Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Chapter
Two
Amina snuggled deeper inside the covers, ignoring the music which grew progressively louder from the alarm on her phone. She was surprised Mark hadn’t told her to turn it off yet.
Her eyes popped open and she shot to a sitting position in a panic. She frantically reached for her phone to shut it off before he got angry. Amina couldn’t hit the snooze button fast enough. Releasing a deep sigh of relief she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Mark was still asleep but his side of the bed was empty. In fact, it didn’t appear to be slept in.
There were times when he’d stay out at all hours of the night and not return for days at a time but something seemed different she couldn’t quite figure it out.
Amina rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and stretched when suddenly all the events of the night before came crashing down on her. The robbery, Mark not answering her calls and then coming home to find him in bed with her cousin.
The worst part wasn’t even the beating where she was certain he’d broken her nose and knocked out some teeth, but the fact that he’d had such little regard for her as his wife and a person that he didn’t care that she knew about his affair.
And then there was Candace’s shrill laugher. It was the same laugher Amina would hear growing up whenever she’d get in trouble with her Aunt for the smallest infraction that none of her cousins would be faulted for.
Amina cautiously touched her face, afraid of the damage she’d suffered. There didn’t seem to be any swelling, or pain for that matter. Her nose felt completely intact as well. Running her tongue along her front teeth, she was relieved to feel they were all there.
Had last night been some kind of freakish nightmare?
One she was certain had ended in her death?
She took a quick look around her room and saw bright colors and paintings adorning the walls. What was going on? When Mark had moved in with her, he insisted she redecorate the house to suit both their tastes in the name of fairness, although when it was all said and done, he’d gotten his way in every decision of the renovations.
The sheets on her bed were pink with rainbows. Mark hated these sheets because he claimed they were childish and no grown woman ‘with sense’ would put them on her bed. She loved pink and girly things because she wasn’t allowed to have them when she was younger.
It was only when she was taken into her grandmother’s custody in her teens was she able to indulge in her love of ‘cutesy’ items and these sheets were one of the first purchases she’d made after inheriting this house. The music on her phone cut on again, and this time she noticed this was a model she’d owned five years back because of the pink and white Hello Kitty cover, another casualty of Mark’s annoyance.
How did she have this phone when Mark had broken it in a fit of rage by smashing it against a wall? She shut the alarm off completely and her home screen popped up with the date.
May 9th.
This couldn’t be right because yesterday was the 9th. She opened her phone to go to the calendar to see if there was an issue with her phone and a chill ran up her spine. The date still said the 9th but it was it was five years earlier.
“What the hell? What’s going on?” she muttered to herself.
She slid out of bed, certain she was in the middle of a dream. She headed to the bathroom and noticed the hole in the wall next to the nightstand was gone. Mark had punched his fist through it with the intention of hitting her but she’d ducked before impact. Her crime according to him was questioning him when he’d come home drunk at 3 in the morning.
She ran her hand along the wall to ensure she wasn’t hallucinating. Something was definitely off. Hesitantly, she stepped into the bathroom and flicked on the light. Her clouds with smiley faces shower curtain hung proudly as if she didn’t have to pack them away when Mark complained about them. But what really took her by surprise was the glimpse of herself she caught in the mirror.
Her skin was flawless. The scar above her eye from when Mark threw a rock at her head because he felt she had been disrespectful to his mother, was gone. She yanked off her frilly pink bonnet and a multitude of knotless braids cascaded down her shoulders. She hadn’t worn this style in years because Mark said braids made her look ‘ghetto’.
Was it possible she had gone back in time somehow? Like in a weird episode of the Twilight Zone? She wasn’t sure how this had happened. And Amina still wasn’t convinced this was all real. This had to be a dream.