The Terrifying

The watch showed 5.30 PM. It was a hot summer evening in Iraq. The sun was setting, painting the sky in an orange hue. And there I was, standing before the gates of a place like no other that I had ever visited. Only the dead have seen the end of war. That was the quote that came into my mind as I stood before the largest cemetery of the world. ' Wadi-al-salaam ' or ' The Valley of Peace ' as they call it! It was my unplanned visit to Baghdad and then to Najaf that had finally brought me there. Ever since my childhood, after I came to know about that place, I had a curiosity about visiting it someday. If you look up for images of that place on the internet, you would fail to think of it as a graveyard at the first glimpse. I felt like it was a huge city with millions of houses lying in close proximity. There are in fact around 5 million graves there but that city has no living members. It is at the second glimpse that you notice the beauty of it; which I think would be ...

 Jesse had a nightmare. She woke up sweating. She was paralyzed. The attacks of sleep paralysis had been getting worse over the past few weeks. Taking medications had helped her with the panic attacks though. She now lied there, her body paralyzed and her mind gripped with fear. Her therapist had advised her to think of things she liked when she was in such a state. So, she thought of how she had met the love of her life, Michael. She thought of how he had changed her after they met. It was not long before they were married and she thought of it. But with it came the thought of how things had changed between them over the past few years. And that they had decided to get divorced. Growing up in an orphanage, it was not easy for Jesse. Michael was the probably the first person who felt like family. And so, being separated from the love of her life had left a lasting impression on her. She had gotten heartbroken, depressed and delusional. Not that she was a weak woman, but she had nev...