Short Stories - taking suggestions.

The Dreamer

I'm running.

Fleeing from a monstrosity that's always one step behind me.

The breath forces itself from my asthmatic lungs as feet pound against a floor I cannot see.

I steal a look back at it.

It looks human but isn't.

A body made of deadly shadows.

Grinning.

My foot collides with...something, and I fall. The ground is cold; hard and unforgiving as I smash into it. I turn around and look up and the monster is right there, staring down at me; poison breath spilling from that cruelly smiling mouth. It raises its arm, sharp talons in place of its fingers glint in an unforgiving light, before -

I wake up.

Another nightmare.

I've been having nightmares for almost as long as I can remember, very rarely interspersed with a nice, or at least less horrific dream.

Yet this is the first time I've had a recurring nightmare.

This same scenario has been haunting my mind for weeks now, forcing me to live out my own demise each night. I can't figure out what it means, and I can't ask anyone about it, because no-one else can dream.

I've never met anyone else who can, and I can't find any information about it on the internet either, and no-one understood me when I tried to tell them about it. The only 'help' I got when I tried to tell an adult about it all those years ago was a diagnosis of schizophrenia and weekly therapy sessions. To top it all off I also got tagged with depression due to the constant low mood swings from having horrifically vivid nightmares almost every night.

As if schizophrenia and sleep deprivation wasn't enough to deter anyone from talking to me.

Well, everyone but one, I suppose.

Honestly, I was pretty lucky to have met Triston, or, well, to have been found by him at least. He's my best friend, and he's stuck with me through thick and thin, despite how crazy I must sound sometimes; and he's the only one I'll talk about my dreams with. Hell, he even helped me come up with the term 'dream'.

An obnoxiously loud tune suddenly erupts from my phone, breaking me out of my thought train; and a small smile plays its way onto my face.

That must be Triston.

With great effort, I relinquished my arm from the warmth of my plush quilt and retrieved my phone from it's resting place on my bedside table. Turning the screen on, my retinas are bombarded with the disturbingly bright glow of the clock function on my home screen.

It is 3:42 in the morning, apparently.

I swipe down my notification bar to read the no doubt groundbreakingly urgent message from my best friend.

"Hi."

Well. I honestly don't know what else I expected.

It's pretty obvious that Triston is bored and can't sleep, and knowing that I wasn't going to sleep again tonight after that particularly shitty nightmare, I respond.

"Hey."

"I'm bored."

"I noticed."

"So why're you awake?"

I don't respond.

"You have another bad

dream again?"