Nightmare Disorder

I stared at my closet door, listening to the growling coming from inside. I knew what I had to do, it was just like every other night.

I could feel my hands grow cold and clammy. I got out of bed, eyeing the door wearily. I wasn’t going to wait for it to chase me. I needed a head start, not that it would make any difference.

After leaving the room and closing the door, I ran down the hall. One that looked nothing like what I was used to. The once bright paint had chipped and began peeling, the wooden floor was falling apart, and instead of having stairs at the end, it ended in woods.

I stopped at the end of the decaying hallway, leaning against a dying tree for support. I tried to catch my breath and ignore the burning in my legs. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rest for too long.

Even if I couldn’t hear it chasing me, I could still feel it. The overwhelming dread that it would catch up with me if I stayed in the same place too long. The growing pit in my stomach every time I slowed down. The feeling that it was watching me at all times.

I didn’t rest for long, breaking into a run the second the air seemed to shift.

The woods were bare and quiet. Not a single creature was alive in this forest, nor could a green plant be found. The ground was covered in dead brown leaves, and decomposing carcasses. Nearly every step I took caused the leaves to make an audible crunch. Either that, or I had to use all my willpower not to gag at the feeling of rotting flesh beneath my feet.

I was deep in the forest now, but I could tell it was still right behind me. My focus soon shifted from staying on a clear path to getting as far as possible from whatever was chasing me.

Trying to avoid looking behind me, I continued to push ahead, ignoring the scratches from left bones or stray branches around me. I pushed forward, not paying any attention to my environment. Every bad decision has a price. I tripped over what was probably a large bone, and bashed my head against a tree.

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“And that’s when I woke up,” I said to my psychiatrist.

“That’s quite interesting,” she said, looking up from her clipboard, “And it seems you started in the same place it ended the night before?”

I nodded, “That’s right.”

She wrote something else down, every pen stroke caused another wave of anxiety to coarse through me. My leg bounced impatiently and my eyes darted across the room. I couldn’t stop my cold hands from moving harshly up and down my arms.

“What about your narcolepsy? Is that getting any better?” she asked, looking back up at me.

I shook my head, “No, I started taking cabs more often because I don’t trust myself to drive anywhere. Coffee doesn’t work, getting more sleep doesn’t help either. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sleeping my time away.”

She gave me what I thought was supposed to be a smile of reassurance, but it seemed forced and unfeeling. “Well, let’s try this,” she took a small orange container off the table next to her and handed it to me. “I want you to try this new medicine that just came in, it has magnificent results and should help with your narcolepsy.”

I pried my hands off my, now irritated, arms and took the bottle from her hand, squeezing it in my fist.

“Now,” she continued, “For the dreams, since they’re lucid, you should be able to… influence them, in a way. Next time you find yourself in this dream, I want you to imagine yourself in a circle. When you’re in this circle, you are completely safe, nothing can hurt you, as long as you’re in this circle. Then, when this… thing presents itself to you, I want you to ask it why. Why it’s chasing you, and what it wants.”

The thought of seeing the source of my dread terrified me, “I-I don’t know, it’s just a dream isn’t it? I don’t think it would want anything from me.”

“You’d be surprised,” she responded, “Every character in our dreams is an extension of ourselves. It could be quite interesting to hear just what this creature has to say.”

‘Interesting for you and your clipboard,’ I thought bitterly to myself.

“Well,” I mumbled, “I guess I could try to-”

“Excellent!” she said almost immediately, “I’ll see you next week.”

She practically shoved me out of her office. I sighed and pulled out my phone, dialing the taxi service with shaky hands. I waited for the cab, watching the cars driving up and down the street. When it finally came I got inside silently and stared at my fidgeting hands. After a while I leaned against the door feeling exhausted. Little by little I could feel myself slipping away...

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I woke up in a dead forest, slumped against a tree. Something was drizzling down my face and my head was pounding. I quickly shook it off, feeling the all too familiar dread collecting in my chest.

My breath quickened as the air became stale. I forced myself to my feet, feeling a small wave of dizziness, and stumbled into a run. I occasionally tripped over my own foot, and lost my balance, but I was still pushing through, until I fell into a dead, black clearing.

My breathing became even more rapid as I made my way to the center of the clearing. There was nowhere for me to hide, and I couldn’t get back up. I tried to think of solutions, and remembered the method my psychiatrist told me about.

I thought about a nicely sized circle, glowing in orange surrounding me. I started to take in slow shallow breaths, telling myself that I was safe. That it couldn’t touch me in here. To my own astonishment, an orange ring formed around me. I let out a shaky nervous laugh.

“I-it worked,” I said, looking around me, the bright orange contrasting from the black colorless world around me.

“What are you going on about?” a deep voice growled.

A person, no that's not a person, people have faces, a thing came out of the forest. It was tall and all black. No face, no features, nothing. It had the shape of a person, well, roughly. It had this… aura around it, as well as this depth, as if it was a hole made to suck everything away. The atmosphere it brought was so suffocating, the dread and anxiety I felt before was nothing like this. I could barely breathe, every movement hurt. It felt like I was dying. The orange circle began to flicker and I pulled myself together, reminding myself that it couldn’t hurt me.

“W-who are you?” I blurted out, trying to find some confidence.

“Hmmm,” the void of a person began to move closer to me, feigning thought, “I think that’s a piece of information I’ll keep to myself. Besides, don’t you have something more important to worry about?”

I felt my heart drop as the light from the circle dimmed slightly, “W-what are you talking about?” I asked, my nervousness becoming more apparent.

“Like… What if I decided to hurt you? Do you really think this little trick is something I haven’t seen?”

“Y-you can’t hurt me while I’m in here, I- This is my dream,” I hesitated, taking a step back.

“Ha!” the creature let out a roar of a laugh, throwing its head back, “Is that really what you think?”

I took another step back in shock, “W-what are you talking about?”

“You thought this was a dream? You’ve been thinking backwards, I assure you everything you see here is real.”

“W-what- No! That’s not true!” I cried out, the orange circle began to flicker, “I-I’ll wake up, a-and I’ll be at home! I-in bed! B-because this is a dream!” I grabbed my arms to hold myself together, and stared at the ground a few feet ahead of me. They’re lying, this can’t be reality. It’s just a nightmare.

“Oh really? And just how will you make it into that lovely room of yours?” he insisted, “You fell asleep in the taxi, remember?”

“I-I” I couldn’t think of a response. It all made sense. I would wake up in different places than when I fell asleep, but whenever I was dreaming, I would be in the same place the last dream ended. “B-but, wait-” Whatever happened in the previous dream was still in place in the next, I could always feel everything, because it really happened. So this fear… this dread… it was all real. It was real. No not it, they. This creature was something. And that something was Terror

“You’ve finally made the connection, haven’t you?” Terror said, stepping over the flickering orange circle. “That little… fantasy you had going on in your head, none of that was real.”

I fell back on the floor, kicking away from the creature, “N-no, t-that’s wrong! Y-You’re wrong!”

They towered over me, a chuckle erupting from them, “And this reality that you’ve been living in, is about to end.”

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I woke up to a loud, blood curdling scream. I was in a hall of bodies. All of them seemed to be sleeping, but none of them were breathing. The atmosphere was so dark and tense. I took a deep breath, and told myself I was alright. This was nothing but a nightmare.

I heard a chuckle coming from behind me. Nightmare or not, I needed to get moving. I stepped over the unmoving bodies and walked out of the room. Outside was a huge dead woods.

“Nowhere else for me to go,” I mumbled to myself and walked past the hollow trees, ignoring the small feeling in my chest that something was off.