Shayde

Shayde's Nightmare
I had a nightmare once. I got sick, real sick. The kind of sick where it feels like the world itself is trying to kill you. Air stabs your insides with each breath. The burn of water traces every part of your throat on the way down. The barest movement feels like metal shards ripping in every joint.

I died in that nightmare, but I wasn't allowed to leave my body. I watched my mom cry herself to sleep, unable to move to comfort her. I heard my dad lose himself in a bottle while cursing The Light. My brother and sister were nowhere to be found.

As the sun set in that nightmare, it grew cold. It wasn’t a normal cold. Normal cold only goes so far into you. Even during the blizzards of my youth, normal cold could only worm its way in so far. Normal cold always had an ending to it, a limit, a wall it could never pass. The fire of your soul is enough to keep it from going too deep.

This nightmare cold, it wasn't normal. There was a force behind it, like a screaming drill of whispers. No heat could thaw it, no wall could stop it. It just borrowed and burrowed until I forgot what warmth felt like. I was trapped in a cage of ice, frozen to my dead body. The ice of the cage whispered and writhed. It sang a terrible melody of whispered screams that I could not silence.

Then my body moved. It rose, stiff and unnatural,  arms bent in bad ways. A wave of pain radiated from within, clawing its way out of my stomach, seizing control of my body with a hunger i don’t want to describe. My cage of ice ached with that hunger.

I knew what it wanted, I knew what was going to happen. I fought it, pounded on that ice with all I had. I screamed, I cursed, I pleaded. I watched my parents die. I forget what happened next, or maybe I don't want to remember. All I know is that was still hungry when I left that night.

I never knew a dream to have a smell. My nightmare smelled of blood.

When I awoke from the nightmare, I wasn't at home anymore. I was in a dark crypt, atop a pile of bodies. The cage was gone, the whispers were gone and I could move once again. I was scared at first, I hid in a corner, I cried. Voices in the dark, ragged, but kind, had told me things had changed. Home was gone, my life was gone, and we were all forsaken by The Light. Forsaken. That's what we are now. I was just glad the nightmare was finally over and that terrifying cage of ice was gone.

I hate that cage. I hate the song that it rang with, I hate the voice that whispered. I hate them all with the rage of my dead father. I hate them all with the screams of my dead mother.

I had a nightmare once, and I’ll never sleep again.