Tick Tock

A light breeze glides over Leslie’s face and a dark auburn curl tickles her nose, startling her awake. The breeze carries with it the sweet aroma of lavender. The scent infiltrates her system triggering a memory—her eleven-year-old hands, dark and smooth, are filled with rich soil from her mother’s garden. The smell of earth entwines with the lavender and both envelope her in a comfort almost equivalent to a hug.

A speck inches down the side of her face and she reaches up to grab it, but the speck dissolves, leaving behind a bead of moisture. A tear.

She twists on her side, her eyes flutter open, and she realizes that she’s lying in a field of wildflowers. When she sits up, she meets the suns boiling face shining above her. The sun is not blinding or hot, so she doesn’t have to cover her eyes. Instead, she stares at its face and can see the dark craters filled with bubbling lava.

When she looks away, she realizes that lavender is scattered throughout the plain of wildflowers. She picks up a stalk and recognizes the variant as her mother’s favorite.

“Leslie.” A voice says behind her. “Leslieeeee.”

No. It’s not possible she thinks. Leslie jerks her head around and sits on her knees to see above the flower’s stalks. Her mother stands there in a beautiful cream gown that blows in the wind.

Leslie was always told that she looked like her mother. They both had the same copper skin, and defined sharp jaw line that looked as if it’d was carved by a Roman sculptor. The only difference was their eyes—her mothers are hazel, the color of autumn, whereas Leslie’s were the same color as her skin.

Her mother stares at her now with her smiling eyes, glowing in the sun. “Mom!” Leslie shouts and runs into her arms.

“There, there, baby. It’s okay.” Her mom coos.

“I miss you so much,” Leslie says burying her face in her mother’s long neck, inhaling her lavender sent.

“I know you do. But I’m right here. I’ve never left,” she says into her ear.

“But you did. You’re gone. I can’t see you; I can’t reach you; I can’t hold you.”

Leslie gazes up into her eyes and realizes that they’ve turned purple the color of lavender.

“Mom, your eyes.” As she says this, her mother’s eyes begin to darken, and her mother jerks her head back in agony. A spot of red appears on her stomach, bleeding into the cloth of her gown. Suddenly the peaceful landscape around them falls away and they fall away with it. They’re freefalling and the wind is whipping across their faces, burning their skin.

Leslie and her mother reach for each other as they fall into nothingness, to no prevail. After thirty seconds they plunge into a field of plush green grass that cushions their impact.

Leslie gazes around at the plush field and spots a wooden barn sitting off in the distance, it’s red glossy exterior incongruent with the green earth surrounding them. Leslie scans the plains looking for her mother and spots her in a clearing about twenty-five meters away from her. She stands up to run to her, but a masked man dressed in dark denim jeans and a black long sleeved short appears by the barn. He walks faster than she can run and no matter how hard she tries, her body won’t move quickly enough.

The masked man makes it to her mother first, effortlessly hauling her over his large shoulder blade and carries her away kicking and screaming. The scents of rot and decay fill the air and travels to Leslie’s nose, and she gags in response. It smells like death, and that’s when she realizes...

Death has come to take her mother and there’s nothing she can do to stop him. He’s too powerful. Too strong. Too fast.

Leslie keeps fighting the sluggishness of her limbs and muscles to get to her mother, but Death gets to the barn first and as he enters, he locks its wooden door. Once there, she bangs on the door with her arms and feet, shouting obscenities. The wind carries her mother’s wails outside, but there’s nothing Leslie can do. The wails grow farther and farther away until she can’t hear them anymore.

Leslie cries and bangs until exhaustion overcomes her and she collapses into the grass, arms and toes bloodied from her efforts. She lays splayed out into the meadow, defeated. Exhaustion takes over and she falls into a coma like slumber. Death’s laugh enters her mind, taunting and provoking her, but she has no fight left. Leslie has surrendered to her failure.

“Leslie. Leslieeeeee.”

She opens her eyes and is met with a pair of dark onyx ones, watching her. She startles but realizes that she’s in her bed. In her home. Safe. And the eyes above her belong to her husband, Mark.

“What time is it?” she says.

“It’s four a.m.” her husband says.

“What’s today’s date?” she says.

“October thirty-first.”

Fourteen years, three days, and five hours. That’s how long it’s been since her mother died that fateful day. The masked killer is what they called him and till this day they haven’t found him. The killer could be her neighbor, friend, or even her husband.

Nooooooo, she thinks to herself.

Every year she has the same dream of the masked killer dragging her mother into the barn. When the police found her body, she was unrecognizable. Leslie’s father had to identify her mother’s body even though they were divorced—Leslie was too young—and he’s never been the same since.

“You, okay?” Mark, her husband says.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Leslie says. She rolls over on her side with her back turned to him. He wraps his arms around her and holds her to his chest. Five minutes later, Mark is sound asleep, but Leslie remains awake thinking of Deaths voice laughing mockingly in her mind and her mother's screams as he carried her away.