Nightmare

In the suffocating stillness of the night, beneath a sky so dark it seemed to swallow the stars, Ethan awoke with a jolt. Cold sweat dripped down his face, his heartbeat pounding in his ears like a war drum. His breath came in ragged gasps, each exhale sharp and strained, as if the very air had become a prison. The room around him was pitch-black, yet somehow, it felt alive—the darkness felt thick, oppressive, almost as if it had a mind of its own. The air reeked of something metallic, damp, and choking, like blood left too long to fester.

The nightmare still clung to him like a suffocating shroud, but Ethan knew, deep in his bones, that it hadn’t been just a dream. No, something was wrong. Something was here. It was waiting. The feeling crept in, a slow, crawling dread that made every nerve in his body scream in terror. The silence around him was wrong—unnatural—and even the shadows seemed to move, shifting just out of sight, twisting with a subtle malevolence.

He dragged himself from the bed, his limbs feeling impossibly heavy, as though the weight of the darkness itself had wrapped around him, holding him down. His mind screamed for him to run, to get out, but his body wouldn’t obey. With every step, the floorboards beneath his feet groaned in a twisted symphony, but these sounds were wrong. They echoed from some distant place, hollow and forlorn, as if the house itself were empty, abandoned, a mere imitation of what it once was.

And then, from the depths of the shadows, came a whisper.

“Ethan…”

The voice, impossibly familiar, slithered into his ears like an oily serpent, each syllable curling around his mind, squeezing tighter and tighter. But it wasn’t his voice. Not anymore. It was deeper, rasping, dripping with a kind of malignant hunger that twisted his stomach. The words hung in the air, lingering like a heavy fog, impossible to ignore.

Ethan froze, his breath caught in his throat. The whisper was so close now, as if something was breathing right behind him. His pulse quickened, but he forced himself to move, stumbling toward the hallway, the weight of his dread pulling at his every step. The house stretched out before him like a labyrinth, unfamiliar and wrong, each hallway darker than the last.

Then, his eyes caught it.

The basement door—ajar.

A sickly green light flickered beneath it, casting unnatural, jagged shadows that seemed to reach for him, to tug at his very soul. The light... it wasn’t right. It pulsed, flickering like the heartbeat of something ancient, something alive. The shadows moved with purpose, creeping and twisting in ways that defied nature, like long fingers curling in anticipation.

Ethan’s legs moved without his consent, dragging him toward the door as if something invisible had latched onto him, pulling him toward his doom. His fingers shook violently as they grasped the cold, rusted doorknob. It sent a jolt of ice straight to his core, numbing his hand, before he twisted it open.

The basement greeted him with a thick, suffocating air that tasted like decay. The smell was overwhelming—musty, damp, and rancid, clinging to his lungs as he descended the stairs. He felt the weight of the shadows pressing down on him, heavy and suffocating, as though the darkness itself was a living, breathing thing. His eyes scanned the room, barely able to make out the vague, ominous shapes that lined the space—old furniture draped in dusty tarps, boxes filled with forgotten memories.

But it wasn’t the furniture that caught his attention. No, it was the shadows. The way they moved on their own, undulating like serpents, swaying and writhing in the dim, flickering light.

And then, in the farthest corner of the room, he saw it.

The figure.

It was tall—unnaturally tall, its limbs elongated and twisted, contorting in ways no human body should be able to. Its face was hidden in the deepest shadows, but Ethan could feel its eyes. Cold, hollow pits of darkness that seemed to reach out and grasp him, sinking into his very soul. The temperature in the room plummeted, the air turning ice-cold as the figure exhaled—a sound like the scraping of metal against stone.

“Ethan…”

The voice was no longer his own. It was a guttural mockery of it—twisted, wrong, and dripping with venom. “You killed them.”

The words hit him like a physical blow, a sledgehammer to his chest. The memories came rushing back with brutal force—the crash, the blood, the screams—the accident. His parents, gone in an instant. His world shattered in a moment of recklessness, forever scarred by his guilt.

But now... now the figure was here. It had come for him.

The thing moved toward him, its limbs snapping and twisting at impossible angles, like a marionette controlled by a twisted hand. Each step was a grotesque distortion, and with every movement, the shadows seemed to swell, pulling closer, curling around Ethan's ankles, gripping him like iron chains.

“You are the reason they’re gone,” the figure hissed, its voice layered with a hundred different versions of his own, all accusing, condemning. “You killed them. You’re the monster.”

Ethan’s heart raced, his chest tightening, every breath a struggle as the figure came closer, its presence suffocating him. The walls of the basement seemed to close in, pressing in on him from all sides, distorting and shifting like a maze that was alive, alive with malice.

In his panic, Ethan turned to run, but the basement had become a nightmare, a labyrinth that twisted and stretched with each desperate step. The door had vanished, replaced by endless, oppressive dark. The shadows surged around him, crawling up his legs, dragging him down. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the thick, black void that pressed against him from all sides.

The figure was there—always there. A chorus of voices now—his voices—screaming at him, accusing him, tearing at him from every angle.

“You killed them.”

“You deserve this.”

“You will never escape.”

Each voice was a dagger in his mind, each whisper a shard of glass cutting into his soul. And no matter how fast he ran, no matter how much he screamed, the darkness would not release him. It was everywhere. It had always been there.

Ethan knew, in that final moment, as the darkness closed in—he had never truly been alone. The nightmare wasn’t something that could be escaped. It was inside him. It had always been inside him.

And now, it would never let him go.