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A Fearful Reality
Sitting hunched over on his bed, dangling his feet off the edge, wearing worn underwear and a stained white t-shirt, the man rubs his eyes. He then runs his fingers through his coarse hair compulsively, revealing crusted eyes, underlined with thick deep circles. He stares down at his bed with sincere longing and distrust, desire and fear. When the temptation of sleep grows too great, the man forces himself to stand up, for the man knows he mustn’t sleep. With each second, his body craves the easiness of sleep. He couldn’t do it again. Endless nights of dreams; endless nights of fear, a fear becoming more vivid and more frightening each slumber. The man stands in the darkened room like a half-naked ghost. Tragically, the body prospers over the will of the man, and he falls onto the bed into an instantaneous sleep.
The man opens his eyes, peering around, deciphering his surroundings. He sits on the cold floor of a dark hallway. The hallway is scattered with elongated shadows like fingers reaching toward him, for him, toward him. Inching himself off the ground, a chill attaches onto his spine and fills his body like a virus: the hallway is unearthly cold, and goosebumps rose up his bare legs. With his uncovered feet against the icy ground, he lurked down the darkened hallway. In this dream, the man recalls other long sinister nights and understands his only passage of escape: he needs to die.
Each turn looking similar, the dream seemed to be an endless maze with hallway after hallway, dark turn after dark turn. Dazed and weary, the man’s steps slowed to a plodding walk. His original alertness numbed to fatigue. His mind was so fogged that when he turned another hopeless dark corner, he almost stepped right into him.
Looming above the half naked man, a formidable figure smiles down toward him. His smile portrays a row of crooked yellow - so immensely yellow - teeth that drip with saliva and spit and dried blood. Each of his muscular arms bulges in defined strength. The entirety of his body is plastered with a skin tight leather-rubber black suit. Draping over his black attire is a swirl of chains and locks, none of which touched the floor but wrap around his torso and shoulders, dangling near his knees, like a moveable cage. The black suit rises up to his neck, where a mask begins - a mask that covers his scalp and entire head. The only holes and revealing of skin are for his yellow smile and his protruding, hungry, bloodshot eyes. In his large hand is grasped a long thick rusted knife. This large figure before the man appears in every dream, and in each dream the muscular man has one goal: to kill the dreamer .
It raises his rusty knife, but the man bolts away. It chases behind, but his chains and size slow him down; regardless, the man knew the killer would not stop until it found him. Quickly the man loses sight of masculine being in the maze of hallways - but the sight of it wasn’t the worst part - it was his voice. The covered chains rattled loudly, echoing through the hallways. It’s voice was piercing and low - it only bellowed two long words.
Come Here. His words resound through the hallway and into the man’s skull. Come Here. The man’s desperate run is futile, for he was unsure if he was running toward or away from it. Come Here. Beginning to tire, his speed slows. Cooooome Heeeeeere. The yell drills into the man’s ears and fills the maze of shadowed hallways like the smoke of a burning house.
The man almost runs straight into a wall. Frozen and exhausted, he is at a dead end. He jolts around to retrace his steps, but it is too late. Still and dire and horrible, it stands at the other end - his chains shrouding him like a drape, his large figure filling up almost the entire hallway, trapping the dreamer in the dead end. The man searches for another turn - a window, a door, anything - with no avail.
It takes his time, knowing his prey is trapped; finally, it steps toward the entrapped man and raises his knife and....
Suddenly there is an absolute darkness, and the man’s eyes readjust; he is back in his bed. He immediately sits up. His heart beat pounds and pumps blood through his fragile ears. The shadows of the room remind him too much of the dark hallways in the dream, so the man gets up, stumbling toward the bathroom. The man reaches into the dark room and turns on the light.
He peers up: his face grimaces; his hair rises; his neck twitches; his mind blanks; his throat dries; his body freezes. Written in dark rich blood, sprawled across the mirror in disheveled letters was DON’T TURN AROUND. But the man didn’t need to - all he needed to do was look into the mirror behind him. His veins turn to ice, blood rushes from his face, his vision blurs to a mist. Standing behind him, filling the entire shower frame, is the being from the dream, now more gruesome and distinct in the light. With surprising swiftness it is upon the man instantly, tackling him, pressing him to the cold tiles.
On top of the man, Edgar’s rotted drooling smile stretches across his masked face like the Cheshire Cat. His victorious grin is accompanied with the slow sheathing of his long rusty knife. The knife inches slowly toward in the ceiling, clutched tightly in his grasp; then, the knife thrusts downward, stabbing the man. Blood immediately burst everywhere – covering the floor, covering the wall, and covering the attacker before him. Everything becomes red like the writing on the mirror. With one long thrust, it forces the knife into him. As the man lying on the floor’s sight softens, the last he saw was the victorious figure above him covered in blood, his blood, and then once more, everything is black.
The man was back in his bed for a second time that night. His mind stings, sharp and frightened. He analyzes over his body, which was unscathed. He starts to realize that his dream in the dark maze of hallways led into another dream. He glances around, panicked of his uncertainty of if he was truly awake or not, for both dreams were so real, so terrifying. The man stays perched in his bed, looking at the gaping door before him and into the dark empty hallway.
His heart remains unfalteringly fast and his eyes stay widened and afraid, not daring to sleep again. The time goes by slowly but progressively when the man thinks he hears something. His drooping eyes perk open and his ears become instantly alert. Listening into the darkness before him, staring intently, a screech emits.
Cooooome Heeeeeere!
The man just sits
and waits.
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