Pinch

The lantern is lit. I am in a dream again.

The meadow is enveloped in a sea of mist and my jagged breaths break the repeated beat of my boots against the sticky, wet ground that’s followed me since I began to run. 

An arrow, its tip aflame, unzips the thick fog that blurs my vision and lands mere feet before me, bringing me to an abrupt stop. 

I have to keep moving to get away from the usurper that’s shifted into a furry beast, with its claws sharp and long like an open ribcage, always aimed for my throat. I’m far too familiar with its teeth too, I’ve jolted awake as they’ve bitten down into my flesh more than I’d care to remember. 

My familiarity with the usurper is irritatingly mirrored. It knows my every move, where I run to, where I hide. That I tire easily, too damned old to keep up the stamina I once had as a youth. No matter, there’s always a new nook in this plane where I conceal myself and pinch my skin until I wake. Always a new crevice in the earth that has split open for me in the endless land of dead grass and veiling mist that only dissipates once the foul beast is upon me. Like an unending torment as I’m forced to witness every ounce of agony thrust upon my soul, as I feel flesh and bone rip away until I rise, unharmed.

In the awakened land I am the ruler of Arrabethia, the largest Kingdom on the continent. My people are prosperous, rich, comfortable. I am the King they adore and I live for them. Their happiness inspires me, urges me on and yet equally frightens every fibre in my being, that these dreams may one day become reality and I lose everything.

But beasts are not real. My powerful Kingdom would protect me at any cost. These are just dreams. My mind playing unruly tricks on me. 

I find a ramshackle barn and set it aflame with my lantern, creating a diversion while I tread to the hollow tree I spotted in the opposite direction. My footsteps threaten to betray me as the slush beneath them stammer my steps but I hold straight, continuing the silent trek until I reach my hiding place. 

I crouch inside, the bark thick enough to silence my breathing. I slap myself in the face after the first three pinches fail to wake me, but it doesn’t work, I’m still here. 

No no no. 

I slap myself again, but this time it is not pain that stings my face nor do I wake in my bedchamber, instead, the beast’s yellow eyes watch me through a gap torn by time, making me jolt where I huddle. With one strike it breaks the tree in half, now looking at me from the top, like I am a child lost at the bottom of a well. It reaches in with brawny arms and lifts me in its claws as they puncture my armour, missing flesh by a hair’s width. 

“You will not have me,” I shout, my voice hoarse, throat aching as though each breath is the blade of a saw. 

It bellows into my face and I waste no time as I punch myself before it brings its teeth upon me and I wake in my bed. Sweat coating every inch of my body, my damp hair stuck to my cheeks as I jerk my head around my room, making sure I am alone. Nothing but darkness meets my eyes except for the flicker of sunlight shining brightly under the curtains as the draft sways the fabric. It must be dawn.

 The mattress is soaked, my servants accustomed to the signals in the middle of the night, used to changing my sheets often after my dreams turn me into a melting mess of a man. Used to the dreams, nay nightmares, that have plagued me for years. 

I rise and head for the wash basin, desperate to rid myself of the memory of what happened in that meadow, in the tree. It is an unusual thing, that the pinching did not work, either the nightmares are getting stronger or I am losing my mind. Either way, it seems hurting myself more viciously still works and at least I have that. I can still hang on to the hope of finding reality again. 

A knock funnels my attention to the moving shadow under my door. Probably Jasper coming in to check up on me. 

“Come in,” I call, aiming for a chair by the window. 

The door creaks open and it is not Jasper that wanders into my room. It is a knight, clad in armour, the visor of his helm covering his face as it reflects the flickering light of the lantern he carries. 

“Who are you?” I shout, but he doesn’t respond. 

I open the drapes, needing the sunlight to aid my vision but when I look out of the window, it isn’t the sun that’s beaming down onto my Kingdom. 

It is an inferno engulfing it. Burning my people. 

I turn back to the knight as he places the lantern on a small table by the dying embers of my hearth and lifts away the helmet, his sharp teeth identical to a monster I’m familiar with. I retreat a step but my back hits the warm glass and I come to a halt. Cornered. 

The grotesque beast is in my room, and reaches me in a swoop, piercing my heart with my own blade, its Ruby rimmed hilt sticking out of my body as my hands clasp around it. I feel the gush of blood ooze out of me, pooling beneath my feet. 

“Not so different from how you took my father’s throne, is it old man?” A hiss of a thousand souls escapes his mouth, pinching the breath right out of me. “Your time has come.” His voice rumbles in my ears as I am swallowed into darkness. 

My reign ended, my kingdom lost, the remnants of the lit lantern a distant memory.