She sat up, drenched in sweat, panting. A cursory glance out of her window presented nothing but darkness beyond the fluttering white curtains, the cool night air seeping into her bedroom. She shivered and pressed herself further into the blankets, wrapping layers of warmth around her like a fluffy cocoon.
With a forlorn sigh, she tried to coax herself back to sleep, trying her best to ignore the bright red numbers of her alarm clock that flashed a disappointing 4:00 AM. She knew this would be pointless. She could never sleep on this night- this night where she was annually plagued by a steady onslaught of nightmares on the anniversary of that grim event. To fall into the foreboding arms of sleep meant to curl up in a flurry of gaunt eyes and hollowed skin among other things- terrible things that slowly slunk back into the light, try as she might to push them into the back of her mind and deprive them of memory or existence.
The worst thing she dreamt about, though, was his face. It rushed into her consciousness like an angry dark secret with blinding clarity and startling vividness. She counted several prominent wrinkles on the yellowing, sickly skin. His hair was thinning, falling out in wispy clumps. Perhaps what bothered her most was her recollection of the eyes. She had looked into those eyes much like one would peer down into a chasm: knowing that there was a place down there deprived of light or joy or laughter, simply an empty void. It had been painful to look into those eyes and realize that there wasn’t any hope left for him. And so she had held the withered hand connected to the emaciated excuse for a body, and the eyes looked towards her one last time, remorseful and hopeless. Then they had closed and he was gone.