With a final, dismissive turn, my sister pulled the blankets back over herself and slipped back into the quiet rhythm of sleep, abandoning me to the freezing wreckage of her words.
I didn't move for a long moment, letting the heavy silence settle over us. Then, with a slow, quiet breath, I turned back and slid under the covers, lying flat on my back in the dark. I closed my eyes, pretending to be fast asleep whenever she shifted, but my mind was racing a mile a minute as I began to think her words.
Maybe she is correct, a treacherous voice whispered in the dark. Maybe she was right all along.
Lying there motionless in the shadows, my thoughts drifted backward, untethering me from the present. I began to wonder if my entire life had been defined by a fatal flaw, this unyielding habit of lingering in past memories. Because I could never let go, because I refused to bury the ghosts of yesterday, how much had I truly struggled just to survive the agonizing emptiness after our mother's death?
The memory of those dark days rushed back, cold and suffocating against my closed eyelids. After my mother's death, I had been a starving soul, desperately trying to grasp that lost warmth again. I had spent countless nights chasing her phantom, yearning for her voice, her touch, any sign that she hadn't truly left me behind. That desperate longing had stolen my sleep, twisting my nights into a waking nightmare where exhaustion bled into madness.
And then, the hallucinations had begun.
In my fevered, sleep-deprived mind, I started to see her everywhere. She lived in the corner shadows of my bedroom, and she haunted my dreams with a haunting, bittersweet clarity. In one recurring, vivid dream, I saw her standing calmly at the edge of the rooftop, her silhouette outlined against the pale, ghostly moonlight.
She turned her head, looking back at me with a serene, heartbreaking smile, and slowly raised a hand. "Come, my daughter," she whispered, her voice drifting across the night wind like a gentle lullaby. "Come with me. Follow my steps."
Caught in the spell of that desperate, aching need to be reunited with her, I had obeyed. I slowly moved forward, matching her steps, drawn by an irresistible gravity until I reached the edge. And without a second thought, I stepped off the rooftop wall, plunging into the open sky.
Then I grasped and my eyes flew open.
My heart hammered wildly against my ribs, and cold sweat drenched my skin as I stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling of the bedroom. I was still here. I was still trapped in the living world. I hadn't found out if I successfully united with her in the fall, or if the nightmare had caught me before I hit the ground. Everything was a blur, a confusing maze of grief and doubt.
That wasn't just a single nightmare; it was only the beginning of a relentless torment. Day after day, for months following Mother's death, that exact dream returned to haunt me. Every single night was a horrifying, suffocating experience. I could never sleep peacefully anymore. The boundary between slumber and waking blurred until I couldn't tell which reality was real.
In that state of utter exhaustion and despair, a dark, consuming thought began to take root in my mind: Maybe if I die, I will finally be reunited with her. Maybe I can feel her embrace again.
For a long time, that whisper felt like the only comfort left in the world. But deep down, another part of my mind fought back, flickering like a dying candle in a storm. A second voice began to challenge the darkness, whispering a terrifying question: If you really die, is there any guarantee that you will actually be reunited with her? No one has ever come back to say for sure. If you throw your life away now, there is no second chance. You will never know what comes next.
The question paralyzed me. I realized there was no guarantee at all. What if death wasn't a reunion, but just an empty, cold void?
Driven by the sheer terror of that uncertainty, I had actually turned to my sister back then, blurting out fragments of those dark thoughts. I still remember the way she looked at me, her eyes widening in disbelief before she snapped at me with a harsh, scolding voice.
"What on earth are you talking about, Iris?" she had yelled, genuine fear and anger flashing across her face. "What kind of silly thoughts are you keeping in that little head of yours? Have you finally lost your mind?!"
"N-no," I stammered back then, shrinking away. "I was just wondering..."
Seeing how disturbed I was, her expression had softened just a fraction into something uneasy, sensing that something was terribly wrong with me. She had grabbed my shoulders, telling me firmly, "Don't ever think like that, Iris. It's stupid and dangerous."
At the time, her fierce scolding had shocked me out of my trance, and I felt a strange sense of gratitude for her harsh wake-up call. Lying there in the dark now, remembering that moment, I realized how desperately I had fought to stop those suicidal thoughts from taking over completely.
I had lectured myself over and over: No, Iris, this is wrong. This isn't the way. If you die now, everything ends. You will never see what tomorrow brings, and more importantly... you made promises to Mother. You have dreams to achieve. How could you ever face her wherever she is now if you break your promises and just cowardly follow her off a cliff? Would she even accept you?
After that another sharp logic pierced through the fog of my grief. Wait... If that really was Mother's ghost, she would never tell me to hurt myself. She would never advise me to commit suicide or take my own life.
I knew my mother better than anyone. In life, she had always loved us fiercely, always wanting to protect us from every harm, even sacrificing her own comfort and safety for our sake. A mother who loved her children like that would never lure them off a ledge.
It couldn't have been her, I realized with a sudden, surging wave of certainty. It wasn't Mother's soul at all. It was just a sick, twisted creation of my own exhausted mind, conjured up by grief and madness. It was entirely false.
A heavy weight lifted from my chest. I didn't need to fear that ghost anymore, and I certainly didn't need to follow it. The only thing that mattered now was the truth: I had made sacred promises to my mother before she passed, and those were the things I actually needed to honor.
I had made a firm decision back then: I would keep my promises to Mother. I would achieve my dreams first, live out whatever path life had laid out for me, and accept whatever arrangements the divine had made. Only then, when my time naturally came, would I face her.
I felt a surge of grim determination. I thought I had weathered the worst of it. I thought the darkness was finally yielding to my resolve.
Little did I know, as I closed my eyes that night with a renewed sense of purpose, a far more horrifying and insidious reality was already waiting for me in the dark. A psychological storm was brewing beneath the surface, one that would steal pieces of my past far more cruelly than any nightmare ever could.
"What was waiting for Iris in the shadows? Stay with us for the next part to uncover the chilling truth."