The Circle of Fate

Hannah Clarah was never really an outcast; she just never really fit in with any of the usual cliques that made up the kingdom of high school. She never wore the right clothes to fit in with the popular group. She wasn't athletic in any way, so being a jock was out of the question. She refused to sink into depression and join the Emo crowd. She wasn't even smart enough to fit in with the brainiacs.
Strange as it seemed, Hannah was never sad or upset at her apparent lack of existence. She didn't have many friends, which is a nice way of saying she didn't have any, but she was never angry at life. In fact, the slight smirk that she wore on her face day to day suggested she had bigger plans for herself than any of her classmates or teachers could fathom.
The truth was, Hannah Clarah did have greater plans, but the blueprints for these plans came not from her imagination, but from her subconscious.
Hannah grew up as a normal kid. She attended daycare everyday, made a mess out of something completely solid, and somehow managed to get sticky with some unknown substance every time she had a meal. Hannah was a happy, normal toddler.
The night after Hannah turned three, her dreams changed drastically. She went from dreaming about deserted candy stores and islands made of ice cream to nightmares of falling into dark pits with no visible bottom and running away from some unseen danger.
These dreams continued throughout Hannah’s childhood and into her teenage years. Her mother was so uptight about anything abnormal that Hannah didn’t see fit to tell her about the strange dreams. Her father was hardly ever seen around the house, preferring his cramped office to their comfortable farmhouse, so she couldn’t have told him even if she’d wanted to. She did have small neighborhood playmates, who she could have told, but they were the spoiled type who grew up to be the snobs of the school. It wasn’t their choice to play with Hannah; they were merely dragged along by their mothers, who wanted to gossip with Mrs. Clarah.
Hannah took no notice of the years that flew by, only acknowledging the time between dusk and dawn, when she allowed her mind to slip into the deep waters of her nightmares. She passed through elementary and middle school, present in body, but not in mind. The nightmares worsened and deepened over time, so that her past nightmares seemed almost innocent. Her bed was no longer a safe haven, but a place she feared more than the misty graveyards depicted in Hollywood horror movies.

The summer before her sophomore year of high school, Hannah and her family took a trip to California. The warm weather of California was a pleasant change to the cold, rainy weather of Seattle, where she had grown up.
Hannah’s brother and sister, Drew and Anna, were loud enough the whole trip so that she was able to stay awake, and for that she was grateful. She was actually looking forward to this trip, thinking her dreams would stay on the positive side for just this one week.
She was wrong.
Their first night at the hotel, Hannah stayed up reading late into the night, fighting the sleep that tugged at her eyelids. The sleep fought a fierce battle though, and eventually, she found herself defeated, her imagination’s pictures created by the book in her hands fading and blurring into the nightmares that haunted her every night.

Waves lapped at her feet, sending a shiver through her body that passed through her head and chest before making its way down to her toes. The sand was cold and dark, the exact opposite of the sand in the day, which burnt your eyes because of its brightness and burnt your feet because of its warmth.
The sky was black with menacing clouds and the waves broke fiercely upon the shore. When the water retreated each time, it seemed as if the waves wished to swallow the land altogether. She tried to take a step back, but her feet were in such a rhythm going forward that she was unable to break it.
Hannah knew then, with the harsh waves slapping against her ankles, that she would have to go into these dark waters. She didn’t know why, or when, but dream seem to be touched with something that makes them all so clear and logical.
She scanned the water reluctantly, it was as if her body had completely deserted her mind and was now moving of its own accord, regardless of the thoughts she was screaming at it.
Finally, in the distance, she spotted a man, bobbing up and down in the waves, struggling to stay afloat in the black water. Her arms moved down to untie her shoes, doing it in such a quick fashion that she didn’t even realize her fingers were moving before her shoes were off and she was diving into the bone-chilling water.
It was funny, how she didn’t even feel the cold shock that comes when you plunge yourself into a body of ice cold water, she was completely numb now, and she finally just let her mind relax while her body swam with more skill than she’d ever possessed.
The waves were way over her head as she spun in circles, searching for the drowning man, but not only could she not find the man, the shore had disappeared as well.
Suddenly, her body felt heavier, as if it had finally agreed to cooperate with her mind, but it was bad timing. Just as this feeling kicked in, a giant wave washed over her head, she sputtered and choked as she broke the surface again, but it was as if she had forgotten how to control her body, because her arms were too slow and her legs were too clumsy to keep her above the water. It was spending way more energy than she could afford to lose.
Her arms and legs ached so much from the effort, which she could now see was pointless, so she allowed herself to be pulled under the icy surface and into the eerie black depths.
Beneath the water, Hannah felt oddly serene. The silence was so absolute that she could hear every movement of her body and every wave that crashed overhead.. Her ears were filled water, and it seemed to be pressing in on her from every side. She knew she should have felt suffocated, but she couldn’t think about anything but this strange new underwater world.
Without warning, the current pushed her violently down, knocking out the little breath she had left and slamming her headfirst into a rock. The water turned orange around her head, though it was more like black with the slightest tint of orange, but she didn’t feel any real pain until her vision began to blur. Slowly, her sight faded and distorted, until finally, she fell into darkness darker than the one she had arrived from.

Hannah awoke gasping greedily for air. Her lungs felt tight and achy, as if she had been holding her breath for too long. Her hand flew to her scalp automatically, but she felt nothing beneath her hair besides solid skin.
Relief spread through her body as she placed her head back gently on her pillow. She closed her eyes and tried to picture something peaceful, to get her mind off the nightmare, but all she could think of was the peaceful world beneath the water. Goose bumps covered her skin as she reached up one last time to feel her head, and this time, she felt cold blood and a shooting pain flew through her body.
She sat up quickly, but as quickly as it had come, the blood was gone along with the pain.

Hannah tried all week to forget the dream about the cold water. She stayed as far away from the water as was possible on a crowded beach in California. But as hard as she tried to avoid it, the water was calling to her, and everyday she found herself sitting right by the edge of the water with the waves licking at her toes like a slobbery dog.
Hannah did have some personal will left though, and she refused every invitation to join Drew and Anna at a game of Marco Polo, no matter how much they pleaded with her.
Her feet stayed firmly on land, even while they splashed her mercilessly. She held her ground as they splashed around in front of her, purposely acting like they were having a lot more fun than they actually were.

Friday came like a storm, sending her thoughts into a whirlwind of confusion. She really did not want to go into the water, did she? Well, it was her last night in California, and who knew when she would get another chance to go swimming? But, what about the dream? It was only a dream, right?
They arrived at the beach earlier than the crowd, so they pretty much had the run of the place, but Hannah took her usual spot in the sand and made a big show of opening up the cover of her book. Drew and Anna begged her to join them repeatedly while they stripped down into their bathing suits, but she pretended not to be too emerged in her book to notice.
Repeatedly, though, Hannah’s eyes traveled over the top of her book to gaze out over the sparkling blue water. She snapped them back stubbornly each time, but they did not let up until she rose to her feet and walked to the bathroom to change into her suit.

The water was so much calmer than her dream, and so much warmer and bluer, which relieved her, for she couldn’t possibly imagine the same scenario playing out in this welcoming water. Laughing, she joined her astounded siblings in their current game, which consisted mainly of jumping over waves.
For the first time in her life, Hannah Clarah was having fun. Actual, true fun. She was having so much fun in fact, that they didn’t realize the storm approaching until it was too late.
A dark cloud floated past the sun, creating a shadow over them, and they looked up finally, but the storm was already upon them. Heavy raindrops were already pelting their faces and shoulders, but Hannah hardly noticed because her eyes had already given in to tears the second she had seen the clouds.
Her nightmare was coming true. Only this time, Anna and Drew would parish beside her if she didn’t do anything about it. She turned to tell them to swim back to shore, but they had disappeared. Deja vu hit her like a stone in her stomach as the wind began to pick up speed and the waves grew around her. She turned in circles looking for the shore, but as she suspected, it had disappeared along with her siblings.
Knowing what was going to happen didn’t make it any easier to bear. Hannah lay back on the water, waiting with her eyes closed for the fatal wave to come and shove her into the arms of death.
She did not have to wait long, for the wave came within the minute, and since her eyes were closed, she hardly saw it coming. She had no time to take a breath before her full body was submerged. She had no idea which way was up as the current pushed her hard, swirling her around helplessly.
Finally, the current shoved her against a rock, breaking her skull as it had before. The water turned orange, only this time it was more than a tint. This orange was only a shade away from being red.
Hannah stopped struggling suddenly and a sense of calm came over her. She couldn’t feel any more pain as her vision blurred and her mind turned to mud. The last thing she saw, before darkness took over her vision, was the man from her dreams, smiling down at her from above the surface.