, it seems that it would only prolong the pain, the need to rid my lungs of carbon dioxide. The second I take my last breath and my heart ceases to thump I would awaken in another world where the sky was the shade of fresh blood and the black barren lands seem to stretch forever in all directions.

This world was my execution grounds. Though execution wouldn't be accurate because my end never seems to come so swiftly. And in this world, I play a game of cat-and-mouse with ferocious lions hunting me through these empty lands. I run and they give a chase. But it's not like I can outrun them forever. And it is then and there when I become fast friends with pain. Pain would course through my body as the lions ravaged it beyond recognition. Pain was the only feeling I could feel for what could be eternity. It was what I could only think of - as those eyes - those endless pits of hell - stare down at me.

* I used a quote from the book Sphinx's Princess, by Esther Friesner, to give me an idea of what to write. *