The way this story begins is far from a “once upon a time.” and it doesn’t end with a “happily ever after,” because in a couple of peoples life, those two phrases don’t exist.
There are doors, doors that are open to the other side. Portals that to the human eye don’t know exist in our safe little world. Our eyes look over the crazed past that hides right beneath our fingertips. The side of sick thrills, chills, and insane phenomenon. There lie secrets of the unforgiving past. Secrets of the dead, the alive, the forgotten, and the forever lost. When you lose your mind, and feels like the room is circling around you and you can hear the ringing in your ears from demons screaming in the background. When you truly feel like your life is at stake and your heart is outrageously thudding from your chest, when you feel like you’re about to be possessed. And when you know that this feeling will never end.
I woke up in my parent’s bedroom.
What am I doing in here? How did I get in here? What’s going on? Did I come in here...
Then sudden panic sunk in.
I couldn’t get out of the web of blankets that I was under fast enough. I kicked the sheets off and threw the comforter out of my way, throwing myself in the direction of the door. My hands frantically searched for the doorknob. Once finding the doorknob, I twisted it left, and then right. It was like it wasn’t working; no matter how much I twisted it I couldn’t hear the “click” of the opening. While in the midst of opening the door, I was looking over my shoulder. The darkness started at the left, upper corner of the room. And it was cloaking the walls, the furniture, the floor, slowly. My heart was thudding, my breath was ragged, and little driblets of sweat were running down my neck - although it was very, very cold in the room, so cold chills ran down my spine… then started the blood curdling screams. The screams were a mixture of agony, pain, and sorrow. Wales of cries were very faint in comparison to the screams. I sunk my back down the door, grabbing two fistfuls of hair, adding my own screams to the evil song.
“Leave me alone!” I shrieked. When I screamed, it was like a whisper. Although the screams were coming from the pit of my stomach, I couldn’t compare to the immortal sound. I asked myself why I was so scared. Why when I woke up I felt such an urge to get out of the room? Why I remembered this fear? I couldn’t come up with a logical reason; but yet there I was, my eyes bugging, and my heart thudding. And more, why wasn’t anyone helping me? Why couldn’t anyone hear the screams? Why couldn’t anyone help? And why were they here, torturing me?
Then I remembered the dream.
I remembered the detail, the sounds, and the scared-ness of it all. I was young when I had this dream,
and I woke up screaming from the nightmare. Watching the darkness escape my small room, I was confused by the nightmare.
Now I remembered, now it was here, and now it was haunting me. I wish I could remember how it ended! What happened? Did it eventually stop and I could get out? But I felt trapped, I felt horror, I felt scared. And that’s something that I wasn’t used to. I wanted it to end, I wanted it to stop and just go away. But the end of the dream didn’t seem like it was near. I stumbled to my feet, and tried to feel for a wall, for a window, for the bed. But yet, I felt nothing. It was like walking into a black hole. The hole was getting bigger, and yet as I was running I could still hear the screams like they were right there. Screaming in my ear, taking my breath away, finally I gave up. I sat down and let the screams take control of me. I felt pushes against my body. And I was now laying down, my back to the floor. I felt an immense amount of weight on me. Kind of like being suffocated, but a thousand times worse, I could tell the demons liked my pain, now hearing screams, but wails of immortal laughs. And giggles of small children prancing around me. I didn’t exactly know what to call the things that were torturing me, therefore, that is why I settled on demons.
Then it was my parents’ bedroom again.
I opened my eyes, and everything was the same like it has always been. Yet the same confusion overwhelmed me. Then the same urge to get out. Then it started all over again. Just like a recurring nightmare.
“Not again,” I screamed when I realized this nightmare just simply refused to end. But this time I gave up, and fell down and let myself slip into the darkness.
“Not again,” I whispered.
With my actions failing, knowing that I would wake up again, I tried something new this time. I opened myself up, I lay myself flat on the floor.
“Come and get me!” I screamed, “I’m not scared of you, come on!” I wanted to challenge the demons. But as soon as I saw… it, I regretted my words as soon as I spoke them. The thing I saw didn’t have a name, a specification, a sex, anything to identify it. It was just a thing that was staring at me straight in the eyes.
It had hair, long, raggedy, dark, damaged, choppy, hair. Its eyes were deep, pitch black, with little red dots dead smack in the center. The mouth was crooked, the teeth were points, and the bottom row was rows. It was like sharks teeth, but they screeched when it slightly grazed one another. Like fingernails on a chalkboard. The same noise that instinctively makes your hands fly to your ears and press against them hard. The exact sound that raised the hairs on your neck and send chills up your spine. Its breath was hard, struggled. The flesh of the thing couldn’t easily be skin, more like bones. The thing had no muscle on the bones, just black ashy bone with thin cracks.
Standing right at my feet, looking right at me it scarred me, scared me.
It opened its mouth and let out a wild shriek. I couldn’t help but screaming, although it was a wasted effort, you couldn’t hear mine in comparison with its.
“Stop,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Leave me alone!” Pain shot from one point of my body to another. I had absolutely no idea what was causing it, either. My hands balled into fists, my toes curled and my face scrunched up.
It felt like my body was being burned, like every inch of my skin was set ablaze. The tips of my fingers and toes were unable to move. My body was unable to move. I was frozen; I couldn’t talk, scream, or move.
Again, I woke up in my parent’s bedroom, bewildered. I remembered both incidents, but both felt like dreams. Just things to stuff away in my memory, nothing really important. But I felt the urge to get out like before, but I stayed in bed.
Looking around for a while, the bed sheets started to swallow me up. I started having trouble breathing, hyperventilating for my staggering breath. I clutched my hands and fought against the sheets. I kicked a foot in the air and held it there. While doing so, I threw my fist at the blankets and that gave me a small amount of room to breath.
Finally I was able to climb out of the sheets, and relief washed over me. I jumped from the bed and again, threw myself at the door. This time it opened, and more relief came. I looked behind me, and the darkness was spreading more rapidly than I remembered it did in the dream – in the nightmare.
I stepped outside of my parent’s room to find everything looking strangely normal, but vacant. I could tell just by hearing absolute silence that no one was home.
My ears were ringing, my heart was racing, and my palms were very sweaty. I tried to contain myself, catch my breath; but nothing would stop my searching eyes, and my thudding heart. Something still just wasn’t right.
I walked and underneath my feet the wooden floorboards creaked. I walked slowly, constantly checking behind my shoulder. I walked all through the house. Finally I was at the kitchen. I got a cold glass of water and wiped the back of my neck and forehead.
It was still too quiet, too okay, too perfectly neat and so silent! What was with the silence, it was more than silence, but dead beat silence that roamed through the whole house, and what felt like the entire earth.
Maybe it was another nightmare, being alone and the last person on the earth. But, I didn’t feel alone. Because I felt like there were several pairs of eyes watching my every step.
Just, go sit down and I can figure this out, I can. I found myself thinking.
The sofa made squeaking noises as I sat down on it. After what felt like hours of sleeping, I was still tired. Sleep couldn’t be bad, but if I did sleep would I wake up to the never – ending nightmare again, or would it be normality. Or would I again wake up in my parent’s bed immediately almost suffocating after opening my eyes.
I lay down on the couch and pulled the blanket that rests on the arm of the couch over me. I closed my eyes shut tight, and not ten seconds later I was almost asleep. I was in that weird, delusional twilight sleep phase. The one where if you trip in your dream, you wake up with a jerk.
That wasn’t my case, I wasn’t lucky enough to have that luxury. Instead I dreamed of my previous dream. Of the darkness, the demons prancing around me, of the one particular demon that looked… indescribable. But at the end I was staggering around in the darkness, hearing frequent laughs, squeals, or screams far off in the distance.
“Hello?” I would yell. No luck.
I stumbled on my own feet and that awoke me. I was awake but my eyes were shut. I kept them shut for I don’t know how long. But I knew it was long enough to realize that what I was laying on was not the couch, it wasn’t the soft fuzzy blanket I was using, and I did not feel safe.
It was long enough to realize that I was lying on what felt like nothing, I had no blanket, and I knew why I was not safe.
Because I was in the darkness, and I knew that because I could hear the screams, and even beneath my eyelids, I could see the indescribable creature that was standing at my feet.
But also because I realized, that this nightmare would never end.
“Never,” I heard thousands of demons whispers echo in the darkness.
Never, I repeated in my mind.
Never.
(Criticism is greatly appreciated, thanks!)
