Ashes In My Mouth

I was fifteen when I learned that death doesn’t wait for you to be ready.

It reaches when it wants.

It takes what it wants.

And sometimes… it lets you feel it.

I woke in the middle of the night with my body burning like I had been dropped into fire. Not heat. Not sickness. Burning deep, violent, wrong. My skin ached like it was being pulled apart from the inside. My chest felt tight. My throat was dry.

And there was a taste in my mouth.

Ash.

Thick. Bitter. Real.

I sat up in the dark, shaking, trying to breathe, trying to understand why my body felt like it had just survived something I couldn’t remember. I checked the room. Nothing. No smoke. No fire. No reason.

Just the feeling of having lived through something horrific.

I told myself it was a nightmare waiting to happen. Forced myself back down. Forced my eyes shut.

And then it came.

A woman screaming in flames.

Fire swallowing her. Wrapping around her. Consuming everything. The sound of her voice wasn’t just fear it was agony. The kind that tears through you because it knows it’s the end.

I tried to move.

Tried to scream.

Tried to reach her.

I couldn’t.

My body was locked. My voice was gone. I was trapped inside that moment, forced to watch someone burn alive and feel every second of the terror without being able to do anything to stop it.

Helpless.

Powerless.

Useless.

I woke up choking for air, heart slamming against my ribs, the taste of ash still clinging to my tongue like it refused to leave me.

I didn’t tell anyone.

How could I?

I was fifteen. You don’t tell people you woke up feeling like you were burning alive. You don’t tell them you watched someone die in your sleep. You bury it. You swallow it. You pretend you’re normal.

So I went to school the next day and acted like nothing happened.

By afternoon, the whispers started.

A close friend… gone.

Car crash.

At first it felt distant. Just words moving through hallways. Shock passing from person to person. But a few days later, I walked into the viewing… and everything inside me went cold.

There was no casket.

Just a photograph.

And an urn.

Ashes.

Someone told me what happened in a quiet voice like saying it too loud would make it worse. The car caught fire. Everyone inside burned alive. There was nothing left to identify… only dental records.

And in that moment, it felt like my heart stopped beating.

Because I had already felt it.

The burning.

The screaming.

The ash in my mouth.

I had lived it before I even knew it was real.

I stood there staring at that urn and felt like I was going to collapse. My chest tightened. My hands went numb. My mind kept replaying that night the fire, the helplessness, the way my body reacted like it was there.

Did I feel it when it happened?

Did I see it somehow?

Was that woman in the flames… someone in that car?

I never told anyone.

Not about the burning.

Not about the nightmare.

Not about the way I felt death before anyone even spoke its name.

I carried it alone.

Because admitting it meant admitting something was wrong with me. That something in me was open to things it shouldn’t be. That maybe I wasn’t just afraid of the dark… maybe the dark knew me.

That night didn’t just scare me.

It broke something open.

Before that, the strange feelings, the heaviness, the unexplainable moments they were distant. Easy to ignore. Easy to push aside.

After that… they were inside me.

Personal.

Intimate.

Violent.

I realized death isn’t always silent. Sometimes it screams. Sometimes it reaches. Sometimes it drags you into the moment whether you’re there or not.

And once you feel it… you can’t unfeel it.

That was the moment my path started forming.

Not because I wanted it.

Not because I was curious.

But because I needed to understand why I felt something that didn’t belong to me.

Why pain could travel.

Why fear could echo.

Why death could touch someone miles away and leave a mark.

That night was darkness.

Real darkness.

The kind that settles into your bones and stays there.

It taught me what helplessness feels like. What it means to witness suffering and not be able to save anyone. What it means to carry a memory no one else knows exists.

And from that moment on… I stopped pretending the world was normal.

Because normal doesn’t explain waking up burning.

Normal doesn’t explain tasting ash.

Normal doesn’t explain feeling someone’s final moments before the world even knows they’re gone.

That night shaped me.

It hardened me.

It haunted me.

It pushed me toward the very thing I would spend my life chasing.

Understanding the dark.

Because I met it early.

And it never really let me go.