Just Another Stupid Love Story

“Alisa, Alisa, Alisa, wake up Alisa,” a familiar female voice continued to coo as I shifted my position on whatever I was laying on, my eyes still shut.
My hands seemed to lie beside my body, my fingers brushing through the loose texture of whatever I was laying on, the warmth acting like a pair of gloves. I could feel the heat radiating off of the suns glare, the light easily noticeable through my closed eyes as the voice of my mother continued to coo—wait, Ma?
My eyes instantly opened before I shot up into an upright position, instantly surprised by what surrounded me. There were no clouds in the sky as I sat in the middle of the desert, sand dunes surrounding me as the familiar voice had stopped speaking. I could feel the sun’s heat radiating on my back, my shadow shading my legs that were covered by my favourite red skinny jeans, matching my old dinosaur converses that Ma had forced me to throw out because of how torn they were.
Covering the upper part of my body was a green t-shirt that had a sketched on monster on it along with ‘GRRR’ written beneath it. I could feel the tightness of a bandana around my head as I ran a hand through my naturally blonde hair, my waves falling down to my hips.
Biting my lip nervously, I whipped my head around, a small gust of wind blowing as I did so. Looking up I noticed Ma standing in front of the sun’s beam, the sun making a light glow around her body, as if she were an angel or something of the sort. A smile grew to my face as I rose quickly to my feet, as questions ran through my mind.
“Ma,” I breathed before running at her to tackle her into a hug, ignoring her protests.
As I tried to wrap my arms around her while I was moving I ended up stumbling and falling onto my stomach, my arms passing straight through Ma’s body as she stared down at me sadly.
“You can’t touch me, I’m not really here,” Ma said with an apologetic look.
“But you are here, I can see you,” I exclaimed, climbing back up to my feet.
“No, I’m not. I’m simply a figment of your imagination, here to help you and your friends before I move onto where I’m supposed to be. Here before I go face my parents again,” Ma said, shrugging as if she didn’t know a better way to explain it.
“Why—How, how can you help me or any of my friends if you-you’re dead?” I asked my bottom lip quivering as I spoke.
“Easily, I need you to wake up. It’s not your time to go sweetie, these things happen for a reason.”
“How do I wake up?”
“I don’t know, you have to survive honey. I tried to survive, but my mission was pretty impossible,” Ma responded, shaking her head sadly.
“Mission? What are you talking about?” I questioned.
“When you get killed or are about to die you get sent to a random place, you got a desert, I got a flower field full of viscous wolves that wanted to tear me apart. I had to survive those wolves, but I couldn’t, I got killed instead. You have to survive this desert, please, sweetheart, try your best to stay with your friends and your brother,” ma said, smiling sweetly as her body started to fade away, “I love you, don’t ever, ever, give in.”
“I won’t I promise, I love you too,” I replied as tears slipped down my face.
I knew I couldn’t stop Ma from leaving, and I knew that this would be the last time I would ever speak to her, whether this was real or not. When Ma had fully disappeared I could feel as the wind slowly started to pick up, it starting to swirl into a circular motion next to me, the sand building up as it continued to move.
I inhaled deeply before I started to run, trying to run even though my feet continued to sink into the loose, grainy sand, it capturing my feet every time I took a new step. The sand continued to build up in the tornado, forming a sand storm as I ran. The sand tornado following my every move as I tried my best to get away, falling over multiple amounts of times as I tried to climb up and down every dune I came across that was in my path.
As I came to the top of a tall dune I could see that the desert seemed to continue on forever, no sign of civilisation anywhere. My breath had become uneven a while back, as my mouth was easily becoming dry. Shaking my head, I knew I had to think positively about this even though I was sure I was going to die, no matter how much I tried. Shaking my head, I glanced backwards over my shoulder, the sand cloud easily picking up its pace making me swear under my breath as I looked forwards. I let out another huff of air before I tried to pick up my pace once again, my legs putting in as much effort as they could to get me as far as I could go.
I had been running for what felt like hours as my legs were aching, my throat was screaming for water and body just seemed to want me to give up. It was pretty obvious that I couldn’t outrun this sand cloud but I didn’t know how to face it, how was I meant to survive a sand cyclone that was literally chasing after me.
I could feel the wind start to whip at me, trying to drag me towards the sand cloud. Making me fall onto my face as the cyclone came closer, not giving me enough time to get up as it swallowed me into its strong air swirls, the sand whipping onto body as the sand hardened around my wrists before pulling me into the eye of the storm.
The sand continued to grab onto my arms and legs, making sure it had a secure grip before tugging me downwards as fast as it could until we were emerged underneath the sand, the sand still swirling around my bodies before slowly fading away and pulling me into a memory of what happened when I was twelve years old.

Today was a Saturday and I was lounging on my bed as I played Mario Kart on my DS, trying to overtake Luigi since he was coming first while I, Drybones was coming second and it was really upsetting because I was on my last lap and I couldn’t get any good weapons. I let out an aggravated sigh when Luigi passed the finish before me, making me snap my DS shut and sit up from my laying down position.
Glancing around my room I noticed that I really had nothing to do or use and all of my friends were away doing something with their families. Groaning I moved off of my bed to open my door and head towards where Ma was watching the television, her head pressed into her knees as she grasped her hair with her tanned hands.
“Ma?” I asked, wide eyed.
I had never seen Ma like this before; usually she was so happy that it was sort of scary. Biting my lip I sat down next to her, moving the piece of paper that sat next to her along the couch. I started to rub soothing circles onto Ma’s back as she continued to sob into her knees, her shoulders shaking every time she cried.
Ma never looked up when I spoke or when I started to comfort her, she just continued to sob into her knees, ignoring whatever show that was playing on the TV screen. I had no clue what to do, or what had caused Ma to break down like this.
“Alisa,” Ma croaked as she pulled her head out of her knees to look at me, her eyes red as they were still brimmed with tears, obvious tear stains ran down her cheeks.
“Yes Ma?” I pondered, looking at her curiously.
“I-I think it’s time for you to know,” Ma said, swallowing back her tears.
“Know what?”
“When you were little, two, maybe three, you and your brother, Coal, were playing outside in the backyard. Building sand castles in the sand pit I had made for you. Coal, your brother was only five or six at the time but was very smart and very mature for his age, it was inspiring, but that’s beside the point. Your father and I were inside watching TV and I had some exciting news for him. Well, I thought the news was exciting.
“So when an ad came on the TV I turned to him with a grin, making him look at my weirdly as if I was a mad woman, so instead of waiting for him to ask, I told him, I told him I was a month pregnant with another baby. He was shocked, unable to speak to me, I thought he was shocked with happiness so I continued to babble on about it, it wasn’t until he stood up abruptly and yelled ‘Shut up’ at me that I realised he didn’t want another baby.
“It was then my turn to be shocked as I watched him storm out of the living room, before coming back moments later with a large knife. I remembered it reflecting off of the sun that was shining in through a small gap in the drawn closed window. I stood up at the sight of the knife, not expecting him to charge at me with full force, stabbing the knife into stomach, watching as I fell the ground in agony as he laughed joyfully.
“It was then I passed out, it wasn’t until weeks later that I woke up from the coma I was in to be informed that my son was gone but my daughter had been left behind. I was confused to why Coal was taken but you weren’t but didn’t worry about it, I was more concerned about the fact that my son was now with a complete maniac.
“A few months later a letter came in, it basically said that if it wasn’t for Coal playing hide and go seek with you at the time he’d have both of you. I thought that was the only answer, because of a childish game you were safe, but when I thought about it that couldn’t have been the case because I was positive you both were playing in the sand pit. Then months later another letter came in, again from your father stating that he had lied. Coal had protected you. Coal risked his own life for you to stay alive and free.” Ma said, finished off of the story, ignoring the fact that tears were streaming down both of our faces.

I was quickly yanked out of that vision, the fresh tears falling down my face from that memory, but the memory itself had released something inside of me. I had realised that I could survive this. I had survived these once, so I could survive them again, and that’s exactly what I did with every memory.
Each memory inflicted a bit more pain each time. Not emotional pain, but physical pain. It felt that fire was below me and after every memory the fire would slowly creep up and up until it had engulfed me fully.
The pain wasn’t easy to ignore, in fact it was almost impossible to ignore. I let out a shaking breath before everything went black, the only thing that passed through my mind was the fact that I had failed. I had failed to stay with my friends and family.
“Alisa, Alisa please wake up, I love you. I know it’s been only three months, although you have only been conscious for two of them but Alisa, please wake up. I don’t have much to say anymore, I beg every day, I’ve never left your side unless it wasn’t necessary, and neither has Coal or Jared. Come on Alisa, please wake up,” I heard Aiden beg over a faint beeping sound, making my eyes flutter open once again, this time to come face to face with a white ceiling, the bright light hurting my eyes.
Turning my head to the side I noticed Aiden had his eyes closed as he looked thinner than what I remembered, although he did look adorable in the superman pyjamas he wore. His hair was shaggier than before as well, it actually made him look sexier than what he looked like before.
“I love you too,” I croaked, smiling as he snapped his eyes open in surprise.
“Alisa,” he murmured shocked as I heard footsteps walk down the hallway and into the hospital room, familiar chattering with it.
“That’s my name,” I croaked in reply.
“Alisa!” Jared and Coal screamed before racing over to where Aiden sat.
“Hey brothers,” I mumbled with a small cough.