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For as long as she could remember, Heather regularly had what she referred to as "that dream". Well, maybe not regularly. Sometimes it came three times in a week, and sometimes she would go months without it coming around once. But it always, always came back eventually. Most recurring dreams were irritating, but she didn't mind that dream. It was beautiful, and it never stopped being beautiful no matter how many times she relived it. It never grew tiresome, never got old. It was so sweet and comforting that she would wake up with happy tears in her eyes. It really was that beautiful.
The only problem was that she could never quite remember it. She tried everything over the years, from the rational dream journal on her nightstand to the plain ridiculousness of making sure she slept facing a certain direction. Every time she heard of a new "proven method" to remembering dreams she tested it, whether it was from a scientific documentary or some silly spiritual book. Nothing ever worked.
Eventually she gave up and decided that it was enough to bask in the bittersweet afterglow of emotions when she woke. She still wanted to know what the hell was going on in her mind, but she came to accept and appreciate what she could get. That acceptance came years ago, and she was past even idly wondering what the contents of the dream might be. Then, in the very last place that she would have ever thought could serve as a catalyst for such a wonderful thing, she remembered.
She was lost deep within the bowels of that church when it happened. Well, something like the church anyway. One of the rooms that wasn't full of rusted grates, living walls, and horrible monsters looked remarkably like her father's bedroom. Sure it was much darker and filthier, and it had blood smears here and there, but otherwise it bore a striking resemblance. She didn't mean to doze off, really. But she was so tired, so very, very exhausted, that when she sat on the edge of the bed to read the diary left on it she fell asleep before she could even turn the first page.
It wasn't anything like the hundreds of possibilities she'd pictured. It was better. There wasn't any real story in it; instead, it went through bits and pieces of an ordinary, uneventful life. That's all it was, just tiny, random, sweet little slices of some unremarkable but still somehow wonderful life. Her life. Her only life.
Her name, in the dream, was Cheryl. It had always been Cheryl. Not Alessa, not Heather, not Cheryl for the second time over. She was just plain, ordinary Cheryl, living in her plain, ordinary house with her plain, ordinary family. And it was the most amazing family she'd ever come across.
Harry Mason was her father, of course. Her real father, who paced outside in the waiting room when she was born, who was there for her first words and her first steps every time, because there was only one time. She was his, and only his. There was no Dahlia to harm her in that world, no Alessa to give herself away while the world crumbled around them, none of it. It was just Cheryl, her father, and his wife.
And his wife never fell ill, never died. There she was Cheryl's mother, who carried her in her womb and was the only woman ever to do so, and who was a wonderful woman who truly loved and cared for her daughter more than anything in the world. They always laughed when they were together. The subject matter changed as she grew older, from dolls to boys and everything in-between. Even in bad times, they found a reason to be happy, to laugh.
The world outside her home was just as perfect in the dream. School was a place she only dreaded if she forgot to study for a test, and no one teased her, or wrote on her desk, or called her names. The only pain came from slips and falls in the schoolyard, little accidents that really had no lasting effect in the long run.
If anything, the scrapes and bruises had an upside. There, Lisa Garland wasn't a suffering nurse blackmailed into working in the dank basement of some hospital. She was just a school nurse, with a bright and cheerful office that wasn't scary at all despite all the bandages and medicines it housed. In fact, Cheryl would often visit Ms. Garland with Claudia--who there was always the little six-year-old Alessa was so close to she called her a sister, not the cruel, evil woman she grew to become--and they would take candies from the bowl on her desk, claiming to be hungry and desperate for a little pick-me-up. Really, they just liked talking to her. The candies were just a small bonus.
Cheryl was in the middle of dinner with her parents when she woke up, and she wasn't Cheryl anymore. She was Heather, cold and hungry and still very tired, covered in blood that wasn't hers and wounds that weren't dressed, sitting in a sick mockery of her father's bedroom while living nightmares crawled the halls outside. And this time, even though she remembered that lovely dream, there were no tears of happiness. There was only bitterness in knowing she'd never have anything like that life, and hate for everyone and everything that made sure of it. For a time she sat on the grimy bed in silence, glaring daggers at her boots and not sure if she wanted to scream, or hit something, or maybe be sick all over the floor. It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. But then, nothing was when it came to her life, was it?
"Now that's a 'paradise' I'd like to see," she grumbled while rubbing at her eyes. She stood slowly and stretched a little, the slight movement still being enough to make her wince in pain. "It's too bad life doesn't work that way, huh?"
With a bitter laugh to no one in particular, she readied her weapon and set out into the twisted halls again. It was time to get this damned nightmare over with.