I
rested in comfortable blankets and sheets,
nestled
beneath the warm weight of my bedding,
drifting
through dreams of sundry foreign worlds
and
smiling softly that I'd fly the next day.
I
soared over valleys and swooped into canyons,
the
wind my brain simulated feeling realer than life.
The
sky was a bright, sensual orange, toeing hesitantly
on
a sea of gold.
I
inhaled deeply, the frosty atmosphere through which I flew,
salty
breeze grazing my cheeks as below the land disappeared,
replaced
by those amber, flowing waves. And seagulls cried
at
my approach, but I rose much further than they could ever aspire.
Up
beyond the limits of aeroplanes, and eventually
even
satellites, until I was enveloped in a lush cosmic darkness.
It
was a comfortable darkness, one I wouldn't mind visiting again
if
given the chance. And stars twinkled about me.
But
the black began to shift, morphing insidiously,
from
the guarding hands that held up the worlds
to
something much more threatening. Something unwelcome
and murderously chilling to the spine.
I
tossed and turned, sheets tangling 'round my legs
as
the suffocating terror encroached on my dreamscape.
I
was no longer free, no longer flying. Instead I fell,
limbs
arrested to my sides, and I screamed.
Reality
spun, from gold to black, as I plummeted down
to
the skies I'd left behind, once beautiful orange,
now
threatening red. And I felt his hand for the first time.
A
cold grip, a skeletal fist, wrapping sternly about my arm.
He
held still at first, observing from the evil silence he cast,
then
he jerked. He pulled. He ripped at my skin.
I
bolted upright in the tangle of sheets, glistened with frigid
sweat.
And he stood at my side.
His
face was a skull, his eyes purple haze,
he
opened his jaw with a crack and spilled out a serpentine tongue.
Then
he spoke, a voice festered by time, archaic and grating.
“Will
you chase the monsters away?”
Points: 181
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