Just a Nightmare
Choking and sputtering, my consciousness returned me to a dark room where the only light trickled in from an unseen source in the open adjoining bathroom.
Heart still pounding, I looped my fingers through the blankets and grasped, trying to drag myself into the moment.
“Shhh, it’s just a nightmare,” a woman’s silky voice diffused through the still air like venom in veins. Cool fingertips grazed over my arm, wrapping around my bicep.
A scream and piss threatened to explode from me as I pushed myself to sit, my hand clumsily yet savagely ripping the foreign limb from me.
The woman sat up, something flickering in her eyes before she blinked them clear, watching me with concern, “What is it, dear?”
My chest heaved. Who was this woman? I scanned her lean body, my eyes lingering on the angular bones barely hiding under her pale skin and how they contrasted with the soft, vibrant features of her eyes and lips. The swirling layers of green and blue in her eyes waved towards me as I met them, clashing with the wine red pout of her lips.
Must’ve gone to bed in a hurry. It was a comforting thought my mind was trying to convince myself that must have happened. Because what else could have?
She reached out one of her long arms and caressed my face, “Are you sure you’re ok?” Her eyes continued to search mine.
Still, I could not remember her. Wow, it had to have been a rough night. I grumbled something confirming; that I was ok, I had to be, it was just the lingering effects of the nightmare that had me on edge.
Raising my arm, she settled into the space beside me and stillness descended over us.
Looking around the room, trying to piece together where I found myself, I gently shifted my legs away from the marble cold limbs she had placed on me. I could see the dark outline of my phone on the small table beside me, and after a moment’s hesitation, I reached out for it.
Her legs met mine again as my fingers wrapped around it and pulled it to me. 3:43 AM. I recoiled at the light and smashed the screen to my chest, blinking hard.
Had her breathing always been that shallow or had she gone back to sleep?
Peeking up one of the corners, my finger pushed the flashlight icon, and a beam of light illuminated the ceiling.
My heart physically stopped in my chest.
Dried, red paint was splashed up on the ceiling above the bed. Odd, my mind was refusing to put things together as I moved the beam around to a section where the liquid had been thrown up by something and spattered across the popcorn detailing by a swinging motion that ended above the foot of the bed. At that angle, the light caught the wall in front of me, where a thin white silhouette stood solemnly where a figure had prevented the liquid from staining the white behind them.
Panicked, I whipped the light around the other walls. The same splattered and splotched red overlapping hues nearly blotted out all of the white. Raised stained streaks were dried along the bottoms and collected on the baseboards. Shaking, vomit rose in my chest, knocking the phone from my hands as it sprayed from my mouth, drenching the bed and the woman’s head. It was blood. Coughing, it spluttered from my lungs and stomach onto my lips and chest.
I tried to push myself up but the strength had left my arms and I lay there helpless as the woman propped herself up on one skeletal elbow, her eyes glittering as they laughed at me.
Blood-soaked hair started to fall away from her skull as she slowly leaned toward me. Lips parted slyly, rows of sharp teeth glittering in the dark, illuminated by my terror, she snarled, “I told you it was a nightmare.”
