December Again

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Two people meet, they fall in love, but sudden dreams began to threaten them both. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. My friends had just left the mall for a movie they were going to watch together, something Elena and I both agreed we were going to skip, even though we didn't know each other, and we're desperately searching for a time to talk alone. We were trying to drift away from the pace of our friends along those same stores, the ones that seemed to line up every mall ever made. We would fall behind, match our steps, ignore each other for a bit, and then speak our first words, Oh, I need to get some new shoes. I didn't, but wanted to sound like I had other reasons to be there with everybody with the most boring place on earth. Do you want to go to Kim's, she asked. I need a few things from there too. Kims was like an off brand reseller, sort of like Payless at the time, but I had gotten most of my shoes growing up from there. I was relieved to know that she was like that, normal someone who I didn't have to play pretend with. She probably also wanted to skip the movie because it wasn't worth it. You can watch movies for free and so many other places, but for me it was half I want to talk to her and half I don't want to pay for a movie. And it was at the food court when we started talking. Everything seemed to match. I guess during that stage everything seemed simpler than it will be. But she wasn't afraid of saying things how they were almost to a level of brutal truth, both to herself and to me. It was how I knew that she was honest, down to earth and normal. Nothing about her would even hint at what we were going to go through in the coming months. We had both graduated, me with an economics degree and she got it in literature and English. We both had jobs near each other, so we quickly decided to move in together, although we hadn't told our families yet. Being together for such a short time was the main reason our families who would flip out. But as young people do, we wanted to rush to do everything to plan out our lives to get the most of it. But I started noticing something was off. Sometime in January. We were planning on going to our family's house to give them the news, before driving to my childhood home, practicing how to tell them without getting lectured on it. Part of me thought that it shouldn't be that big of a deal. We were both adults by then. Plus I also thought that that's what was bothering her and why she would end up on her phone late at night, scrolling with the occasional loud TikTok popping up on the screen, startling me enough to wake up. As expected, she would wake up tired, her face started drooping around her eyes, and her hair stopped shining the way it used to. Of course, I was more careful with my words, although she expected absolute honesty from my behalf when it came to these kind of things. Open communication was our rule. But I struggled to finally ask if she needed to see a doctor, if the pressure of our relationship was affecting her sleep. I mustered up the courage to talk to her, finally approaching her during breakfast on a Monday, and that's when she startled me, I've been having terrible dreams. She looked down and stayed quiet. What about, I asked, half expecting her to continue without me asking I know when I'm gonna die, she said, looking down at her coffee, no longer steaming and still unstirred, with a creamer slowly rising in strange shapes from the darkness. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I asked her when in March. She said, March second this year, I asked, in shock of both what she was saying with such a straight face and the thought of losing who I thought was going to become an important person in my life. I don't know what I was thinking. It only felt like something that she wanted to talk about, perhaps a topic of conversation. And yet I can't help myself at thinking if I fuel this. Had I ignored, this would have been forgotten, along with the many other ideas that Elena would have for me on a daily basis. She was an interesting person who was obviously familiar with the stories across cultures and ages. That day, she simply nodded and quietly got up to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth. The inside of the coffee cup was completely light brown, now all on its own. When she got home from work, I asked her more about what she had told me in the morning. Had to promise her that I would take it seriously. Because I had been bothering her for several weeks. The thoughts of us celebrating something that wouldn't happen because of her death was a very serious and very real thing in her head. I had no choice but to ask more about it. I've been having these dreams, she said quietly, Dreams where I'm in bed and suddenly I can't breathe, my heart begins to struggle, and suddenly I'm gone. It always happens the same way, enough for me to spot details within them. I waited for her to tell me the rest of them. You can't think I'm crazy, she told me. I simply stared at her light brown eyes. You can't, okay, she asked again. All right, I said, raising my hands as I backed away and placed them on my lap, adjusting my shoulders to line up with hers on the couch. For several nights, I've had these dreams where I'm in bed and I begin to hear strange noises. There's knocks on the window, tapping on the wall. I look around, sitting up in bed, and I hear them voices coming closer, asking me where I want to go, and some only tell me where I'm going. They tell me not to be afraid, but of course I panic. I begin to shake and wonder what is going to happen with me? What will happen to us and to my family, my things? How though, how do you know that it's happening soon? This is where I tell you to not think I'm crazy. But do you know about the puppy calendar? I nodded that things she picked up when she was at one of the department stores. I think t J Max near the cash register. She loves of all calendars, those cheap ones you would get when you pick up a Chinese food order or at furniture stores, usually of beautiful views of nature, animals, or cities around the world. This one she picked up for two dollars on a whim and placed it on the wall next to her mirror. The two Dulmatians, she said, her eyes filling up with water, but keeping her tone the same. It's always set to the two Dulmatians in March. Are you going to ask me about the dates? She said, looking right into my eyes. Yes, how do you know about the exact date? I followed up without skipping a beat the moon. It's always at the edge of the light post on the right. I've searched for it. There's a day in that month when it would appear right there, right around that time, and appears right there from where I'm sleeping March second. I don't know how it worked, and frankly I didn't care. I wanted to get her some help, to do everything I could to at least stop her from thinking about this, and we did. Helena. I was super smart, and I had a list of things to cross off, including researching all these theories of time and why she was being told where she was going to go. The next few weeks, we went to get a bunch of tests done, her heart, to lung's brain, everything we could think of. She would tell the doctors that something didn't feel right, but stopped herself at that Everything checked out just fine. She was eating the same things, maybe even healthier than me. Helena. I asked her on the drive back from one of those appointments, Am I in the dream next to you when you die? No, she said, but you're around I'm not alone when I go. Still, I kept thinking that maybe it was all in her mind, something about the vision she kept seeing found a way to repeat itself. But the thought of her leaving and our dreams shattering like that made this a serious matter. How can you know if these dreams are real? I asked, expecting to stumper with a question. She turned to look at me again. You can't think I'm crazy, I nodded. I've dreamt other things too, she whispered. As the days and weeks passed, I started keeping track of her dreams, multiple ones, as she would have at least the notable ones with the reoccurring dream of the voices and her death. She witnessed a death in one of them, and it was of a red car that spent past her and ran a red light. She called me crying. Two days after that, when it happened a mother and a daughter were crossing the street and were hit, dying on the spot. The wrong delivery dream where a FedEx guy comes and tries to deliver a package but it's actually for the neighbor's house. Nothing significant, but it did happen. About two weeks after that, her sister announcing pregnancy, my friend getting fired from his job. Sure those things were eerie to me, but they did it didn't matter. All they seemed to be able to prove was that her dream was going to come true, that she would leave me and leave all of us. One Saturday morning, she was in the kitchen when I walked up to the counter and found her staring at the unstirred coffee again. She looked at me and said, at four o'clock in the morning, without her having to explain anything else to me, I knew she had found out the time she was leaving. And from that day on things changed. Helena was calmer, smiling. Even whenever the topics of her death came by, she would talk about it like she had accepted it completely. I wanted her to change, although of course I loved seeing her this happy, but I couldn't help myself. I asked her about us taking a trip, maybe going somewhere for the rest of the month while we take time off work, to maybe try to gain this crazy theory and move out to change things, to get rid of the calendar she had on the wall, Maybe talk to someone about it. I don't know a priest or someone who would know about this stuff. I suggested sleeping pills and prayer. Things I was not known for even wanting to talk about like meditation or witch doctors. Someone somewhere must know about this phenomenon and might even be able to help us. It will readjust, she said, smiling. She must have already tried this before. I noticed her moving her mirrors and adjusting the blinds, switching the position of where she slept for a time. Yes, I asked myself about who I thought I was, thinking I could get in the way, but I knew what she wanted. She didn't want anyone else to know about this in fear of them getting in the way or telling her that something was wrong with her. It was until she accepted what was going to happen, when she became calmer, that she began to sleep better and would wake up in a better mood. Sometime in February, around Valentine's Day, she quit her job. We started talking about finances, ideas I'd never thought i'd have to talk about with her, at least not this early in our lives. And it was March by now when I thought of everything we had gone through in those last few months, Like our entire lives, played out really quickly, and soon I found myself next to her as she was falling asleep now past midnight. It was March second. We talked about her staying awake, hoping that somehow those dreams were only nightmares and that we would wake up the next day. We would laugh about it, move on. We would end up with a great story to tell her children one day. But sadly, it didn't turn out like that. I woke up around three in the morning after twisting and turning from ho the night. She was breathing normally, and I tried to wake her up when I suddenly noticed the movement in the corner of the room. It was quick, like a tissue, and the way it disappears into a vacuum cleaner by accident. That's when it started. The knocking. It was soft at first, with taps on the window, before quickly building up to full on knocking at the front door. I started shaking Elena that morning, trying desperately to wake her up, but she wouldn't move. I got out of bed and walked over the door to the bathroom, swinging it open so violently that it slammed against the wall. The knocking at the front door became louder, and the shapes around the hallway were materializing into these strings of light, like smoke when the candles go out. They were streaming up and around the ceilings, back down, and then toward me. I saw one in particular swaying toward my face and neck before vanishing. Then everything went silent. As I rushed back to Helena. Her body was curled on the blankets, facing toward the ceiling. I turned on the lamp on the nightstand next to her. Her chest and stomach were not rising anymore, and from that moment on they would do so no longer. The next few days were a blur. I couldn't remember going to sleep or what happened after I discovered Elena lying still on her side of the bed. I was trying to piece everything together when my mind was available. I don't remember when I requested time off work or where I placed anything around the house, but I did start to remember a few things, like memories of Helena, almost as if they were dreams. I wasn't sure who I had come into my house to get rid of her things, someone who knew how devastating finding something of hers could be to me, my parents, perhaps, dreams of the mall walking next to Elena among the crowded stores, with the echoes of strangers around us. Everything was coming back when I slept, or at least when I thought I did. There was something about dreams and nightmares that I believed in ever since I was a kid, that they would somehow become real only if I could remember them when I woke up. It rarely happened, And yet I doubted Elena so much when she told me about hers, or did I What if I had been responsible for what happened for believing in her own dreams, I could have dismissed them. I could have told her that I thought she was crazy, and maybe that idea would have stuck with her and none of this would have happened. But I couldn't. I believed in these things. They were real to me once I heard them, but I dreamed what happened, and I was able to make the connection only when I remember them. Deep down, I knew that this could become a slippery slope that I would never escape. The way you can blend reality with dreams is not something you play around with. I always made up a scenario in my head, saying, what if I could fly in my dreams? And somehow confuse that in real life heading up in a crowded sidewalk surrounded by strangers, dreams are not something we should talk about. We shouldn't make them real. And these thoughts I knew would never leave my mind. I was lying in bed one night. I'm not sure if it was days or hours from these previous thoughts I had when I got a message from an old friend. He said that they were getting together after the rush from Black Friday, and to come meet them that many months had passed already. A question out loud, without thinking much about it, I agreed, assuming that maybe this would be good for me. After I sent the message, I went back to my home screen on the phone and looked at the date, and I was losing it. December again. I turned off the screen and looked at the reflection of my eyes against it. I was losing my mind. I woke up with the worst headache I've had in years months. Maybe I don't know. I scrolled her on my phone, finally opening up my photos app, a thing I had been avoiding for a very long time, or at least I thought so. I found nothing in there but pictures I took at work, my brother's birthday party, a picture of the sun set from a living room window. Where was Elena? The thought circled my mind a whole day as he followed me to the sidewalk and the bus stop from the parking lot, and to the exterior tables where my friends and I would always meet. Then they arrived. Up in front of me were my three friends and a fourth person, Helena, standing with her guns and Roses t shirt, her white shoes and blue jeans. She smiled nervously as my eyes widened and I stood up from my chair. My eyes watered, completely blurring my vision, though I managed to grab a napkin from the holder in front of me. And these parts, these I remember, the way she looked at me, and the way we wanted to talk to each other, knowing each other's favorite stores, a dislike for movies, her questions about what high school I went to, and if we had met before, the way we laughed at the man with the hat, the same one who had given me a strange metal mixer thing that he put on my head, supposedly a head massager that ended up getting tangled up on my hair. Memories of what seemed to be another life, we like our time at the food court that day, same spot, same coffee, The way I looked at her coffee cup, the creamer slowly creeping up to the top. I looked up at her, and she looked back at me. I could tell that she knew me, and she knew the same of me. Things went as drenthed before, with our trips to the store and the calendars of puppies, the Netflix nights and recommendations for podcasts. We would both wake up from terrible dreams sometimes, and although I managed to forget mine, I know that they linger for her, and yet, from our previous lessons, they can't become real if we don't talk about them. Yet I keep waking up from the nightmare it is to watch her lay completely still, the knocking and the voices, the streams of energy looming around the hallway, saying goodbye. Let the fear stay in our our minds, But they say fate only waits. I think of this now as February is coming to an end, hoping so desperately hoping that it becomes December again. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kobar Rubias. If you like this story, drop some stars for me. On Spotify, you go to the podcast, you tap the three dots and rate the show. On Apple Podcasts, you scroll down the podcast page and you add your stars there. It's simple than free, but it gives a show a boost and we need to keep up. As always, if you're following the show, I will tell you another story next week. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.