For a while I found myself playing with the idea of knowing I was in a dream. At first it didn't seem very likely. I'd be awake and then the next moment I would be getting killed. There was no true interlude between the waking hours and the dread. Occasionally a glimmer of difference would peek into the dream. Either something out of place in such a way that I snap out of my dream state. Or the terror of the situation would be so great that I willed myself to consciousness. Immediately closing my eyes as tightly as I could until I heard the familiar silence of my bedroom.
Each night I would sit there thinking about something. A number, a place, a concept, I would drill it into my mind until it was on repeat. I would hold onto this intrusive thought no matter how exhausted I got until inevitably I fell asleep. However that thought would carry with me. A tiny tendril of fabric to connect the waking self to the dreaming self. In that moment I opened my eyes within my room and looked around. I was here.
I was in the nightmare where my home sat amidst the endless nothing. Outside the window lurked the monster that came for my flesh. It would wait until I peeked and our eyes met. Once I did it would leap into the room and kill me. But this time it was different. I knew that this was the plan. Instead I turned to my bedroom door and walked through it. Down a hallway that wasn't quite mine into a kitchen that was slightly off. Our living room too wasn't quite all there. Shelves where they shouldn't be, more doors than there should be. Everything askew if you focused on it too long.
I opened the living room door to the outside world. The ground looked like the surface of the moon. Lifeless and barren. As far as I could see it was nothing but blackness and yet I could still see the ground. No stars in the sky, no air touching my skin, it was as if I was standing at the bottom of the void. I looked around and did not see my hunter. I knew he was nearby but not where. The stairs down from our door weren't right either. They skewed to the left down the side of the home instead of away from it. I walked down to the ground and turned to the house. All of the lights were off. None of the windows looked right.
Even the roof was wrong.
Atop the roof I saw it standing there. Something like a Vampire but if you focused on it there were qualities of a werewolf. Not necessarily in joints or hair, but general bulk. This creature was large and vicious. I had some decisions to make, would I try to fight it or would I flee? I had never felt in control before but I also hadn't locked eyes with it yet. I turned and I ran. My speed started slow but increased faster and faster. Before I knew it I felt like I was moving faster than anything I could imagine. I glanced back to see my home vanishing off into the darkness at record pace. It wouldn't be long before I lifted straight off the ground.
I was flying and I didn't know how. I also didn't know how to control it. I felt light, so very light. Like a leaf on a windless breeze. This carried on for some time. I relaxed in the sky and felt my heart calm. It would feel like forever before my alarm clock rang and woke me up. I looked around my room. Waking up from something other than the searing pain of my own heart was a new experience.
Could I take this further? Could I fight back? Just how much control would I have over the narrative of my own nightmares? Would the horrors of my dreams grow as I grow? I didn't know. But I didn't have much choice but to find out.
