A loud crash. An ear splitting sound. The sound of hard metal crashing into hard metal. The echo of tyres screeching on road. The smell of burning rubber. The jolt of body into a hard surface. The feeling of being airborne. The feeling of crashing into ground. Then silence. Ear wrenching silence. Silence that screams louder than the loudest sound. Pain. Pain like never felt before. Pain like a thousand knifes are stabbed into the body. Like an arm was broken into fifty pieces. Like the head crashed into a rock while falling from a cliff. Now the numbness. A really calming numbness. Like a baby falling into sleep. Like the senses were drugged. Like a deep sacred meditation. Now quite unexpectedly a light. A bright light like from the other end of a tunnel. Guiding. Leading into consciousness. A bright but blurred light shining for a moment. Like from an over head small personalized sun. Then darkness. Deep darkness.

Radhika jolted awake, sweating profusely. Almost as if rain drenched her in her sleep. Yet she knew it was not rain but more like an explosion of lava that left her drenched.

She was remembering more things. More frequently now. But she didn't knew anymore if remembering was what she wanted. She once cursed this blankness in her memory. But now as she started remembering more and more, she was not sure if it really was a curse. Doctors said maybe forgetting was her mind's way of coping. Her defense mechanism to overcome such loss and pain.

Today that blurred light that shone towards the end of the dream was new. No, not dream. This could never be a dream. Her therapist liked to call it nightmares. But she knew what it was. A memory. An ugly suppressed memory. A memory hidden so deep within her mind that for some reason has finally decided to come back more frequently. As if it was in a hurry to finish some marathon. A memory that she both wanted and hated at the same time. A memory that is her truth.

Radhika let out a deep sigh, resigning herself to spend yet another sleepless night. She looked at the alarm clock near on her night stand, an alarm clock she didn't need any more as she had this internal alarm in the form of these nightmares to wake her up at the crack of dawn. It was 4 a.m. She got out of bed as she knew no matter how much time she lay down sleep was not going to come. Maybe she should start taking sleeping pills.

After taking a shower to wash away the remaining tiredness from less sleep, she got ready to start yet another pointless day. That was how she felt about her life now-a-days, pointless. No matter how much she wanted to go back to those happier days, years ago, she can't and that truth hurt her more than anything in this cruel world.