Just My Nightmare

I wake up from a nightmare where I was wandering through a forest, lost in a maze of trees that were of impossible size. There was something unnatural living but in a way dead and evil chasing me. It had ruff rugged skin that was smoke black looking like a walking skeleton with only that dead cracking skin like old parchment clinging to its bones. It had claws that were long, sharp and gnarled in an unkempt fashion looking as if they were made for cutting through meat like a knife through hot butter. Its long yellowed teeth each going into a needle sharp point making the jaw in its torn mouth look like bent fitted saws made of ancient worn bone, emitting a stomach churning, heart dropping mown of a creature whose soul has been tortured and slowly torn from it body. The creature had maroon eyes that looked expressionless and dead, hungry for the fresh meat of the living, just a morsel of flesh in which it hasn’t had in so long.

While this creature was chasing me for what seemed like forever through a dark, never ending forest there was a voice, a voice that was harsh like dry dead leaves, a rasping whisper in my ear rambling nonsense into the core of my essence. I take a deep breath of fresh air before opening my eyes it has the fresh sent of thick forestry and I notice that I’m cold and wet. I open my eyes and everything is very dark, I can’t see anything. Where am I? My arm and side of my face I was laying on has a numb prickly feeling to it. I soon realize I am sleeping on the floor but, it’s covered in damp moss and moist, soft, black soil. How did I get here? My eyes start to adjust and though it’s still very dark, I see trees so big they looked unearthly, ancient, and their bark ebony black.

Was my nightmare really just a dream? Wel… I start to cough as I try my voice. “Well I don’t know where I am and I surely can’t be alone out here.” I try to get up off the ground and on my feet but there’s a sharp pain in my leg moments before I collapse back to the cold wet ground while blankly staring at the tree tops, miles out of reach, engulfing the gentle, calming blue sky I once knew. When I regain consciousness, I’m aware of the long gash going down the length of my leg; it’s covered in dry cracking scabs and blood and has dark blackish veins branching from it in every direction. It looks as if it’s been infected by something, but what?

There’s a snap that sounds like a twig and a voice resonating through the back of my conscious, rambling mad nonsense in my ear with its harsh maniacal voice again, my heart starts racing. Whatever I do I needed to think of a way to get back on my feet and then find a way out of this wretched forest, before whatever is out there decides to come by for a snack. I grab a sturdy looking stick off the forest floor and force myself onto my feet using the stick as a sort of rough, earthy black, gnarled looking cane I start to limp each step an agonizing torture as if someone were hacking at my leg with a rusted, yet sharp blade, broken into jagged formations from overuse.

I look around trying to see a way out, but after a period of agonizingly slow and poisoning time my hopes begin to ware away to a fine powdered dust. Is there even an end to his woefully heinous forest? Then it hit me like a blow to the stomach, ''what if I never get out of here? What if I’m stuck here till that creature gets me?'' The voice is louder now, just above a whisper carelessly spilling a constant throb of toxic insanity into my stream of thoughts.

I see it as I now try to run away, but suddenly like the coming of an unpredicted storm there’s an explosion of pain from my leg, and I topple to the forest floor once more. If I can’t run than what am I going to do? “I’ll have to fight it off but what can I do to defend myself from that… that thing?” I lay myself up against a hill composed of rock and some withered plaint covered dirt steep enough to lie in an almost perfectly upright sitting position, grabbing my cane, I wait in the dawdling partial silence of my inner isolation.

Abruptly out from behind a tree trunk the creature of my nightmare rushes at me with speed unthinkable for its boney figure, with mouth gapping loosely open as if unhinged, reveling yellowed needle sharp teeth and looking just like the one from my reality, once thought a nightmare. It closed the gap between me and it in seconds and it would be on me in no time. It’s an arm length away when taking my stick I was earlier using as a cane and swing it into the side of the creature’s skull knocking it to the ground onto its side.

It viciously thrashes its body to get back up as I grab a fist sized rock from the ground and bash it into the side of the creature’s head again knocking it back to the now slightly blood soaked soil of the forest but it still refused to stay down. As it desperately tries to get up reaching for me with its long, dead, twisted hands mouth wide open trying to get a taste of flesh. I kick it with my good leg square in the chest sending it stumbling backwards eventually falling down on its crippled back.

I lunge myself on top of it to deliver a finishing blow, just then the rambling voice became a high pitched head splitting shriek, my vision failed, and everything went blank, right before I felt an agonizingly sharp pain in my stomach, as the creature slashes me open with its razor sharp claws. The voice drops back down to a harsh whisper and my vision comes back as I’m falling to the ground in what seems like syrup, because it seems like forever before I really hit the ground. The creature is on top of me now, it’s over I’m going to die and who knows what will happen after that and as I closed my eyes the creature bits me in the throat and the voice was gone and everything went black. It was over.

I curtly open my eyes awakening from a dreaded nightmare in a cold sweat, trembling from the now foggy, vague, yet very real events that took place in my sleep. I could feel the soft, reassuring comfort of my bed and the warm silky sheets that were now plastered to my face and body from the salty brine formed from sweat that now covered me. As I pull the sheets back, I’m blinded by beams of brilliant bright light, radiating the suns heat onto my face that, at the same time being chilled by the prickly needles of cold refreshing air. So it was a nightmare after all. Was it possible that what I saw in my dream was what has come of the outside world humanity left behind? Maybe but how and what about the creature all life beyond the walls supposedly died of the disease long ago. I pushed these thoughts away as I got up from bed to start a new day. --Cartoon Reaper (talk) 20:21, June 20, 2014 (UTC)Kaleb LaPointe