I can’t sleep right now and just woke up having a dream so I thought I’d write it as close as I could to how I dreamed it. Plus I don’t want to keep Lynn up with my tossing and turning. I haven’t even edited this and I can’t remember writing a short story before, but here it is in it’s raw and unfinished (probably never will be either) glory.
It was a warm summer day. The dead grass on the rolling fields in Wyoming gave a beautiful golden tint to the landscape. There were no clouds in the sky, a slight breeze, it wasn’t too hot – under any other circumstance, it would have been a great day. Julie was running. With tears streaming down her face, she was running. John was sitting on a blanket in the distance, reading. He heard her desperate sounding voice calling his name as she ran toward him. These days, John spent most of his time completely alone.
“What is it, Julie?” he asked. He put his book down and rubbed his grey beard with concern. Panting and sobbing simultaneously, his sister Julie came to a halt. Now that she had arrived, she didn’t quite know how to break the terrible news to him. She began pacing around with her hands on her head.
“I just got a text message from Tommy. He’s at the hospital. Rebecca just died.”
John looked at the ground and started to sob. His daughter was gone. In a single month, his entire world had crumbled to pieces. It had all begun with a single nightmare. He had been running down a hallway. It was an endless hallway with doors on either side. He wasn’t sure what he was running from, but he knew he had to get away. He tried a door. A swirling vortex of black smoke engulfed him and a dozen hands came out of the blackness. They clawed and hungered for him. They strangled him and scratched him as he writhed around on the ground trying to be free from their icy grip.
As John awoke in terror, his wife Samantha jolted upright, hearing him gasping for air. She comforted him, and assured him it was a dream. The very next day, Samantha went back to work at the hospital. She was making the rounds when another nurse saw her scream in terror and collapse, writhing around in fear. She was clawing at herself. When Samantha snapped out of it, she said she thought she saw a swirling vortex of black smoke all around her with dozens of hands trying to choke and scratch her. Julie was given a two-week paid leave with the recommendation that she get some psychiatric care.
With each passing day, John would have another nightmare. They would only be dreams to him, but with Samantha, they would manifest themselves as if they were real. She would go days without sleep because of some perceived threat that she couldn’t seem to escape. Each nightmare John had would manifest itself on a daily basis. She would be running from the swirling cloud of hands one minute, and then five minutes later start screaming about the building around her burning down. John would come home to find her curled up on the bed in the fetal position crying and trying not to be found by something.
Finally, one day, John came home from work and found the front door wide open. As he stepped inside, there were toppled lamps, the couch had been moved out of position, and there were broken dishes everywhere. He stepped into the kitchen and found the body of his wife in the corner. There were scratch marks on the walls next to her and her fingers were bleeding. After the examination, the doctors said that she had died of a prolonged state of stress. Her fight or flight response had been triggered for so long and her adrenaline levels were so uncontrollably high, that her body simply broke down and died from it.
Through all this heartache, the nightmares didn’t stop. He and his daughter had moved back into his parents’ old house, where his Father was on assisted living because of advanced Alzheimer’s Disease. He and his daughter Rebecca slept in separate bedrooms and just stayed there for a month or so as they dealt with the grief of losing Samantha. The nightmares continued, but this time, whatever was wrong with John was getting worse. Samantha started having manifestations of spiders crawling all over her from her Father’s dream. His aged father started having terrors in the day, but couldn’t really communicate what was bothering him. He just kept shaking and speaking gibberish.
—-
John got up from the blanket. The warm summer day’s breeze flapped through his shirt. He hadn’t combed his hair or bathed in days. Normally he was a tidy man, but he was totally unkempt. Julie, still panting from running sat down on his blanket, not sure what else to say. Calmly, John started walking back toward the shaded gazebo where Julie had run from. The car was parked right along side it, facing the country road they had driven from. Under the gazebo, John’s father was sitting in a wheelchair, rocking back and forth, speaking gibberish. John looked at his father as the old man shook and looked around him in terror, unable to articulate what was bothering him.
John knelt next to his father and held him in his arms.
“I’m sorry dad,” he said through the tears. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what happened to Samantha and Rebecca, but whatever it is, it’s happening to you too.”
John wiped his eyes and continued. “You might ask yourself why. Why I didn’t try to fight it. Why I couldn’t be brave.” John stood up, possibly having more to say but chose not to continue.
“I love you dad.”
Samantha sat on the blanket, watching John embrace his father. John started walking away from the gazebo. She watched him in the distance walking into the endless golden fields, apparently going nowhere. The man had lost everything. His back facing her, she saw him stop at the top of one of the foothills. He looked up at the sky, as he seemed to be reaching for something in his pocket. She covered her mouth and gasped. Then there was a gunshot. And John collapsed, never to rise again.
