My fate is not my own

A person is watching me in my dreams. This is not the first time. It’s a reoccurring theme that haunts me. It all just started with no warning. I fell asleep one night and my dreams were more lucid than normal and everything felt off. I looked around where I was and realized that I couldn’t control the dream I was in. So I stared walking and everything was silent. I changed my rhythm to walking in circles not taking anything serious until I eventually stood in wait. Everything was at a stand still and I realized that even though I was dreaming, I wasn’t resting. I started to feel more and more tired and gravity felt heavier and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  I looked around at the grassy, empty landscape I was in with the unnatural yellow tinted sun shining, and I ran. The sun turned blue. Then purple. And as the I kept running and my speed picked up, the sun went through every color of the rainbow and grass felt drier. Something was off. I kept running till I realized that it was no use and stopped. I looked around confused at what I was looking at when I felt a hand on my shoulder that felt eerie and turned to see a tall male figure with pale skin and a haunting grin that only got wider the more seconds pass. Their brunette glistened and the hand felt heavier. I realized that has made  grave mistake unsure of what I did but I snapped my eyes open. I stopped sleeping most nights and on the ones I did I could feel their amber eyes growing more impatient watching me closer and concocting more nightmares but to what end. The dreams continued and more days that passed the more the characters started to fill in one by one each with the same empty smile until I started seeing small rural towns. And then major cities and the madness continued. 

Sometimes I see events. Catastrophes. Some sweet and others gruesome. The characters in my dreams are oblivious and nameless. They all live their lives quietly and none of them speak to me while all smile, looking around with an absent look on their faces and don’t do anything more. Until one day someone looked at me for a beat too long. I tried speaking then yelling and begging for help but none of the characters listening until the wrong one did and I could feel their smirk and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with the same familiarity when they finally spoke for the first time, “You shouldn’t have done that,” and it was then and there I ran once more. The location changed second after second with each head turn I started to cry. One location being the wood in the Appalachian mountains, the other being New York City time square, and the last being a random city street in which I finally forced myself awake. Time in my dreams doesn’t exist so the time I ran felt never ending.  I sat up in a cold sweat and went out for a run late at night to clear my thoughts. I ran for about a mile when a stray dog that normally sits on the corner beside the street sign turned toward me with a horrifying grin and the same feeling so I took that as a sign to go home. I feel like Im going insane. I don’t know who is behind these dreams but this has been occurring for so long that I’ve resided that this is going to be my life for the foreseeable future. 

I went to doctor after doctor and they all prescribed me medicine that left me numb. Ive tried every caffeine brand on the market and non of it is enough to stop any of it. All the doctors told me that it was just in my head and if I tried to go another one they would lock me in a psych ward so I finally gave doctors a rest. I just wish that I could evade this torment. I’ve begged and pleaded with author behind it all to stop and all I’ve heard back is silence and the night following the character that gave me the warning disappeared and the cast changed with a new set of faces and I learned my lesson and live my life in my dreams timidly and smiling with everyone else hiding what I was really feeling never daring to argue or fight back again. 

The insomnia became so bad that I started seeing the faces of those in my dreams everywhere I went. It went from the dog again randomly on my street. To at my job the same faces following me saying nothing. To behind me in my mirror grinning. To on the ceiling when I woke up. Yet I acted like I couldn’t see it. I started walking around a shadow of my former self. Friends asked me what changed and the bags under my eyes gave them their answer. They asked questions but to no avail they never understood what was really going on and one by one they all dropped off and I started dozing off wherever I went and it was never enough. The dreams followed me even when I napped and even midday when I would accidentally close my eyes only to be met with the same ones on the other side following me. No matter what I did I couldn’t escape them, they wouldn’t leave. I made it a mission to keep my eyes open. But no matter the alternative I was met with madness it was all a matter of which alternative I would have rather more so I accepted reality.

This continued for weeks up until the hallucinations became unbearable and then the dreams all unfolded one by one. Day by day and I managed to beg the media, while looking as inane as I felt, to evade the world ending. Finally I could rest and the faces disappeared. It took time but My body eventually got the rest I needed and eventually rejoined the land of the living. I finally accepted that all the while inconvenient, my fate is resourceful. I just hope the insanity doesn’t take me and the dreams don’t come back.