“Not the same dream again! God help me, I hate this place!”
The ground around me looked creepy, cracked and grass-less. There were things crawling around on the ground that I couldn’t see. Yet, I knew they existed from past experience. I was happy, for the moment, not to see them. What I could see was the tops of what appeared to be trees so I knew that woods surrounded me. They appeared to be flat topped trees. Flat topped trees were the worst kind.
Why? Because I knew there were monsters waiting in those woods. Flat topped trees with oddly shaped branches always hidden monsters in this domain. They broke me every time I found myself here, in this wasteland. I’d been here so many times now I was rarely surprised when I appeared and saw flat topped trees. I already knew the first thing that was going to happen.
Now I was dumped. The question remained, where had I been dumped this time?
I looked to my left. “Where am I tonight in this wasteland?” I asked myself.
I had come to the conclusion, early in life, that I had been born as a joke. God and Satin had grown tired of playing chess with other peoples lives and were concentrating on just mine now. Yes, I had been created for the amusement of God and Satin. I firmly believed this. They had created this nightmare for amusement and they sent me here often just for laughs. I assumed they made bets between them About such things as which monster would be the first to stall me, catch me or even rape me? To this day I was certain I was right. I’d never been proven wrong thus far.
I glanced to my right hoping to see some light. The shadows around me were so thick that it was impossible for me to see my surroundings. This was normal. I always expected it to happen. What fun would it be to let me in on the joke? What I didn’t see most certainly would hurt me. It always did.
I looked downward, and found it to be the only place where I could really see anything. I kicked at the dirt around me. That might get the dream started. I wanted nothing more then to get it going so I could leave. One day I was sure to die here. One day this dark place would be home. Today, wasn’t going to be that day. Today, I wasn’t going to die.
I kicked the dirt around some more nothing happened which was no surprise. I might as well give up. I was just about to decide this when I felt my foot bump against something hard. I couldn’t see it, of course, because it was too dark and shadowy. I bent down slowly and carefully to exam what I’d found. One always had to be careful in this world. Things that you didn’t think could bite did bite.
“It’s a graveyard,” I whispered, fully amazing. It was something one would expect to find in such a dismal place, but it was a place I’d never have been to in the past. So, why was I here now?
“Well, at least it’s new,” I finally mumbled softly. I’d do anything to reassure myself that it wasn’t all bad and I’d be fine. I just had to get the dreamover with and fast.
“So why am I here?” I asked as my gaze turned skyward. Always I wanted to know more than I was allowed to know. Questions asked aloud always brought results. This once again reinforced my belief that this was a game between good and evil.
In answer to my question, the shadows surrounding the area began to vanish. A very old cemetery came into view. Crumbling stones and large decaying mausoleums, constructed of marble surrounded me. The ground, in these areas, had very little greenery. Long broken line of cracked ground seemed to form a path one could follow if they so desired. This crack weaved around the stones going no where in reality. It was, however, the focal point of the entire community of stones. As far as I could see, this crack had no ending.
In other places stringy grass covered the ground around some of the plots. Gaping holes of rubble, clothing and bones suggested that some dead souls had clawed their way out of their graves. Bits and pieces of these inhabitants were scared across the grass-less dirt.
In the distance I saw a light. It was moving slowly, creeping, like someone walking. The first light turned left and it was then that I saw more lights following it. There were five of them. I didn’t move. The lights didn’t appear to be focusing on me. It appeared, I was safe just to watch. As the lights grew nearer, I saw people. These people were carrying Halloween bags and dressed up in weird costumes.
The lights were pumpkins lit from the inside with bugs. They were following the long crack I’d just studied in the dirt and werewolves picking up the remain of those long dead from around them. I saw them filling their bags with clothing, pottery, false teeth and jewelry. Anything not stuck in the ground, unmovable, they were collecting.
Were they trick-or-treating?
The costumes varied in style. Some were half undressed and their ribcage was visible. Others had no pants on and the bones of their legs and hips were exposed. Some had on collars, but there was no master holding the collar to lead them. I watched them circle around the graveyard walking funny, until they disappeared into the distance again. I finally came to the conclusion that they were zombies.
I returned my gaze to the moon. It hung low tonight. It was, of course, a full moon. What else could I expect to find in this hellish land but fright? The full moon suggested that wolfs would be wondering around tonight, more then likely they would be the type that changed into werewolves. I had no plans of meeting any of them. Still I didn’t know exactly what the night had planned for me. I glanced in the direction I’d last seen the zombies. Fright one had already taken place; what lay in store with fright two?
A tiny smile crept across my face; Perhaps this time it’d be different. I already knew once I entered this dreamland, I had no chance of escape. The dream had to release me and it would only do that if I found or did what I was expected to do. I shivered and looked around some more. I was hoping against hope that I’d find an escape route. There had to be a trick. I just didn’t know the trick.
This was a place I’d first visited as a child. Only recently, at forty-three, some 27 years later, had this same horror called me back. I didn’t know or really care why. All I wanted Was to leave and never return. Let The Devil and God find another person to play games with. I’d had more then enough.
I moved towards the center of the graveyard, slowly. I, of course, didn’t have any light. So every step I took could be my last. I listened as I heard bones break and gravel crunch under the weight of my feet. I smiled, why would I have a flashlight? I kept walking, slowly. Inch by inch I nearly the stone in the center of the lot. Suddenly my feet felt cold. I glanced downward.
I was shoeless. I held back a giggle. Why would I have on shoes? Why wouldn’t I want to walk, barefoot on this moldy, sickened ground which had assorted decaying bodies and monsters decomposing upon it? It was cold, naturally. It was muddy, of course. How else could they catch me unless I was at a disadvantage?
In the center of the graveyard I saw a huge headstone. I continued creeping towards it while sweeping the area around me with my eyes every few seconds. I hoped to reach the stone before the monsters found me. It had to be my destination.
“This has to be the place,” I shivered. Damn, I was cold. Why else would I be able to walk to it and not be pursued. Of course, cause I didn’t have any shoes on. I wrinkled my toes from the frost and tried to warm up by blowing into my hands a few times and rubbing my feet. Stupid as that seemed, only because now if I’d stepped into anything that’d kill me I’d Just gave it a bigger advantage. But I was too cold not to try to warm up my feet. So, I dedicated that it was a requirement. Like all the bad things that happened in this dreamland.
The sooner I encountered the ghoul, the sooner I could be released from the badlands I rationalized. I took a few more steps lifted my head high in the night sky and screamed. I’d just about reaching my limit of reminding myself what not to do and what to do every few seconds.
“Come on bad guys! Let’s get this over with!”
No sooner had I finished screaming then a cold breeze began to blow. Following that the sound of faith buzzing greeted my ears. I swallowed hard. I knew this wasn’t going to be good.
“Dust fairies!” I screamed and tried to run. I didn’t get very far before they surrounded me.
The ground all around me was alive with movement. The smell of decay and dying things greeted my nose offensively. Winged creativity flattened themselves around me and beckoned me to upchuck. Already I could feel what had been in my stomach traveling up the back of my throat. They wanted me to throw-up, and they were trying to force it from me. In this placeThere was little food for them to eat, so whenever they had the opportunity to be fed they never missed it. They lived on vomit.
I brushed the dust fairies away and placed my left foot on the stone which surrounded the main section of the headstone. One never stood barefoot on the ground when being attacked by dust fairies, one got onto something solid. Once off the ground you became invisible. They couldn’t find you. Now I knew why my shoes had vanished.
Standing on the ground for too long was a big mistake, even with shoes on. I’d once saw a monster die from throwing-up, because he had no place to run to escape the ground. It had been gross to see bits of his stomach tumble out of his mouth and the dust fairies eat it up.
I knew one of their favorite hangouts was graveyards. I wasn’t sure which type of graveyard They were attracted too, and thus far I had never been placed in one to find out. The only ones I’d seen briefly were small and dark. They were occupied bythe dead only. This one was unique because it seemed to be alive with activity.
Once I was standing on the stone, I felt safe and solid. That should have been my first clue. Nothing in this hellish place was safe or solid. It was in dreamland where anything could happen and it most often did. Perhaps I was being overconfident. One never got confident in a doctor’s office when they knew they were being examined for cancer. So why was I so confident now? Wasn’t this dream split open with cancer?
As I stood, alone, on the stone, I searched for something to hang onto. That’s when I felt something, unexpected. What was that? I glanced upwards at the stone itself.
“Whose stone is this? Could that be important?”
I felt an inscription, but it was covered in so much grim, moss and decay that it was impossible to read. I rolled my eyes, what had I been thinking. Easy wasn’t how anything worked in this place. Why did I keep forgetting that?
The stone towered into the sky, many meters above my head and was wider then me by at least a couple of yards. The Angel resting atop had a chipped smile and her eyes seemed to be always watching me. Which gave me the impression that she was waiting for a chance to attack. I felt as if she had been planning an attack on me for years and now the moment she’d been anticipating was dawning.
Her long, now cracked and grounded gown, seemed to ripple in the night, giving it the effect of hidden things. What was beneath it? What was waiting to escape both for surprise and misfortune, I wondered.
I placed my finger over the letters, trying to feel their form. What did they say? The surface was spongy and wet. Pebbles and bits of broken glass were embedded deeply in the letters. As disguising as they were, I knew, I needed to know what they said.
I dug my fingernails deeper into the shapes, knowing the sooner I figured out what the message was, the sooner I’d be vanquished from this realm of reality.
Trying to get the muck from around the edges was difficult, but after a lot of digging I managed to figure out that the first letter was an R. I started digging at the second letter. The night was scary and I knew some kind of monster was going to show up soon. I’d managed to get away from the dust fairies too easily. They had to be the beginning of the nightmare not the content.
I continued to dig, not really paying attention to my surroundings. I know better than to do that. What was I thinking?
Suddenly, one of my feet felt weird. It was almost like something was crawling on it. I hated the idea of looking down. A shiver traveled down my back at just the thought. Any number of creepy crawly things could be on my foot. God, what would I see? The longer I waited to look down the faster my heartbeat. I licked my lips and held my breath. I had to do it. I had to look down. There was nothing for it but to do it! Still, I held fast and waited.
I head a sound. It came from the headstone beside me. It sounded like something breathing, and that something breathing wasn’t doing it well. Again, I was positive it was Something I didn’t really want to see. More then likely it was the monster sent to capture me, cut me, rap me or cage me.
My fingers felt like burning sticks of fire. My foot keep calling out to me to look at it, and I kept ignoring them both. I wanted to wake up, and I wanted to wake up, now!
“Damn,” I whispered, “of course it didn’t happen. My eyes traveled down to the left side of the stone. I had no choice. I had to look.
A pair of glassy glazed over eyes stared back at me. It was a man, not any type of normal man, mind you, but a man nonetheless. He was dressed in faded jeans and a raggedy shirt. Both contained long gaping holes and missing buttons. He was dirty, and smelled like death. He smiled at me, giving me my first glimpse of his vampirism teeth and rotting gums. His eyes suggested to me that he wasn’t well bAlanced. I watched as he caressed the blade he held in his arms. I was pretty sure it was meant for me.
The tip sparkled in the moonlight with a droplet of blood. He placed the tip of the blade to his lips and licked it clean. In the moonlight I got a better look at his gruesome teeth. They were pale, like yellowish icicles. My stomach started to hurt.
“Wow, my nightmares have improved,” I rationalized attempting to make myself feel better, “the scary is worse then before.”
I looked down at my foot, the one that had been bothering me. I saw droplets of blood seeing out of a pen point cut in the center. Now I know where he got the droplet of blood from.
“What do you want?” I asked, as I inched away from him on the stone. My fingers continued to dig at the letters…U…with each impression I made my fingers reminded me that they had been injured.
I knew this was the alteration I didn’t want…yet I knew it was inevitable. Why fight it? If I let it happenNow; Perhaps, I could leave that much faster.
The breeze turned into a gale, and my paper thin gown climbed up my legs, exposing my nudity beneath it to the ugly guy sitting on the stones. He pressed his lips together as if he were hiding a smile and put the tip of his knife into his mouth again. I watched him suck my blood off the end just as my fingers found the letter N.
That was the clue I’d have been digging for, “RUN!” the stupid thing said, RUN. Like I needed anyone to tell me that!
Sweat covered my forehead, my breathing increased and the foot which he’d cut began to ache. It wasn’t from the cut, I realized, but rather a wish to be cut again. I felt dampness between my legs and realized I was excited. I looked crossly at my foot blaming it for my sudden interest in someone I did Not and never would desire. I knew that if I didn’t escape now he’d have me and today would be the day I remained in this dead zone.
The realization of that suggestion gave me the shivers. I had to escape by any means possible. I didn’t judge distance, I didn’t even try to calculate where I might land if I decided to jump. I just leaped from the stone like a prime ballerina in a play who had no other choice but to leap to her death. I soared through the air like a kite and hit the ground with my feet poised for running.
I knew of no other place to flee except the forbidden woods. What awaited me in those woods had to be easier to escape then this man, who had captured the love of my foot. Distance took the edge off the movement of my foot and I found that I was able to run at a faster rate. I took advantage of it. Because of this my feet barely touched the ground. I was relieved that the dust fairies, who had previously been in search of me, had moved on. At least I was safe from them for the moment.
It wasn’t long before I felt his claw like fingers snarling at the ends of my hair. His moldy smell and horrific breathe warmed my shoulders. His loud growthling kept my feet moving quickly. He had to be within inches of me, I reasoned.
“Don’t think about. Don’t think about it.” I kept repeating to myself as I ran. “It’s only a dream! It’s only a dream!”
I knew that he had to be in pain. Every breath that he took sounded like cannon balls rolling back and forth in a tube. I found myself praying that it would be his last breath.
In no time at all my foot, that loved him, slowed down. No matter how much I tried to increase my speed I found it was impossible. No matter how much I pulled at it I couldn’t get it to move very fast. I watched in horror as he caught up with me and was able to slip a black collar around it. This collar was connected to a long chain and this chain was connected to his arm. He had me. I was started; I was his. This had never happened before. It’d been far too easy for him. I wondered which God, from the game above, had won and what the price was going to be.
Still, I reasoned, This can’t be happening, I can’t lose. That ugly toad has captured me without much of a fight. I glanced down at my offending foot and considered hacking it off so the rest of me could survive. It was the only part of me that desired to be with that old, ugly, creativity.
He smiled at me and begin to play around with his pants. No, I reasoned.
I swallowed hard. He was undoing his leather belt with his free hand. I had a good idea what he planned to do with that belt, and I wanted no part of it.
“HELP!” I began screaming in a panicked voice. No one answered. Why would they? This was my fate, and I knew it. Still, I kept screaming!
The gale started again, strong this time. I felt the paper gown, I was wearing, began to rip. I tried to hold it together and found that impossible. Out of no where a pair of wire cutters suddenly appeared in my hands.
Someone loved me I decided and gave thanks for the assistance as I quickly tried to cut the rusty chain as I felt his claws dig into my back and neck. He was attempting to make all of me love him.
“NOOOOO!” I screamed aloud, and jerked across my bed with a start. Finally, I was awake.
My body was covered in sweat. My breathing was hard and forced. My teeth were cinched, and I looked at the floor wildly for the man. I knew wanted to rape me. He wasn’t there.
“What had just happened? My right hand rose to my left shoulder to rub it, because it was aching.
“What’s that,” I questioned, “Liquid?”
I pulled my hand away. “OH God it’s blood!” I’m bleeding!
Three long scratches glistened with blood along my shoulder blade. I picked up a towel, that had been lying next to the laundry basket, and tried to stop the bleeding. My neck and back hurt too. They had the same scratches.
This had never happened before, I’d never woken up from a dream where I received real hurts. Something had changed. I just didn’t know what.
Leave a Reply