Nightmare

[sgbd]

The brisk wind nipped at her bare ankles as Eve skipped down the stone steps of the school building. It was chilly, but the sun was still shining down on the yard spread out like a canvas before her, illuminating everything in a soft, ever-so-slightly golden glow. The grass was a brilliant shade of green, and little crocuses and daffodils were just beginning to poke out of the soil. The trees, too, were finally waking up again after their long winter’s sleep, their leaves unfolding as though to say that even the most frigid of winters couldn’t break their spirit. Eve couldn’t help but smile at the almost idyllic scene. Spring had always been her favorite time of year, when everything was fresh and new and so, so beautiful. She took a deep breath in and exhaled, relishing the smell of the season.


“Ready to go?” a voice spoke from just behind Eve’s right shoulder. She turned around and was greeted by the sight of Hannah, her best and oldest friend. The girl was of a slight, petite build, with bright blue eyes and an explosion of blonde curls atop her head, and sported a cranberry-colored cabled sweater despite the changing weather and a grin that seemed to foretell merry mischief.


“Of course,” Eve replied, grinning right back. They made their way to Hannah’s car amid jokes and fits of giggles, carefree and untroubled by the world. Eve hopped into the passenger seat of the old sedan with the faded paint and the seemingly permanent smell of the coffee Hannah had spilled the previous fall and could never quite get out of the carpeted floor of the vehicle. Hannah took her place in the driver’s seat, and not a minute later, two other girls leaped into the back seat.


“Sorry we’re late! Stupid English teacher kept me after class again,” said one of them. This was Abby, the third friend in their group of four. Abby was always running late. That was just who she was, a hectic hurricane that charged through life without stopping to think. None of them minded, though; she always came through when it really mattered. The other girl, who was too busy scrolling through her phone to say a word, was Rebecca. She was Abby’s twin sister, obsessed with everything social media and fashion. It would be easy to assume that she was a shallow person with little to no academic interests, but she was equally enthusiastic about math and science.


Hannah rolled her eyes and started the car. They were going to Eve’s house like they always did after school. It was a few miles away down a winding back road that hardly anybody ever used, but that had its fair share of accidents. Eve’s mother was always concerned about them taking such a hazardous route, but Eve had always brushed the protestations off. They were careful, so what did it matter? Besides, the road was pretty much deserted at that time of day anyway.


They were zipping by down that road, the trees blurring together outside the car window, when, in the corner of her eye, Eve saw another car heading towards them, driven by some guy whose face she didn’t recognize. At first, she thought nothing of it. But then the other car suddenly swerved straight into their car’s path. She could feel the panic rising up in her chest like a tidal wave, and she barely had time to scream before the two cars collided head-on.


Suddenly she was immersed in pain. She was on fire. Her veins were flowing with acid. She was being simultaneously crushed by an unimaginable weight and exploded from the inside. Every fiber in her body had been shattered, ripped apart, shredded until there was nothing left of her. All of this pain was compacted into and instant, and then… Nothing.


What felt like millennia later, she opened her eyes. At first, she recognized nothing, her surroundings hazy and her vision still blurry. Then her vision cleared, and she saw a face that she instantly recognized as the driver of the other car. Her head still pulsing a bit with the lingering pain of the crash, she locked eyes with the driver, unable to comprehend what was happening in between the headache and the nausea she felt like a rising tide in her stomach.


“You,” she mumbled, barely able to breathe out the words. “Who… Who are you?”


@Daemonic

 

[Drakonian]

"For the third fucking time, Jess, I do not want to have anything else to do with you! Is it that hard for you to get it?"


Travis shouted into his phone loud enough for the neighbors to hear as he turned to close the door. He lived in a decent home. in a rather small neighbourhood, perhaps the most quiet in the town. Not taking the time to listen anymore to whatever his ex-girlfriend, Jessica, had to say, he moved the phone away from his ear and hit the end call button on the screen, locking the screen afterwards and shoving the phone in the pocket of his black jeans. Travis wasn't anything special. Tall, somewhat lanky, even, with messy blond hair and eyes of a mix between green, blue and gray. Bony facial features and a proeminently carved jaw, perhaps due to the fact that he was quite skinny.


His steps, otherwise betraying a deeply seething anger, carried him towards his car, a black 1967 Chevrolet Camaro. Slipping within the car, he shoved the keys in the contact and relished in the sound of the roaring engine, soon after deciding to turn on some music to help with his irritated mood. He needed to make it to an appointment within the hour, but the place was quite far. He figured he would have to take the shorter route, a pretty ill-fated road. He remembered, for the moment, of driving by paramedics struggling to resuscitate a woman near two wrecked cars, all while others were struggling with pulling out a man from one of the wrecks, or, at least, what was left of him.


As soon as his car sped up on the shortcut road, one of his favorite songs kicked in, immediately causing him to take speed as he began singing, rather merrily, along with the song:


I live behind the wheel


The dusty grey keeps calling me


So I drive through the night


Another city, another scene


Straight ahead aimlessly-


The open road is my bride


This is life on the fast lane





His attention, however, devided by the exaggerated excitement, made him oblivious to the fact that another car was heading straight towards him right from the opposite side, at considerable speed. A moment stretched like eternity, moment in which he found himself unable to react properly and simply take his hands off the wheel. The impact was harsh, destructive, causing both cars to first compress before recoiling and remaining wrecked on the road. And suddenly...


There he was. Standing before her. He gazed down at her, unable to comprehend just what exactly was this. The surrounding area was a thick and rather dark forest. How did he even end up there? He couldn't recall. And he stood before a young girl who was looking back at him with the same confusion that he had.


"Um... question is... who are you? And where are we?"

 

[sgbd]

Eve could see the driver's face more clearly now. He was young-ish, perhaps a couple years older than herself, but not that old. He was kind of scrawny, too, one of those guys that looked like he could eat an infinite amount of food and not gain an ounce. He looked like he'd been having a really bad day, and she would almost feel sorry for him if it weren't for the fact that he'd crashed his stupid vintage car into her friend's and... She frowned. And what? What had happened after the crash? All she could remember was the pain, overwhelming, unstoppable, eternal, and then she was here, wherever here was.


Looking at her surroundings, she saw she was in a forest, pine and fir trees packed thick and close together. It was dark, not the deep, rich dark of late night, but the dark of twilight just after the sun had set, everything cloaked in subtle shades of greys and somber blues. A thin fog floated through the air. There was something off-putting about the place, something that wasn't quite how it should be, but Eve couldn't place it at first. Then she realized: The forest was absolutely silent. She knew the sounds of a forest at dusk well from spending her childhood summers at her grandparents' cabin. At nightfall, when she lay in her bed, she could always hear the cricket's quiet nocturne, the gentle footfalls of deer, and the rustle of smaller animals wriggling through the underbrush lulling her to sleep. But now, in this strange new place, there was nothing but a silence that enveloped her completely and left her with a sense that something was deeply wrong.


Then she looked down at herself. She was still wearing the same pale blue floral sundress she'd been wearing in the crash, but it was as pristine as it had been when she'd put it on that morning. Her body, too, was completely unmarred. She looked the same as she always had: petite in height and slender of build, with pale, alabaster skin, cornflower blue eyes, and soft brown hair that fell in gentle waves around her shoulders and down her back. There wasn't a single bruise or a speck of blood on her, and, except for the now-fading ache in her head and ringing in her ears, she didn't feel any pain. Now she knew something was wrong. The cold, clammy fist of nausea wrapped itself like a slimy stake around her inside, squeezing them tighter and tighter until she thought she might vomit. It was the same feeling as motion sickness, when your brain can't reconcile what you see and what you feel, what you know to be true.


Swallowing her fear, she whispered, "My name is Eve Lancaster, and you're the guy who crashed into my friend's car, right? And I think we might be..." Her head spun with the prospect, because how could it be true? How could she be seeing all this, having this conversation, if she was... "Dead?"

 

[Drakonian]

With eyes wide in shock, he repeated in a question the key word in her phrase. "Crashed?"


His hand drew close to the back of his head and his slim and long fingers began scratching somewhat vigorously as he always did when he thought about something. What did she mean by crashed? Did he really crash a car? His car? He could have sworn he has been in that forest forever. Speaking of, the place seemed oddly familiar to him, save for the absence of any lively being's sound disturbing the quietness. His eyes took a short scan of the area, taking in the shadowy details of each of the trees, that, by the way, looked like nothing more but curious spectators to this strange encounter. His gaze soon fell back upon Eve, ever so curious.


"I'm... Travis." He muttered lowly, for the first time seeming uncertain whether or not he was indeed Travis. "You say I... crashed into your friend's car? How can you even tell? You've been lying there for longer than I care to remember and I've been here for even longer. Thought I'd see the morning with you out cold there but you woke up. Although, there really was no morning thus far. Time seems to have really stopped here..." He concluded with a sheer absent mind, taking a step or two around as he cast his gaze upon the trees and the surrounding, trying to determine precisely where he knew this place from. It looked, in all honesty, like something from a distant memory, something that irked him, something that...


Suddenly, the air has changed. Not only it became less chilly, as if a source of warmth was nearby, but also, the warm wind brought with it the smell of smoke. Of burning wood. But where could it be coming from? "Do you smell that?" Travis asked Eve with slight fear in his voice, turning around as he looked over into the distance to try to determine where it all came from. The smell of burning wood was now stronger, and with it, Travis' memory began hinting at something particular. The forest. He remembered it now. It was the forest he used to spend his childhood summer days in. The forest that... burnt. The thought made him turn around to face Even, and with it, his eyes saw the fire limbs rising somewhere not even far away from them.


"Holy shit! Eve, behind you!" He shouted in sheer emergency, pointing over to the fire that burnt behind the girl, drawing dangerously close, heating up the air within the moment and causing the whole surrounding to become a living hell. He has seen this before. He has had this nightmare. It used to be recurrent. And now, it came back to him.

 

[sgbd]

Eve could feel the change in the air instantly. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end., and she got the same sensation you feel when there's someone standing right behind you, staring at you, boring holes with their eyes into your back. She could feel the hot, dry air on her bare shoulder like the breath of a dragon. And then she smelled the smoke, filling the air with its acrid stench and making it impossible to see or breathe or think. All her brain could register was her most basic animal instinct of fight or flight.


For a moment, she was frozen in fear, as though someone had replaced her muscles with concrete. Some distant, isolated part of her registered the guy, Travis' voice. It came as though she were underwater and he was at the surface, the sound strangely distorted somehow, but it gave her the jolt she needed to duck out of the way of a falling branch, engulfed in flames, just in time to avoid getting hit. She could hear it whistling through the air as it fell and the crackle as it hit the ground, close enough to her to singe some of the hair off of her arm.


Then, hoping this Travis guy had the good sense to follow her, she ran. She ran faster than she'd ever run before, for she had never before had to run for her life. She ran and ran and ran, ducking and dodging burning sticks and logs, until her lungs burned from the smoke and the exertion and she thought she would surely collapse. She ran until she physically couldn't run anymore, collapsing on the ground on her hands and knees and coughing deep, hacking coughs that rippled out from her chest, tearing themselves from her body. It was like her body was trying to expel her lungs from her chest. The coughing turned into dry-heaving, the nausea she'd felt earlier finally manifesting itself into awful, empty retches. The smoke had been too much.


She couldn't breathe. She hated not being able to breathe more than anything. It was, by far, her worst fear. Her vision started to turn black around the edges. She didn't know if she, or Travis, for that matter, was safe from the fire. She had no idea if she'd made it out of the forest alive, or if any of this was even real. All she knew was that she couldn't move any more. Could this really be the end? She didn't want to die. She had too much left to do. She was going to go to college in the fall, travel the world, maybe even be a doctor someday. She couldn't leave her friends and her family. In that moment, all she wanted was to just go home. Maybe if she just let the darkness creeping in on her vision take over, she would wake up, and all of this would have been one terrible dream. She would wake up, and she would be safe in her bed, her parents and her little sister just down the hall. Everything would be all right. it had to be.

 

[Drakonian]

"Defibrillator!" One of the doctors yelled to the nurses, who then passed the order further on. A whole army of men and women in white were gathered around the bed of a man who seemed to have gone into shock and was about to lose the grip on his precious life. Travis. His face was stitched, his body was bandaged, but all of a sudden, he has fallen limp, and the monitor of his heartbeats has gone completely out of the way. All that could be heard now was the long, exhausting beeping that reminded that the young man's heart was all but done in, and, should they not work on reviving him, he was lost. Forever.


But so did he feel. He now ran through the burning forest, barely able to see further away from his own feet. He tried to follow the girl who introduced herself as Eve, as she also ran for dear life. But alas, the smoke around wouldn't let either of them breathe or see a visible end to this. It might just be his undoing. So, by the girl's words, he did not die from a car crash but he would from a burning forest? And what was this forest anyway? Was this the hell that all sinners were threatened with by religious maniacs? And then, he, too, was affected by the excess of smoke, collapsing on his knees close enough to Eve. She wasn't down, but she, too, seemed as unable to move as he was.


Come on, Travis, think, goddammit! a little voice in his mind shouted, suddenly awakening him from his despair and hopelessness. Yes! He had to think of something. It was his nightmare, after all. It has been occuring for so long in his nights, especially of late. There had to be a way out of it without burning to death, and that was... ah, yes! The beach! Now he remembered. The forest eventually led up into a beach. If only he could... grab Eve somehow and run with her towards it then it would have been fine. A huge tree behind him crackled loudly before falling upon other trees, its trunk giving in to the violent fire. The air was hot, impossible to breathe, and the smoke made seeing very difficult if not impossible. How was he going to just save the day?


But suddenly, the heat dissapeared, as through a miracle. The scenario was completely changed, as if a cortine has just fallen upon the stage revealing the second act of this freak show. The beach. If only he could remember any part of this, to announce Eve of what they were to expect. Oddly enough, he did not feel the burning in his chest. Nor the smell of smoke. It was as if, all of a sudden, everything has gone away. And now they just both stood before a calm sea upon which the moon reflected its rays gently, like soft caresses. But for some reason, he knew something was awfully wrong.


"He's stable once again, Doc." Announced one of the nurses as the defibrillation process was ended, Travis now again breathing calmly and quiet enough. "And the other?" The doctor looked at the nurse as he refered to Eve, the pacient in the next room. "She has passed through just fine as well, doctor. What a strange coincidence that both had this shock going on at the same time, no?" She flashed a quick smile before moving to get out of the room.

 

[sgbd]

As though from a great distance, Eve finally registered the sound of gentle waves lapping onto a shore. It was as if, in an instant, she had been transported to a completely different place. The burning sensation in her lungs was gone, as though she'd only imagined it. Perhaps she had. Slowly, she opened her eyes onto a calm, moonlit beach scene. She could feel soft sand on her hands, and the scent of salty ocean water gently wafted towards her. It should have been a welcome change from the hellish forest, where she had been trapped on every side by walls of flame, but something wasn't quite right. She knew it deep in her bones, right down to her very core, just as she had known when she had been in the burning forest that danger was imminent. The fine lines of worry creased her forehead, and she could feel her pulse steadily rising.


"But... How did we..." She shook her head slowly, as thought trying to dispel the feeling of malaise. "How did we get here? We were just in that forest, and now we're here? This can't be possible. This can't be real. I..."


But just then, she could feel herself being drawn to the great expanse of water. Something about the noise of the waves, the way the moonlight sparkled off the surface of the water like the surface of a polished stone, pulled her closer as though a great magnet in her stomach was connected, somehow, to the depths of the ocean far, far below. She took a step forward, and then another step, and then another. With each footfall that brought her closer to the water's edge, the pull grew stronger and stronger until she thought she might burst. Her mind was strangely empty, as vast an expanse as the water before her. Her pulse slowed, and Eve felt the most peculiar sense of calm wrapping around her like a blanket.


The water was at her toes now, cold as death. She waded further, until the water was at her ankles, her knees, her hips, her waist, her shoulders. Now she was surrounded by water up to her chin. Only now did she feel panic seize her by the throat, but it was too late. The waves crashed over her head, and she was underwater. There was water in her eyes, water in her nose, and just like in the forest, she couldn't breathe. The frigid, deathly liquid tossed her this way and that, dragging her violently deeper and deeper. The moonlight was growing ever more distant as she fell ever deeper beneath the waves. She struggled against the icy embrace, trying to swim back up to the surface, but it was no use.


This had happened before. She'd nearly drowned once, when she'd been a little girl, too fragile, too weak to save herself. It was all coming back to her now, as the water filled her lungs that had only moments before been filled with smoke. The call of the ocean and the finality of the water, surrounding her until there was nothing else, were all too familiar. She was scared, so scared, just as she had been before, and all those times after that when she had relived the memory in her dreams. She was nothing more than a child again. Maybe, if she just let the water rock her back to sleep, she would wake up. That was how it worked, wasn't it? You had a nightmare, and then you woke up. You always woke up...