Alexandria, Egypt, December 18, 2009, 12:30 am.

The bed sheets twisted around Camellia’s body from turning so often. She felt a sudden rush of insomnia attacking every cell in her body. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes; her mind wouldn’t stop thinking about what happened earlier, she couldn’t figure out an answer.

She closed her eyes and held her head. “Is it psychosis?!” she said loudly, yet she didn’t have a response to her question. She sighed loudly and went to the balcony to get fresh air; the weather was chilly yet warm.

She looked back at her bed and glimpsed sleeping pills on the nightstand. Camellia went back to her bed and swallowed one pill, then closed the balcony and the drapes to make the room a block of darkness. She lay on the bed, humming as the cool pillow touched her face, sending shivers all over her body.

4:00 am.

All her muscles were at peace, her eyelids closed and her breaths deep and relaxed. Her consciousness swirled in a dream. It felt more like a memory resurfaced. Suddenly she took deep breaths and moved swiftly, then rested on her left side.

Her breaths became shallow, and her face became agonized; the dream hunted her soul.

“It is my fault; I shouldn’t have told Addaya what I saw,” said a deep, old male voice. “Tell Liam I’m sorry.”

The vision was a blur; it was a hazy image of a man with grayish hair. Tall, athletic body wearing black pants and a dark green polo shirt with long sleeves. Camellia looked around; she was in a foreign space. She rested her hands over her chest; the air was running out of her lungs along with a tightness in her throat that made her tighten her grasp over her shirt.

She opened her mouth to speak, yet no sound came out; just her hopeless attempts at catching lost breath. She looked again at the man; her vision became hazier.

“WAIT!” Camellia said and opened her eyes swiftly and painfully, her whole body covered in her heavy sweat.

She tried to set up, but a tremendous amount of pain rippled through her body, slowing her movements. She ignored the obvious pain and went directly to the balcony next to her bed, trying to organize her short breaths. “it’s not a dream… it can’t be a dream,” she whispered to herself, moving her hair away from her sweaty forehead.

3:30 pm.

Hours passed and felt like decades to her. The moment she woke up from the tiring dream, it left her anxious and hungry for answers. She went to the hospital hours before her shift, burying herself in work. Desperate to take her mind off the dream, but her mind kept telling her it wasn’t just a dream; it was something even worse than a nightmare.

She wanted to call Nadine to tell her what happened, but she didn’t know what to say, how to explain what she saw or how she felt. Dazed and confused, but later she called her. “Nadine,” Camellia said through the phone; her voice was hesitant and low. “Something is wrong… I don’t know what it is exactly… but something is happening to me.”

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Nadine said nothing, yet he heard her loud breathing through the phone. “What happened? Are you okay?” Nadine said.

“I—” Camellia was about to say what she was thinking about but paused. She held her breath and opened her eyes wide as the memory came rushing back. A fragmented memory came together like pieces of a puzzle, with the same suffocating feeling taking over her shocked body.

Her frown grew stronger when she found thirty papyruses with hieroglyphic texts placed inside the box. Written in odd patterns. Camellia was familiar with hieroglyphics; she translated each page, not fully grasping how creepy it was.

After reading, she felt her body shiver. She removed all the papyruses from the box and spread it across the hood of the car. Each papyrus she read muddled her mind even more; it was a coded message her mind couldn’t decipher.

Striking with an overwhelming sensation put her on the verge of recalling a foreign memory that, for a moment, felt like it belonged to her in some way.

With endless questions racing through her mind, one stood out above the rest: what if the story written on the papyrus is true for implausible reasons? Her thoughts were interrupted when a bright light reflected from the box struck her eyes. She reached inside the box and grabbed whatever was inside.

She felt pain in the back of her head. Her face went pale as if all the blood ran out of her body. She was barely breathing. She took one step backward; her sight went hazy. In a matter of seconds, the ground beneath her vibrated, and she crumpled. She fell hard on the ground with her hand clinging to the necklace, and eventually, she lost consciousness.

“Wake up,” a voice said into her ear. She opened her eyes slowly to adjust to the place she was in. A foreign place with no end; an empty white void. Her body felt normal again. She stood up, looking for any clues to figure out where she was, yet nothing looked familiar or normal.

She walked, hoping she could find anything to stop this scary feeling from crawling into her soul. She stopped suddenly and screamed, nothing in return, just her echo hitting back at her. “Camellia,” a deep old male voice said behind her. Startled, she slowly turned and saw a man in his mid-fifties. Grayish hair, tall athletic body wearing black pants, and a dark green polo shirt with long sleeves.

“Who are you?” her voice was shaking. It was the same man with the same sad tone in his voice.

“I’m Donggun… Liam’s father,” Donggun said and looked at the ground, hiding his face from Camellia’s gaze.

“Liam’s father…!”

“Tell Liam I’m sorry,” Donggun said and looked into Camellia’s eyes. She felt the sadness coming through his teary eyes.

“—CAMELLIA!” Nadine screamed on the other side, making Camellia drop her phone and hold onto her chair for balance.

“Yes!” she held the phone again with shaking hands.

“What do you think it means?!” Nadine said. “I don’t know exactly what I saw, but… it felt real and scary.”

“Sorry… what?”

“What do you mean what? Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Sorry… I was… distracted. What did you say?”

“Nothing Camellia… I said nothing,” Nadine said and sighed. Camellia’s hand kept shaking from what she remembered; her heart was racing, and almost felt like it was ripping itself out.

“Let’s meet at my house tonight. I have a patient now. Bye!” Camellia blurted. She hung up, then slammed the phone hard on her desk. “Fuck!” Camellia knew she must reach Liam. She tried to call him, but he didn’t answer. She kept calling him the entire day until his phone turned off.