When I was a child I had become very accustomed to death. I was born into an older family so it felt as though we went to funerals of aunts, uncles, and cousins almost every month. However, when I was about eight years old my grandmother died. I had been to funerals before, but I had never looked in a coffin. For some reason my dad thought this was a great lesson of life and death to forcibly picking me up and having me peer into my grandmother's coffin.
This was my first encounter with a dead body, and I hated it. I kicked and screamed to have my dad put me down and when I finally broke free I ran from the church. I cried and cried so uncontrollably by myself at the steps of the church. I was surrounded by death but I didn't understand it until now.
I knew people's souls would leave their body and hopefully go on to a better place, but I didn't understand what the body would look like when the soul left. My grandmother's soul was very light and airy. She had the brightest smile and most active personality. But her body was stiff and pale and her face looked wicked with that frown stitched on.
That was when the dreams started. I was terrified of my own dreams mostly because they often repeated themselves and my older sister enjoyed tormenting me. She would tell me to make sure I never had the same dream more than three times, because if I did it would come true. I missed many nights of sleep over this dream.
In this horrific dream, my family needed to go to Florida to go to yet another funeral. However my mom promised on the way we would go to Disney World, and I have never been there so I was looking forward to it. My dad became sick of driving and decided to go to a hotel for the night. It wasn't an eery looking hotel, Just a simple Holiday Inn.
My parents decided to get two rooms instead of one. My older sister and my dad had one room, and my mom, little sister and I were in another. My little sister wanted to go to the pool so we got on our swimsuits and started walking down the hallways. Oddly enough, the hallways would grow longer and longer as we walked. We began to run to try to make it to the end of the hallway, but it would just grow faster and faster.
Finally we gave up and decided to walk back to the rooms. My sister told me she didn't want me to sleep with her and my mom and I had to sleep with dad and my other sister. This didn't bother me one bit. I came to my dad's door and knocked so he would let me in. The door opened by itself and I looked into the room.
There was no bed, but a large closed coffin instead. My dad and sister were sitting on the old green couch my grandmother had in her house. Their eyes were bulging at me. Their faces carried the same frown my grandmother had stitched on at her funeral. Suddenly my grandmother walked in the room from the bathroom with three beautifully adorned porcelain dolls in her arms. She also had that same expression on her face that she had at her funeral.
My granmother began to speak. When she opened her mouth I saw that her mouth had literally been stitched on the inside, which made it hard for her to speak. "Happy birthday sweetheart," She barely managed to mumble. She set the dolls on the top of the coffin. Suddenly I realized that the coffin was much smaller than before. Too small for an adult, but perfect for a young child such as myself.
I screamed and I ran out of the room. I didn't want to sleep with dad and my older sister, I wanted my mom and my little sister. I didn't want to be near my grandmother. For some reason my mom's room was not next to my dads. I ran down the hallways. They were long and twisting, and I felt like I was going in a circle. I finally made it to my mom's room, but when I opened the door I was terrified.
It was not a hotel room, but the room I used to sleep in at my grandmother's house. The walls were such a soft pink that the girliness of the walls echoed around the room. However, there was something different. The walls were lined with shelves of porceline dolls and there was one doll on the bed that looked just like me. A little blond girl in a white sundress walked out of the closet and picked up the doll. She put the doll in a bassinet that sat at the end of the bed.
I moved towards the girl. Suddenly every doll turned it's head towards me and glared. No longer wearing the trademarked soft smiles, but the haunting frown. I looked back at the girl and the doll was no longer in a bassinet, but a coffin. She slammed the coffin shut with the doll inside and she put her hand on my neck. She began choking me while she chanted nonsense words. She slowly spun me around the room and as I spun I saw that the dolls eyes melted and blood flooded out of their sockets.
I could feel myself fading. The lights flickered as the room began to overflow with blood. Just when I was about to take my last breath I woke up in my bed. I would hide under my covers unable to sleep for the rest of the night until dawn. This dreamed happened over and over for most of my childhood. I was terrified that it was going to come true.
One day my mom said we were going to go to Florida to see family and go to Disney. And on our way down my family grew tired of driving and decided to stop for the night. We stopped at a simple Holiday Inn and decided to get two rooms.