As a child I was always told stories of far off fantasy lands, full of wizards and witches, strange creatures and epic conflicts... I never believed any of the drivel but I would never let that get in the way of a good story. Who wouldn’t want to hear about castles of glimmering crystals and princesses trapped in towers, waiting to be rescued by prince charming on the back of a white stallion.
My own life story contained none of the ingredients for cooking up a great meal of fantasy... And until my family died it was a pretty normal existence.
Hundreds of times I’ve had this same dream, well, nightmare would be a more fitting term I suppose. It always played out the same, an exact retelling of when the course of my life took a sudden twist and sent me towards a different future.

Black. Darkness. Not the faintest trace of light. I could hear whispering nearby as the world slowly came into focus; I was in the back seat of my mother’s car... fifteen years in the past. I could hear phrases like “Are you sure this is the way?” and “Yeah, she said second left once you leave the tunnel.” My center of gravity shifted as the car made a gentle curve to the left. It was pitch black save for the last sliver of a waning crescent moon, but I could see Sukumo Bay and the lights of Kashiwajima from the back seat of the vehicle. Our destination was close.

“Papa, I’m tired... how much further is it?” I couldn’t see anything of my parents beyond their silhouettes. A chuckle rose above the dull hum of the car’s engine. “We’re almost there, just go back to sleep.” He turned and started muttering to himself. “We probably would have been there by now if your mother didn’t drive like she was in a wheelchair.”
The woman behind the wheel shot a glare in the other adult’s direction, faint moonlight glimmered off her glasses. “You keep yappin’ like that and it’ll be you in the wheelchair... and it’s not my driving that’s the issue, its daddy’s inability to read a map.”
“No fighting!” I protested. “How am I to fall asleep with you two talking so much?” My hinted request for silence trailed off into a yawn.
My mother turned away from the steering wheel for a moment and stroked my head gently. “We’ll be at our new home soon, and then you can have all the quiet naptime you want.” Her smile was lit by an exterior light, as was my father’s. Smiles I would never forget...

...that was the last time I saw them.

The next instant was the first movement of a deafening symphony of twisting and buckling metal, accompanied by an orchestra of shattering glass and explosions... and a choir of faint and brief screams...
Our family sedan weighed about two thousand kilograms, not including luggage. It might as well have been and origami duck when pitted against the brick wall of a large truck. I learned years later that the driver of the larger vehicle was killed instantly; a section of radiator replaced the space his head used to occupy. My family met a similar fate, their bodies were hardly recognizable. Nobody survive... excluding myself.

I regained consciousness a few dozen meters from the blazing wrecks, the mossy ditch was soft, and rolling down half its dew and sea-spray soaked bank had saved me from any lingering embers and flame. An algebraist would sit around for hours behind an abacus and rant about the astronomical odds, a priest would undoubtedly praise a deity about my survival being a miracle... all it really boiled down to was luck. Despite all that had just transpired I was completely unharmed. The fuel cell of the car exploded, engulfing the already burning vehicle in a fireball and propelling shrapnel through the air. So scratch that, I was completely unharmed, however I was too much in shock to feel anything. Pain, sorrow, the blood flowing down my cheek and neck from my fresh wound. I just sat there and stared, almost as if it were a family bonfire... which in a sick, tormenting way... it was.
Sirens blared in the distance as fire trucks and ambulances made their way up the coastal highway. It was far too late for them to be of any use beyond giving me a lift to the nearest orphanage.
Feeling finally started to return to my body, I was now painfully aware of the long, deep wound on my face and the blood now staining my clothes... I could feel something else, a warmth that dwarfed the blazing inferno. I managed to move my eyes to its source, my hands were a noticeably darker shade than what I had been used to. The shimmering glow of the fire revealed that I was in fact covered in blood. I wasn’t my blood, it couldn’t have been, the shrapnel hole in my face couldn’t leak nearly this much.
At the time I hadn’t really thought about it… but all these years later, I was aware of whose blood I’d been soaked in that night. The blood of my kin.

...the blood of my parents.