#wswtask01

II. THIS IS JUST A DREAM.

Down. Down. Down.  What started as a happy day morphed into the stuff of nightmares as the current pulled her down.  She struggled, fighting the waves as water filled her lungs.  Audrey tried.  She tried hard to breech the surface but the harder she fought the further down she was pulled.  She couldn’t breathe.  She couldn’t see or hear.  Everything was muffled and the world around her was disappearing.  She was choking, gasping, and fading.  Nothing mattered.  The world was gone.

Then Audrey woke with a gasping scream.  Her mind was running as sweat poured down her body.  She couldn’t calm her racing heart as the dream replayed in her mind.  No, it wasn’t just a dream.  It was a nightmare.  She couldn’t close her eyes without feeling that overwhelming pain.  The gasping breaths while she choked on the water.

There’s people screaming.. the crowds.. they cheering her on ‘Kill them Tyler, Go get ‘em, Prince’. Such chants which got the fighter rough and ready, bouncing on the balls of her feet, ready to the go.  Making that walk to the octagon, through the stadium of thousands of people - Tyler couldn’t have felt more alone. Something wasn’t right. While that all too sickeningly cliche Me, Myself & I intro track by G-Eazy blared.. Something Tyler chose at a young age and swore she’d have to change - She knew something was.. off. Swinging punches into the air, shadow boxing.. warming up even more so.. she was ready to go.. this was the MAIN CARD FIGHT.. defending her Featherweight title.. fucking sure she was gonna beat whoever she was up against to a pulp. 

Stepping into that octagon, Tyler looked around, eyes catching the large screens, those FOCUSED on two familiar faces; her mother and father. Her Father.. someone who insisted he never watched her matches.. that they were animalistic. He whom ignored her after her fighting had gotten her twin brother hospitalised he tried to help her. He was sitting there.. ring side.. he was actually there. In a defending title match. And while he’d hurt her.. so.. so much, emotionally.. mentally. There was no way he was ruining this.   But the crowds grew louder.. screaming.. ‘Kill them Tyler’ Heterochromian eyes flickered to the frame in the opposite corner of the octagon - their hood of their robe still up. 

Adrenaline was coursing Ty’s veins, fingers flexing. The screams, cheers so deafeningly  amping her up, ringing in her ears. It was so loud, she almost missed that infamous ‘Ding, Ding, Ding’ to start the match.  Right from the get go, Tyler swung punches.. hell.. her opponent hadn’t even gotten their hood down yet. Tyler couldn’t see their face.. But she kept going. She was going to win this.. she was going to make her father see she was better than he thought. 

She kept going.. kicking, landing punches to the other face until she could hear bone crack, until blood coated her fingers and gloves. It was at most thirty seconds before her opponent was on the ground.. seconds from blacking out before their hood flopped down from their face.. to reveal heterochromian eyes identical to her own.. those of her twin brothers.. that brother whom had gotten hurt before. Her actions had once more beaten him to a pulp. Before Tyler could do anything, the crowd roared as the referee dragged her off, calling in the medics as he crowned her the featherweight champion again.. only to watch her brother being taking away by paramedics. 

II. THIS IS JUST A DREAM.

Daz stands usually at six foot, six foot one on a particularly good day. But in this darkness she is no taller than anyone and the muscle she’s garnered seemed limp. She feels so small that she almost mistakes herself for sitting down as opposed to be stood up, but what other way would she face her mother? Her features change every time Daz dreams about her, an unknown face, an unknown evil. 

She feels like the child she was not allowed to be. 

This woman is always scolding and Daz is always frustrated, the angsty teen this woman never raised. Daisy this and Daisy that until Daz refuses to hear it any more, that is not her name. This woman gave her life and then took away her parent, she gave up the right to what little say she had about her. Daz’ name was so inherently personal. She was no flower and no one would get to think as such. A daisy, a weed. A pretty pest, her mother’s pretty pest. But that woman plucked this daisy and offered her elsewhere, carelessly uprooting her. 

She feels like the child she was not allowed to be. 

Her features are always dark and Daz strives to see more of her and ask questions but she’s talked down. “I made the right choice.” Her words reveberate in the darkness and Daz hears them over and over. “How could anyone be proud of you?” More echoes, more lines to haunt her. “How could I have loved you?” 

Daz doesn’t wake in a cold sweat or panting, it’s a sluggish eye crack from one reality to the next. Dreaming of her mother, rather having nightmares about her mother is not something that allows her heart to race, rather it pulls her in and reminds her of the child who was not allowed to be. The silent child that is still waiting for parental guidance to a world she still struggles to understand.

II. THIS IS JUST A DREAM. 

The dark feeling of terror rose up in Priscilla as the room she was in clarified around her. She’d studied this room, this warehouse really, for months after her brother had been murdered there. She’d studied every bit of the case until she couldn’t forget a single detail. She’d done it because she hadn’t been there to protect him. She hadn’t been there at all in the years before his death. Her best friend was taken without her knowing. As she took in the place around her ghostly images began to flicker there. A scene she’d imagined many times before. A recurring nightmare that she had almost every night in the years after. 

There he was. Her brother as he did the job their father had passed onto them. A job he had never really wanted but was trained for. Trained and yet it wasn’t enough to keep him safe. The other man walked in. A face she knew as well as her brothers now. She’d seen him locked up and knew he would remain that way for life but that didn’t make him any less scary. This was the man that had taken her heart. That in her dreamlike state she thought would come back and take the rest of her family too. 

In front of her the two men worked out their deal with their own workers surrounding them as they did. She could name each man that had been there without pause. Paint pictures of them all. A swirling of rage filled her over the men that had failed to protect her brother. Failed at their job. Things took a turn and Priscilla watched helplessly as her brother was overtaken. She watched the fear in his eyes and she was locked in place. She couldn’t move to help him. She was paralyzed in her spot. The blood seeped from the multiple wounds and she watched him bleed out in front of her and that was all she could do was watch.