The Dream

1983

45th Parallel North                                                              

“Who is he?” She thought “What does he want?” 

 She ran up the stairs and to the left into the kitchen, she stumbled and fell. She crawled backward into a corner and blindly grabbed a knife, her hair a mess and blood running down her forehead into her mouth, the taste was sour. The shadowy figure stood in front of her. He was eight feet tall and slender. His arms were long even for his size. His figure was man-like but the outline of his was jagged and barbed, she could nearly feel the razor blade-like outline slice her skin, the only color on him was his blinding red eyes, red like the blood the rushed rapidly through her veins. 

She sliced him with the knife across the leg. Then she barely stood and stabbed his stomach and fell back down. His blood was glowing white like an arctic flame. The white blood sprayed and splattered on her, burning her skin into a deep purple color. Her bone was visible, peeling away from it was her skin with an alien-like goo seeping from her tendons. She screamed until she felt her last breath come out of her. He stood above her, his head twisting around as if it were a screw.

“Huh?” she jolted up in her bed. It had all been a dream, a sick, twisted dream. 

She panted like her old dog Bingo in the hot Arizona summers. She went to examine her hands then realized she had a knife in her hands with the same arctic flame white blood on it. She carefully laid it down on her nightstand knowing what the blood would burn her skin. She got up from her bed expecting the worst. Then she felt it. A body on the ground, cold and dead. She made the sign of the cross and sent a quick prayer, then looked down. 

She expected the worst but found something more horrific than that. Her son. Her six-year-old was dead in front of her. She was standing in his blood. Then she glared over at the knife and saw the blood was normal, not white. Then she felt something on her ankle. Like a hand...Its grip was tight.

It pulled her under the bed into a world with her memories displayed around her. She saw everything in black and white. There in front of her was the Fraser spiral illusion. She was slowly being sucked towards it. She went to say “Who are you?” but discovered her mouth was wired shut. But he could read her thoughts and she heard “good question.”

“Tell me! Lucifer, Hades?” She thought 

“No, good people though” “We play pool together every week” The voice responded

“You're not funny. Tell me you white blooded shadow freak!” 

“Bingo”

“What do you mean by bingo?”

“Oh. That’s not my name. That's your dead dog's name that you murdered in cold blood. I meant that I am a white blooded shadow freak.”

“I didn’t kill my dog. It was an accident. I WAS FIVE!”

“Well, you still threw his bone out the window.”

“ No more joking! My son is dead. So tell me WHO ARE YOU?”

“Didn’t you kill him?” He snarked 

“No.,” she said speaking softly

She woke up in a puddle of perspiration, Memory fuzzy yet vivid. She got up and walked to the kitchen to make a sandwich, ignoring the previous events.

A hand grabbed her back. She saw this coming. Little did she know it was her son that she neglected to check on. She grabbed the knife and stabbed him in the chest.

She saw what she did. She fell on the ground and curled up into a fetal position. She looked up at the clock and what felt like seconds of her laying on the floor was hours. She had read of the inconsistencies in dreams. So thinking it would end the dream loop she grabbed the knife and stabbed herself. But she wasn’t dreaming that time. 

A shadowy figure came up the stairs and staired for a long moment and then simply smiled, snapped, and vanished in the wind only leaving a pile of dust.

The next day two investigators crouched over her dead body, puzzled. Another detective leaned over her body and said a bit dazed from the sight of the crime scene “what could drive a person so mad in such a little time?” “She was fine before last night!”

“Drugs maybe?” an investigator said inserting the body

“None in the house” the detective replied “What a mystery” “Perhaps unsolvable.”

The detectives walked out of the house and asked for the body to be transferred to the morgue.

“Huh?” The boy woke up in a cold sweat, panting like a dog. He pulled up the covers and saw a knife in his chest.

Story By HR Reichert Submitted on reedsy for the power outage contest and for the "Write about someone who feels powerless" prompt.

I think I wrote a pretty good story but it is under the word count so I am writing this sentence right now to get to the word count (1000 words)

I never really liked the word limit imagine how many better stories or more great stories we could have if there wasn't a minimum or maximum amount of words.

I ran out of things to think of so here are the lyrics to don't stop believing by journey:

Just a small-town girl

Livin' in a lonely world

She took the midnight train goin' anywhere

Just a city boy

Born and raised in South Detroit

He took the midnight train goin' anywhere

[Instrumental]

[Verse 2]

A singer in a smoky room

The smell of wine and cheap perfume

For a smile, they can share the night

It goes on and on and on and on

[Pre-Chorus]

Strangers waitin'

Up and down the boulevard

Their shadows searchin' in the night

Streetlight people

Livin' just to find emotion

Hidin' somewhere in the night

[Verse 3]

Workin' hard to get my fill

Everybody wants a thrill

Payin' anything to roll the dice just one more time

Some will win, some will lose

Some are born to sing the blues

Oh, the movie never ends

It goes on and on and on and on