Night Terror

The following is my contribution to the weekly challenge by The Ink Well, run by @raj808. This week's challenge is about keeping a dream journal, and then writing a short story based on your dreams. I almost never remember my dreams, even if I wake up in the night as I often do. But oddly, I had a very memorable dream about the time the prompt came out, in which I was being chased by a giant lizard thing. It was inspiration enough for this story. It was fun to write. I hope you enjoy it.

Night Terror

Sonya never knows when the dream will come. It begins differently every time, but it always turns out the same. She is running… running… and the thing is behind her chasing… chasing.

She dreads sleep.

“I’m going to stay up,” she says to her husband. “You go on. I don’t feel like sleeping tonight.”

Robert pours a beer into a frosted mug. He likes his routines. “Honey, sleep is critical. You can’t just stay up.”

“Well I'm going to.”

He raises his glass. “Power to you, my love. But you know the dream never ends terribly. It might be scary, but you always wake up. And then it’s over.” He sips his beer and some bits of foam dot his mustache. “I mean, I don’t want to sound insensitive. I know it’s awful.”

She pours a glass of wine. “You’re not insensitive, just unaware. You don’t know how frightening it is. You haven’t experienced it.” She doesn't mention that with every subsequent dream, the monster comes closer to getting to her before she wakes up.

“Cheers to that, baby. You know I love you. I hate that you have to deal with this.”

They clink glasses but she says nothing more. What is there to say? No one, not even her husband, understands. She feels like a bore. A boat anchor. She no longer wants to talk about the dream. It seems all of her insecurities and lifelong sense of powerlessness have caught up with her.

Robert yawns. His late night beer always makes him sleepy. And he sleeps like the dead, never moving. She has awakened in the night many times, knowing that she has been tossing and turning from the dream and screaming like a person being tortured. But he sleeps through it. Each time, she wipes the sweat from her face and the tears from her eyes and looks at her sleeping husband - a log by another name. Through her self-pity, what she feels is envy. She cannot remember ever sleeping that way.

“Well, good night,” he says. He sets his beer mug in the sink and kisses her cheek. Then he takes hold of both of her shoulders and looks into her eyes. “This too will pass. Recurring dreams don’t last forever. Something will break the spell.”

She smiles. “Thanks honey.”

After Robert goes to bed, she pours another glass of wine. It seems to be propping her up, giving her the self-possession to just be. Out the back window of their living room, the moon is rising beautifully, majestically, through the trees. For a moment she wonders if one can enter a dream state that is like sleep, but that does not invite the frightening, unwanted dream world. She sits on the couch and watches the moon change from a giant orange orb to a small floating white disk as it rises above the trees, and she lets her imagination play.

Before the dream took over her life, she had fancied herself a writer. She had even written a few children’s books. With a bit more work they might even be publishable. She sips her wine and begins conjuring up a story about a child who can walk on the moon.

The wine is softening her resolve to remain alert.

If she could just rest her head for a few moments and imagine….

Outside, she sees that a child is climbing up through the tree branches, higher and higher toward the moon. It’s a little girl. She couldn’t be more than six years old. Sonya stands, opens the deck door and steps out. “Be careful there!”

The girl seems too small for this. But she looks so determined, so sure that she can do it. Sonya wants to tell her to come down, the way her mother would have, yelling that she is going to fall. Instead, she quells her fear and shouts, "You can make it! You're almost there!"

As the girl begins to reach for the moon and begins climbing up the side, Sonya notices movement in the shrubs below her deck. She peers through the darkness. There is a rustle, coming closer, as if something is stealthily moving toward her, hidden by the growth. And then she sees it emerge from the shrubs - an ugly lizard monster the size of an alligator, or a komodo dragon.

It sees her and flicks its forked tongue. And just like that it is running for the stairs up to her deck. It is coming for her. She hears its feet thudding on the steps and is frozen. It tops the stairs and she sees its hateful yellow eyes and full girth. How could anything so huge and reptilian move so fast? As it rushes toward her, she screams. Then she wakes from the dream.

---

“So,” Robert says in the morning. He stirs cream into his coffee. “Didja stay up?”

Sonya watches his simple movements. The gracefulness with which a rested person can make decisions, prepare coffee, and stir cream into a cup is confounding. How is he doing that? Her eyes feel like sandpaper. She does not answer.

He looks out at the September sun. “You never got into bed, anyway.”

“No. I never got into bed.” She pours herself some coffee as well, wondering why its aroma does not seem enticing. Why the very idea of breakfast is repulsive. Why she can’t help but feel irritation each time her husband looks at her or asks a question.

“Hey, it’s Saturday. Let’s go for a bike ride. Look at it out there. A beautiful day. We can’t waste this.”

She nods. The coffee tastes vulgar, but she drinks some anyway, hoping it will clear the rodent droppings cluttering her brain.

“I’ll check over the bikes and pump up the tires after breakfast.”

“You do that. Thank you, honey.” Normal. She is all about keeping things normal.

Her mother calls when Robert is out fixing up the bikes. “Hello darling! I’m just checking in. I know you’ve been having a rough time with the bad dreams. Is it any better?’

Sonya sits on the couch and rests her head against a pillow. “No, Mom. It used to happen occasionally, but now I’ve had the recurring nightmare every night for weeks. It’s a little different each time, but it ends with a komodo dragon-like thing coming after me at high speed, and I wake up screaming.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Completely. And I’m so tired I no longer know whether I’m awake or asleep. My conscious and unconscious realities are blending.”

Her mother makes an exasperated sigh. “Your trouble is that you let things bother you. You always have. Then of course you don't sleep well. If you were smart, you would take something - so you go into a deep sleep.”

Somehow, this is not what she wants to hear. She wants soothing words, and kindness. She wants her mother to say it's all going to be okay. But that is not her mother's way. Her mother observes what's wrong. She implies that people are misguided. “Thanks Mom. I’ll think about it.”

That day they ride 20 miles from their little Minneapolis suburb out west to a farm where there are hayrides and farm produce. The days are shortening and it is already mid-afternoon by the time they arrive. A bluegrass band is playing and children are selecting apples and pumpkins and riding about in tractor-pulled wagons.

Robert picks up a giant pumpkin that must weigh 25 pounds. “I guess we should have brought our saddle bags along,” he jokes.

They drink cider and listen to the music. The daylight is waning. Sonya feels so tired, she could curl up in some hay for a rest. There are so many people walking around the farm and fields, in and out of the gift shop, taking rides, that she wonders if anyone would even notice.

Then far off, she notices movement of a different type. People have been emerging from a corn maze far to the left of the musicians and food stands. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, except that something large is rustling in there. She can see the corn stalks moving in waves as the thing nears the exit from the maze. No one else seems to notice.

Then, through the dusk, as she wonders idly whether Robert made sure to bring their bike lights, she sees the monster's head emerge from the stalks of corn. It is looking for her. She knows this with such certainty that she gasps, even before its eyes lock onto hers and it begins to come her way.

She stands up from her hay bale chair. It is running for her now, quickly covering ground smoothed by many trampling feet. It runs past a scarecrow, and through oblivious crowds. No one sees it but her, which seems impossible. But this all feels real.

Robert is a dozen feet away, in conversation with one of the band members who is on a break. She has no choice but to run. She considers her bike, but she doesn’t know if she can get to it fast enough, or if she can get the bike moving quickly enough on the gravel road. Instead she runs for some out-buildings among some trees. Maybe there will be a place to hide. A hay loft. The top of a tree. Could the monster climb? She doesn’t know.

She is running… running… the murmur of the crowd fading away, the sounds of the monster’s thudding feet coming louder. She runs for a barn and enters. It is nearly dark. She looks around. It is cavernous, with only soft stacks of hay in the corners. There is no place to hide.

Then she sees a pitchfork leaning against the wall. She takes it in her hands, raises it up, and when the creature rounds the edge of the doorway and faces her, she hurls it with all her might, tines first, toward its eyes. It pokes the creature hard, but then bounces away. The monster is unscathed. But now it is very angry. Its tongue flicks venomously, yellow eyes gleaming. And for the first time, she can see its horrible serrated teeth. It walks toward her, slowly, as if it is now aware that she has some power to hurt.

There is another implement, a shovel. She grabs it and runs for the monster, smashing the shovel down on its face. It howls and she raises it again, bringing it down on the creature’s hideous head. Blood squirts from its mouth, and she feels braver, stronger. She smashes again and again. It rears back, then falls. Finally, it drags itself to the door and slithers out into the night.

A shadow at the door. “Sonya?”

She is still holding the shovel over her head, ready for more. “Robert.”

“Honey, what are you doing? I saw you running toward this barn, and I thought, ‘what the heck?’ I finally just caught up to you.”

She allows him to take the shovel from her hands, and smiles at him in the dim light. “I think I killed it. Or at least it’s mortally wounded.”

“Good.” He looks her up and down. "Are you okay?"

“I think so. I mean yes. I won, Robert.”

He puts his arm around her shoulder. “I always knew you would. Now, we’d better get going.” He produces their bike lights out of his pocket to clip to their shirts.

Soon, they are gliding along the road, at one with the evening. The last frogs of summer croak petulantly in the marshes, like children who don’t want to go to bed. She has conquered something, shattered its hold on her. She knows she will sleep well that night and dream the sweetest dreams.

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Thank you for reading! Image credit: Original image by janwinkler, modified with Deep Dream Generator.

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