The nightmare
The slow and steady echo of heavy steps is filling the dark and narrow corridors. I can feel it getting closer. I can sense it’s rotten smell lingering around in the caverns. Nowhere left to run, nowhere to hide… But it’s been too long, too long to give up just yet. I’ll make a run for the exit, maybe this time I will be lucky. That thing will not catch me, not this time.
Slowly crawling from underneath the ledge I was using as hiding, trying to find my way in the engulfing black that was all around me, the steps suddenly stopped. Their sound was replaced by a deafening screech that made its way through the tunnel like a shockwave. I can see them at the end of the corridor, two red eyes and a pair of giant fangs, glowing against the dark backdrop of long-forgotten stone. The beast stands between me and the exit. It’s slowly approaching, every step resounding around, empty yet full of power, each step an earthquake on its own. I stand before it, frozen not of fear, as I know the beast all too well, and as soon as I move a single muscle, it will sense me. And then, when I see a way…
As I’m sprinting towards the exit, the beast jumped towards me. I duck underneath it, but its monstrous boney claws rip through my side and I just lay there. Scream… I’m trying to scream, but I cannot. I try to breath, yet I can’t feel the air. My eyes. I close them, closing them…
“Hey, hey, are you alright? I’m here, I’m with you, breath, brother, breath.”
“It was another nightmare, Jasper. But I swear it felt real. It’s as I was there… I felt dad, somehow…”
“Damien, it’s been almost 10 years… Father is dead. It was just a nightmare. Wait there, I will get you some water. We need to rest, there’s a big day tomorrow. “
“You don’t believe me. I’m telling you, father is still alive. I know it, I can feel it… You have to believe me, brother…”
“Ok, fine, say he is alive. Why didn’t he reach out to us? He would never have left us like that.”
“What if he is, I don’t know, somewhere he cannot reach to us? Maybe that’s what my nightmares are about. He used to always talk about all sorts of weird..” , but Jasper interrupts him.
“Do not start all of this again. I refuse to listen to your crazy theories. Either go back to sleep, or don’t, I don’t care. Just don’t make tomorrow a disaster, please.”
“Fine… thank you, bro… Good night!”
“Good night, little pain in the ass!”
But Damien was having a hard time falling back asleep… Those red eyes and those glowing fangs… They are still etched into his brain. He sees them every time he closes his eyes. And that pain, that agonizing pain in his left side that he has been feeling since he woke up sweaty and screaming.
“Not just a dream…” he’s mumbling to himself…
“Father… he’s alive, somewhere, somehow…”
As the clock strikes 3’oclock, the sleep catches up with Damien and no more nightmare can disturb him. For now.