one shots

d r e a m s

Throughout my childhood, I had the same reoccurring dream; if you could even call it that. They weren't dreams or nightmares, no— no they were more like night terrors.

I had all the symptoms of a night terror, the bolting upright in bed, the screaming, I wouldn't wake up and it was impossible to calm me down when I did.

The doctor said they were night terrors and that I shouldn't be remembering them but I did. I remembered them vividly.

I could never get a good nights sleep because I would be plagued by them, by him.

There's a man in my dreams, he's haunting.

Every night it was the same thing over and over.

I'm in a white room with nothing surrounding me but the strange thing was I felt suffocated.
And then the walls started closing in. They caged me in them, not releasing me just getting smaller and smaller.

My deep ragged breaths greedily sucked in the rooms oxygen. As I sunk to the floor I screamed and screamed, and then...

"Then what happened?" My therapist Genevieve asked curiously as she sat with her legs crossed, pen in hand.

Looking up to her from my gaze on the floor my voice shook slightly as I answered.

"And then nothing."

There's a man in my dreams, he's dark.

The room was gone and I was in the woods,
running through the woods with the leaves and sticks crunching beneath my weight.

I could feel the blood and dirt on my feet and running down my back. I was completely and utterly exhausted.

When people say they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders they aren't exaggerating.

I felt like the titan Atlas, holding up the sky. I felt strong and powerful and then my knees gave out and I dropped the sky.

"And how did that make you feel?" Genevieve asked.

"When I woke up that first night after having the dream I felt... odd" I say while tilting my head, eyes watering on their own accord.

There's a man in my dreams, he's angry.

"Odd how?"

"Odd how?" She asked once again the words falling on deaf ears.

"Emily."