I had a good family.
Not the kind you see in advertisements where everyone is smiling over breakfast. Just a normal, noisy, slightly chaotic family. But it was enough.
My mother loved me more than I probably deserved. If I came home with my shirt torn from a stupid neighborhood fight or a note from my teacher, she would yell enough to bring the roof down. "Do you think money grows on trees? Are you out of your mind?" But the strange thing was, her anger came with an incredibly short timer. Five minutes later, she'd stop mid-sentence, notice a scratch on my elbow, and her entire demeanor would flip. Suddenly, she was dragging me to the sink, fussing over the cut, and asking if I wanted anything to eat. She had a temper that lasted exactly five minutes, replaced instantly by an endless supply of forgiveness and food.
My father was… different.
If you asked him directly what he felt, he would probably just grunt, adjust his glasses, and change the subject. He didn't do long emotional talks. But he had his own quiet, awkward way of speaking.
It was in the way I'd wake up to find my broken earphones carefully patched up with black electrical tape on my desk. It was the way he'd stand outside my school gate on a rainy afternoon—not calling to check on me, just standing there with an umbrella. We would walk the entire way home in total silence, but I always noticed that the umbrella was tilted slightly more towards my side, leaving his own shoulder completely soaked.
And then there was my sister. I definitely can't leave her out.
She possessed an annoying, almost magical talent for starting a world war over absolutely nothing. I remember this one time we didn't speak to each other for three straight days just because she ate the last piece of leftover pizza I had explicitly hidden at the back of the fridge.
"If you wanted it, you should have written your name on it. Fridge rules," she had declared with a smug look, completely ignoring the fact that I had literally covered it in a plastic wrap fortress.
I wanted to throw her out the window that day. But later that same week, when a senior tried to shove me around in the alley near our house, she didn't hesitate for a second. She marched right up to him, barely reaching his chest, and started shouting like an absolute lunatic until he backed off.
She was my biggest headache. But looking back now… she was my best friend.
The best part of our week was always Tuesday night. Every Tuesday, the four of us would crowd onto the living room sofa to watch those overly dramatic TV serials. The ones where someone was always plotting a murder behind a curtain, and dead characters came back to life with a different face just for the sake of drama.
My mother would sit there and genuinely complain about the plot holes. "Why didn't she just call the police? This makes no sense." My sister would loudly make fun of the dramatic zoom-in camera effects.
And my father? He would sit in the corner chair, pretending to read a newspaper, acting completely uninterested. But whenever a commercial break hit, he'd be the first one to ask, "Wait, so the lawyer is actually her brother?"
Life was good back then.
It didn't give us every luxury or comfort in the world, but the house was always loud. It was full. Complete.
Like most kids my age, I had my share of ridiculous, childish dreams. Lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I used to imagine that one day I would wake up with superpowers. I would become a hero, save people, fight villains.
The twisted part is that one day, that childish wish actually came true.
At least the part about getting powers did.
The hero part… didn't really go according to plan.
If I had known what that wish would cost me, I would have kept my mouth shut. Because I didn't realize that the exact moment my wish came true, the small, loud, annoying happiness I had would begin to disappear.
Everything started with the dreams.
For an entire week, it was the exact same dream. It played out like a recorded video stuck on repeat. There was always a man standing at the far end of our dark hallway. I could never make out his face—it was always blurred by a weird, static-like fog—but I clearly remember the heavy black coat he wore, and the slow, rhythmic sound of his boots against the wooden floorboards as he walked toward me.
At first, it just felt weird. But the closer he got with each passing night, the heavier the air in my lungs became. A quiet dread would start building in my chest. It wasn't the kind of fear you get from a jump-scare in a movie. It was a cold, sinking feeling. The sort of terror that spreads through your veins when you realize you are completely, utterly alone.
Like I had already lost something. Something I could never get back.
In the dream, I would shout for my mother. I would yell for my father. I even screamed my sister's name. I knew they were supposed to be right there, just inside the house.
But no matter how loudly I screamed, no one ever answered. The house was dead. Empty.
That was the part that unsettled me the most. In real life, they were always there. My house was never silent. Yet in those dreams, it felt as if they had been completely erased from the world.
Back then, I just brushed it off.
They were just dreams. Nothing real. At least… that's what I told myself over breakfast the next morning while my sister fought with me over the remote.
And for a while… I believed it.
Unfortunately… the next night proved exactly how horribly wrong I was.