You are walking home as night approaches, your nightmare. As you walk down the street, you see the light fading from the sky. There is enough light for you to see where you are going but enough darkness that the street lights are flicking on. The nightmare of sleep is making your eyes dark. You dread the very thought of sleep. Every night you wake up to the same nightmare and tonight should be no different. You cautiously approach your front door and turn the key, allowing yourself entry. The fear weighs heavily on your shoulders as you sit on the couch to watch some TV before bed. You turn on the flat screen, but nothing happens. The TV is still showing a black screen and the lights begin to flicker.
There is nothing unusual about this; the lights often flicker in this house. The TV not turning on is trouble, but you do your best to remain calm. You only stay in this wretched house because no matter where you go the same thing always follows you. It's almost like an apparition, or maybe even a demon but no matter what it's there. Of course, this is another reason you choose to live alone. You don't want to hurt anybody with this condition.
So you sit there, fear building in your heart as it pounds in your chest harder and harder. You can hear the beating. It's like somebody is knocking on your chest like a cop pounds on a door. Thud, Thud, Thud. The sound echoes in your brain as you feel the rush of sleep starting to overwhelm you. You fight it and even start a pot of coffee, hoping to stay away from the dreadful thought of sleep.
I only need to make it through the night. You think to yourself, but night has only just begun, and your eyes are already feeling heavy. It must be this nightmare that haunts you luring you to a humble grave. It's kind of sick when you refer to your bed as a grave but every night that's how it feels. Some night it will be the end of you, all of this, this nightmare. You gulp down your coffee in hopes to gain some energy; it seems to be working but still it's only stalling the inevitable. You will fall asleep and dream it once again, but it never feels like a dream. Its a dream that always feels real. You begin to tremble slightly, and fear is finally starting to overwhelm you. The lights flicker one last time and finally turn off on their own.
It must be time, the game of cat and mouse begins. You stand up from the couch and approach your doorway, leading off to your bedroom. You turn on the light and see that your bed. Your bed is neatly sorted and made up. There was something troubling about this. You didn't make your bed this morning, but here it is as it prepared itself for you.
You feel drawn to fall into yet another slumber of no rest; maybe you did something to deserve this torture. This agony of never being able to love, never able to take on somebody else's embrace. It's like your love is a disease. It happens to be something that causes your infection. Infected with your love, if life isn’t a bitch, you don't know what is. You quit trying to fight it and soon enough, you dress for bed. It's a long white gown that hangs down to your knees. You feel a small breeze roll in behind you, almost as if it's pushing you to your bed. You give into the drive and step forward, one foot after the other, creeping to the edge of your bed. You lay down with a gentle sort of ease as you have done so many times before.
When you are comfortable in your bed, you gently close your eyes, and that's when it starts. The nightmare, the hell of your sleep awakens just as you go under, and darkness overtakes you. Moments later you wake up unable to move, but you can feel it. You can feel their hairy legs as they glide across your body. There must be ten or more tonight. The weight of each step they take has you suffocating in fear. You can't move, and you can feel them climbing higher and higher onto your body. Soon enough you can feel them on your chest and neck. These hairy bastards never seem to give up. You feel a strange sensation when you move your fingertips. You can move for the first time while dreaming. This hell could finally be over. You rapidly sit up and start swiping all the spiders off your body but in the process, you feel several sharp pains on your chest, hip and shin. You rip off the blanket to see a tarantulas biting you. When they pull their oversized fangs from your flesh, you can see the venom and blood dripping from them. You swipe the remaining spiders off you and look in fear when you see a horde more surrounding you. They engulf your body. You let out a bloodcurdling scream as you are being eaten alive by hundred of tarantulas. You can feel them draining your body of all it's essential fluids.
Soon enough you are a fraction of your former self, a sack of bones in a nightgown. The spiders soon disappear leaving you helpless and half dead. You feel a strange sensation in your stomach. It almost reminds you of butterflies in your tummy but more painful. Almost like actual butterflies are flying around in your guts. You look down your body to see your stomach moving around like there are thousands of living creatures inside of you. Your stomach begins to swell and grow. It looks like a balloon full of monsters. This swelling becomes so much to the point that you don't know what to do. It pops, exposing what was inside, it's thousands upon thousands of spiders. All of these babies scatter after this forced c-section. Your children are gone leaving you broken and exposed, your insides out in the open.
In the next second, you wake up from the nightmare but are in an all white room in a white gown, strapped to a different bed. Finally, you feel at ease; the nightmare is finally over. You look down at your wrists and see they are red around the restraints; you must have lost control while you slept once again. To the right of you is a man sitting in a chair holding a notebook on a clipboard. His long white lab coat had his name tag on his right breast pocket, and it reads ‘Dr. Angel’.
“How are you feeling now, Ella? Did the nightmare happen again?” Dr. Angel asks while his pen was in the writing position, almost as if he was going to record what you said.
“Yes doc, it happened again. How many times must I go through this?” you ask with all the energy sapped from your voice.
“As many times, this is necessary darlin’. Good luck next time.” He says before he finishes writing my answer down. He stands up and walks out of the room through the heavy white door with a wired glass window. You lay there confused and exhausted.
Good luck next time he says. Fuck you Dr. Angel.
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