Creature Of My Dreams

Screech.

What was that? I pulled from my mattress, clawing away the blankets in my way to get a clear view on my room.

Screech.

I winced.

It was like metal grinding against metal. No, against concrete.

But where—

That when I noticed. My room was not mine anymore. The wooden panels that had lined my walls were gone, tiled away by gray slabs. The blue-hued carpet had been tore away from its base; now bare, ashen bones that matched the borders showed their faces. And even the bed was no longer a bed, but a pile of decaying long-grass cast aside in the corner.

Screeeeech.

My eyes lifted to look in the darkness above me, where something taunted. I pressed myself against the dampness of the concrete as it came again.

Sccccccreeeech.

And then again. And again. Growing longer and becoming more amplified each time it rang out.

SCREEEEEEEEE—

Thwack.

Something struck the ground.

For the few seconds following, it was as though I had swallowed my voice; even my breath was barely audible by my own ears as I huddled there in my sheets.

But then, finally –“Hello?” – I spoke.

I regretted this simply act with a shudder as a deep suction echoed through my new-found cell. But that wasn’t the worst. Whatever it was that had fallen from the abyss above, this creature—this monster, it created its own light. It was dim, perhaps an internal glow, but it gave me a good look at it.

It was hunched near the wall adjacent. Its body dripped with an ooze that slightly engulfed its light, and with every rapid breath it took, more and more poured from its skin. And the smell that leaked from it was that of rotten flesh. Then my eyes met with its feet, and the noises that had touched my ears from above had an obvious source. Rubble—rejected metal from a scrapheap.

“Hell—”

“You’ll never get out.” Its voice was that of a hoarse child's.

I blinked back the surprise of its audible speech. “What?”

It turned to watch me with eyes like giant craters holding irises that blended into its sclera. It opened its mouth to speak, and as it did, it began a thousand voices in one, “You’re going to die,” A raspy inhale, “just like the rest of them,” Another breath, “just like the rest of us.”

Then it came at me. Its mouth still agape, only greater, revealing its crude, jagged teeth and rotting gums. I could feel its hunger as it rushed, feel its fury churning with the acid of its stomach. It was on me before I could move, snapping shut its jaws around my shoulder. I could still feel the tear of my muscle when Mam shook me awake.

“Jesus, God in Heaven, girl, thought you were having a seizure, thrashing like that;” Mama spoke, “and the system didn’t say nothing ‘bout no seizures.”

With a deep breath in, I blinked away the damp feel of my nightmare room, and looked up at Mama.

“Sorry, Mam.”

She wasn’t really my mom; just a foster mother I was in the custody of until my 18th birthday. But she was a good parent; both she and Paul were.

“Bad dream.” I informed her.

“Ah, demons workin’ at cha mind, are they?” She rubbed my hair like she would a toddler child, “Well, they can’t get cha if your eyes are open. And if that doesn’t work,” She whispered, “A midnight stroll always helped me.” She smiled before setting my cloths out on my blanket, “Now come on, breakfast’s getting cold, and this house has been waiting nine years for us to clean it.”

And with that hint of the day’s duties, I was left to my thoughts.

I took minutes for me to remove myself from the cot, terrified of what abomination was hiding under my bed. But with a leap, I moved, springing from the mattress to a few feet away from the base. Tilting my head, I spying at the floorboards lying dormant in the stead’s shadows. Nothing.

I huffed out a sigh and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, trying as well to rub away the burning reverie from my thoughts. But though the sleep was gone, the creature – or at least its words – still remained.

“You’re going to die.”

I shook away the shiver that followed, and hurried to get dress and help Mam.

ᴓ

I was washing the dishes for Mam when I heard the floor creak from behind, and for a terrified moment I felt I was back in the monster’s den.

I turned fast, dropping the plate I’d scrubbed back into the sink.

Pa stood in the entryway of the kitchen, fingers laced in the act of buttoning his overcoat and eyebrow raised. “Shit, girl, startled you like light does a cockroach, didn’t I?”

With a silence prayer in my breath, I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Now, what chu doing? Dishes? Milly’s got you workin’ hard, eh?” He ended with a snort.

“Yes, sir.” I answered, returning my hands back to the dishs, and willing my heart to slow.

Ma returned in from taking out the trash a few seconds later, and it was almost instant that she knew I had been frightened. “Ah, Paul. What you doing scarin’ her for?”

Pa shrugged himself onto one of the kitchen stools. “Weren’t my intent. Came into the kitchen, she turned like a doe does to my truck on the road.”

“Well, it’s a good thing she ain’t that deer.” Mam come over and gave me a squeeze. “I’d miss seeing these eyes sparkling at me in the morning.” She mumbled with a grin.

Pa looked up from lacing his boots, mumbling something near agreement, “Mmmm. Right. Eyes. Lovely.”

Mother removed herself from me and placed a kiss on Pa’s forehead as well as a smack. “Mmmm. Yes. You be careful at work, ain’t gonna be a widow anytime soon.”

Paul gave her a kiss back. “Course not, hon.” And took his leave for work.

After the sound of his engine faded, Ma turned to busying herself in the living room. “Once you’re done with the dishes, Rebecca, you can help me dust.”

“Yes, Ma.” I called, plunging my hands into the water, not only to collect the plates, but to rid the murky image, I pretended my mind hadn’t casted, of the creature’s eyes from the water’s surface.

ᴓ

I took a deep breath as I sat on my bed, taking what Mama said to heart. “They can’t get me if my eyes are open. It can’t.”

So what? I questioned myself

Was I going to stay awake forever?

Throughout my mental discussion, I hadn’t the idea that my psyche had started to doze down into sleep until I heard the monster growl above my head, following its call with the taps and scratches of its misshaped feet.

When the walls began to morph and the carpet burned away in a fireless heat, it gave a sense of lucid dreaming, but that didn't make steady my heart, or give warm to the chilling ice in my chest. Nor did it make the echoed cries of rage any less terrifying.

By the time it’d collapsed, I was standing, palms sprawled on the concrete walls for guidance and blind eyes search for the light that gave it away.

There.

Five feet to my right, sunken into the same ball, curled like a cobra. The stench came next, a stronger and more rancid odor that briefly stunned me. Then its eyes opened, and those gouged holes seemed to know exactly where I stood. I didn’t dare to blink when they fixed themselves onto me.

“You’re going to die.” All those voices echoed the same phrase.

I ran my fingers across the concrete behind me, trying to remind myself this thing wasn’t real.

It was just a dream. A nightmare.

“Just like the rest of them, the rest of us.”

Just a repeat of last night. That’s all.

But even knowing that premise, when the liquid coated its light and its words echoed from the hollow of its jaws, my skin began pricked with sweat and my stomach churned.

Nightmares can’t hurt you...

The creature reared itself back on its metallic claws as though hearing my thoughts; and in the seconds it stood positioned, its massive maw unfastened. Rotten breath misted through dozens of broken teeth. And even in there, through its own light, I made out the metallic entity that had also arranged its feet.

Nightmares can’t hurt you…

A scream. Like thousands of echoing crows erupted, spilling from the decay of its throat. And while it scream, the monstrosity began to grow, filling out the space around it. Its weight brought down its own feet, near cracking the concrete foundation below it.

It stood before me now, two-stories tall and equal that wide, with its back arched like a predator and metallic claws extended.

Then everything fell instantly into silence seconds before that final voice whispered.

“You’ll never get out.”

It charged.

ᴓ

Milly wasn’t there to wake me from my dream.

And when I had awoken, wrecked and fatigued, and brought myself out of my room, she wasn’t there either.

The note of the fridge said she’d stepped out for groceries, but the vacancy of the house felt as though she had been gone for years.

Shoulders drooped in defeat, I shuffled back to my room. I closed the door, turned the locked and sat by my window, where I cried, waiting for her to come home.

When the clouds overtook the sky and the clock on my bedside started to read later into the afternoon. I began to worry. Milly’s vehicle still wasn’t in the drive.

I wiped the tears from my cheeks, pulling from my curled position.

Exiting my room, I began a scurry down the stairs.

I called out. “Pa?”

There came no reply, but it didn’t take long to find Paul hidden away in his study.

“Pa, where’s Milly?” I questioned, leaning on the door frame.

“Hmm?” He groaned.

“Milly, she should be back by now.” I insisted.

“Mmm!” He looked up from his paperback. “Truck broke down, outside Rigway. Called while you were upstairs. Said something about spending money on a mechanic.” He added bitterly.

I anxiously squeezed the hem of my shirt into a coil. “Don’t you think we should go get her?”

“Ain’t leaving the car in Rigway, no way. Besides,” he interjected, “she’s fine, knows how to take care of herself.”

“But Pa…”

“Now, don’t go whining on ‘bout nothing here.” He ordered.

With a sniffle, I agreed and hurried back to my post at the window, still waiting
for her to come home.

The clouded cleared sometime about 6, but my thoughts stayed cluttered. I wanted Milly home. I needed her here. To talk to. And to be under—

I yawned.

The drowsiness I recognized after I had drew the warmth from my bones. My mind flashed to the permanent vision of the creature as it attacked me; and my stomach twisted, nearly causing another onset of tears.

Even if Milly was back before nightfall, I needed to stay awoke.

But how?

“A midnight stroll always helped me.”

I groaned, thinking of Milly as her advice turned in my head.

Nevertheless, I decided to attempt her tried-and-true method. I grabbed my warmest clothes from the closet, packing them away in my leather school bag. I crammed a book for the walk as well, knowing the simple tap of my feet wouldn’t be enough to distract me from sleep forever this first night. With everything ready, I slung the pack over my shoulder and stepped out into the hall. After a dash down the stairs, I looked in on Pa in his study.

He rested in his chair, book abandoned and television on; his eyes didn’t seem to move from the motion on the screen. I almost thought he didn’t hear me coming down the stairs until:

“Rebec!” He called, “be a dear and go down in the cellar and find my tools? Mechanic won’t help and Milly wants the truck fixed before sundown.”

I glanced at the low-bearing sun through the window. Milly might be disappointed.”

“Yes, sir.”

I dropped my bag gently on the floor beside the cabinet’s hinges, and hurried to the worn door of the basement. I pulled it open and the cold, dank smell of decay rose in the motion, wafting straight against my nose.

I shivered as I began my descent and the scent engulfed me like the creatures claws. Halfway down, I flicked the light-switch.
The cellar remained dark.

With a curse, I thumbed it back up and down again, only to get the faint buzz of its bulb’s life coming from the abyss, but no glow.

Damn it.

Arms curled around the rail of the stairs, I slowly lowered myself until the wooden feel through my shoes changed to the loose gravel of the basement floor. Releasing the banister, my arms moved out in front of me, waving through the darkness, trying to find something to bring back order to—

I stumbled over one of Pa’s toolboxes.

“Oh, son of a bitch.” I whined, turning myself around. Though by the absence it had made in sound, I suspected a hollow belly, I began a blind search anyway. After minutes of running my hands against the dirt, it was a reassuring feel to touch something other than the damp soil. But what I felt wasn’t the metallic rim of the container. It was softer, like a rotten beam.

“Hey Pa!” I shouted. “I think the ceiling breaking apart down here. There’s a b—”

The overhead light finally ignited in its pale yellow blush, wavering on ragged flower-printed cloth.

It wasn’t a beam.

“Milly?”

My heart seemed to stop as I saw her there, crippled and buried in a layer of crimson dust. My grasp went for her hand, to feel her pulse and knew she was fine. I nearly lost my stomach when the cold skin I touched revealed no such pattern.

“No.”

I cupped my fingers around her cheeks and tried to pull her back from Death.

“No! Milly!” Then I called the only one I now knew. “Paul!”

I screamed past my tears. “Paul! Oh God, Milly!” I huffed. “Paul!”

But when his footsteps didn’t come, I stood, intent on charging for the stairs, to find Paul, to the phone, to—

I stopped.

Towards the back wall, where the shadows played, something drew my attention.

Fear turned my feet to stone, for even through their shaded fingers, I saw what impossible thing resting on the wooden table: A sewing man’s puppet of metal and rancid flesh.

“That’s…” the monster.

“Stunning, isn’t she?”

My skin near ripped from muscle when that voice called.

“Paul?!”

I turned back to the way I’d come, to see him standing limply on the bottom step.

“Her name’s Sarah.” He moaned in a mono-toned call.

“Wha-”

“Milly wouldn’t let me keep her.” He whispered, his words coming from a distant mind, “Didn’t want me to finish her. And now,” He trailed.

“What did you do?” I whimpered, again spying down at Mam’s cripple body. “What did you do to her?!” I screamed.

“She’s not finished yet.” He whined softly, with a mind completely confined to the thought of his atrocity.

I peered at the abomination on the workbench before returning my gaze to my foster dad.

“Paul, please—”

“She needs your eyes.”

It was hardly a blink before I saw the axe coming my way.

“You’re going to die.” ”

Thwack.

Just like the rest of them.”

“Beautiful.”

“Just like the rest of us.”