The Dream

     The blood-red sky above forgave nothing. Even if the tall trees hid an inexistent sun, its beams were sending a dark, reddish glow everywhere, making the sense of unreality even more unbearable. He was suffocating and he couldn’t do anything to prevent it. He couldn’t move.

      This cursed place had haunted him for months and even if he knew it couldn’t have been real, he had hoped with every inch of his body and with every particle of his soul never to see it again.

     It was a forest but the trees were so thick and black that it was impossible to see too far between them. It felt like they were closing in around him, imprisoning him, taking away his ability to think straight, getting into his soul to pervert it. What was he doing here? Where was he? And who was he after all?

     He tried hard to remember how he got there but couldn’t remember anything at all. He tried to remember his family. Had he any family at all? Why was this happening to him? Why him? He tried to get a grip on himself and he HAD to make his head stop spinning. What that his head spinning on the ground?

     And then he saw it. Sliding through the trees, tall and slim like a serpent, and white like the first snow of the year. Why was it always sliding like that, always around him but never approaching? Was it waiting for him to follow it? Everytime he tried it disapeared and anyway he couldn’t move? Could he? He could feel his body, everything fell so real. He watched his fingers like he had never seen such things before. He tried to move them. They moved. If his hands worked then why would his legs as well? He made a small, shy step forward.

     He looked up again but the luminous form seem to have disapeared. He looked around carefully listening at the same time for any sound at all. But it was impossible to hear anything. Nothing was moving, everything seemed dead or waiting for something terrible to happen. There was no cloud on the red sky.

     Then he moved a bit more toward the darkness of the trees. He didn’t know why, it was like something was pushing him from behind, like a whisper or a gentle breeze. He was drawing closer and closer to the dark wall in front of him but he just couldn’t stop. One more moment passed, he had passed into the darkness and now all he could see was black, dense, almost solid nothingness. But his eyes slowly got used to it and after what felt like hours he could see a bit more before him. He looked up at the sky but this time there was something new to see. A tiny star appeared, dark so it could easily been seen on the see of blood around it.

     Then he saw it again, standing in the darkness in front of him. Still he couldn’t see it properly, it seemed to be blurred but of one thing he was sure and that it was human. Boy or girl, he didn’t know, he didn’t care. All he cared about was to catch that God forgotten ghost and ask it what it wanted from him, why was it always bringing him there, why couldn’t it just leave him alone?

     But again he had no luck for before he could get his hands on it, it evaporated in thin air. He wanted to swear out of frustration but found out that he had no voice. Instead he decided to move forward in the darkness, determined not to allow it to fool him again like a little child. He walked and walk for what seemed like days. At a certain point he could swear that he was going in circle chasing the sounds made by his own steps. And yet no other sound came, he was surrounded by darkness and what was worse was that he was fast panicking.

     After blindly walking a bit more forward he came across a black stone path that went straight through the forest. It looked suspicious, he knew that it could be dangerous to step on it but he couldn’t stop feeling that the path could have been his salvation.

     “No!”

     He stopped dead in his tracks. From where came that whisper?  Was is in his head? It was certainly not his voice. It didn’t sound like it. Then without knowing why he looked back and saw it again. Standing in the dark not far from him but still blurred. What should he do? Step on the path or follow his obsession? He knew that the path could have brought him out of there and he knew that following the shadow would be mad. Why he decided to chase it, he never knew but moments later he was following it for this time it did not disapeared but it was backing away from him. The more he advanced the more it ran away from him. He broke into a run but the shadow got further and further, always further and for one desperate moment he thought he had lost it.

     And then it stopped and he got closer. He thought that the moment to discover its identity had finally come, but then just before he could get close to it to turn it around he lost control over his body. Again he stood paralyzed and realized that he was in a clearing in the middle of which stood a huge, dead tree. It was so thick that perhaps not even twenty people could embrace it’s trunk. And so tall that it almost covered the whole sky, apart from the little star that was still clearly visible.

     The tree seemed to be alive though, it was vibrating slowly and he wondered who could he had known such a thing since he wasn’t close to it nor he could seem much because of the darkness. The shadow stood there in front of the tree doing apparently nothing. For a moment he wondered if that was all, if he would never find out who or what the shadow was, if there was maybe some piece missing from the puzzle.

     And then, slowly the shadow began to move…

     “Jan!”

     It was coming toward him but the way it moved looked unnatural. He knew it couldn’t move like that, it was sliding and curving like a snake and twitching. And before he realized what was going it was in front of him, barely a few inches from his face.

     “Jan!”

     And it began to turn to him, slowly. And as it did that he felt the terror rising in him. He wanted to escape, to run but he just couldn’t do it.

     “No” almost done, we was close to seeing its face…

     “Jan!”

     “No!.”

     “Jan come back!”

     His heart was beating like mad, like it wanted to flee his body and leave him behind. “No…” Why? “NO…” Why not? “NO!!!”

     “Jan, wake up! Wake up I tell you! JAN!”

     “Wh-what happened? LET GO OF ME!”

     “Jan, stop fighting it’s me!”

     “Aileen?”

     “Are you alright?”

     “Yeah, yeah I’m alright. Just a nightmare.