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"No!" I screamed as I sat up in bed. I pulled my covers up and looked around wildly, expecting to see the fiery hell of my dream. No, I told myself, trying to calm my ragged breathing, it was just a dream.
"Lace, you okay?" asked a voice from behind my bedroom door. The door opened slightly to reveal my dad looking into my room, concern written all over his face. I squinted my eyes as the light from the hall streaked across my bedroom floor and into my face.
"Yeah Dad, go back to bed" I said in a shaky voice. I saw him hesitate, unconvinced "Go dad. Seriously, I'm fine. I just had a bad dream, no biggie". I forced a smile to my face and flipped my long dark hair over my shoulder, in what I hoped was a care free gesture. He smiled back at me and slowly backed away closing the door gently whispering a soft good night.
As soon as I was alone I started to shake uncontrollably.
"Its okay, its okay, its okay" I chanted to myself though clenched teeth and closed eyes. Then an image began to form beneath my lids. I opened my eyes quickly, but I couldn't stop it. The blood red eyes and sadistic grin where there, burned into the back of my eyelids floating in the darkest corners of my room. I heard the whimper escape my lips before I could stop it.
Then just as suddenly as the fear had devoured me it was replaced, by cold hard anger. It was anger at the dream for haunting for a solid three months now and angry at myself for letting it make me weak.
"Coward" I hissed into the air where it stayed simmering violently. In that instant I hated myself. Why couldn't I be brave like Kayla? She wouldn't have let the fear hold her captive like me no Kayla would have looked at it and it would have crawled, whimpering, back into the hell it had came from because that was Kayla.
Kayla was one of my best friends. The pretty one, the smart one, the athletic one, that was Kayla. Kayla was everything I wasn't and everything I wanted to be like. A piercing spike of envy ran up my spine.
I smacked the side of my bed to clear my mind and looked over at my alarm clock, 4:32am. I contemplated going back to sleep for a second, that’s how long it took for the image come back to my eyes, then decided that that was not going to happen, and jumped out of bed to shower.
I crept slowly down the hall past my father’s bedroom, to the only bathroom in the house. I always felt bad about waking my dad. He works as a construction coordinator during the day and a custodian at Boston University from 10:00pm to 2:00am every night. He's also a student there part time working to get a law degree. So, all and all, he doesn't get much sleep and I hated to interfere with the little bit he got.
Once in the bathroom I looked into the mirror and groaned. I was very obviously sleep deprived, there were large purple bruises under my tired light brown eyes and my dark curly hair was uncharacteristically lank and dull. A shower was just what I needed. Thankfully the water heated up in an instant, and I felt better as soon as the warm water hit my back.
I sighed blissfully and contently, all my demons defeated for a moment. Thanks to my early awakening I was able to fully enjoy my shower, I even spent a full thirty just lying on the floor of my tub letting the water run over me.
Maybe today wouldn't be so bad, I thought. Then smiled at the absurdity of that thought, when where things ever better than they appeared.