The Stuff of Nightmares

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

The Stuff of Nightmares

By Plot Roach

Darkness crept in on cockroach feet. And with it came the nightmares. Megan tossed and turned in her sleep, unable to shake herself out of the fantasy world and back into reality. In her dream she was being chased by an unknown terror without form. But it devoured all she held dear, one piece at a time. It chased her from her childhood home, destroying loved ones and friends. It continued to hunt her throughout the different stages of her life until her present. There it had her trapped in her cramped little apartment, devouring her neighbors before it cornered her in the bathroom.

She had locked the door, propping the hamper against the handle. She sat on the toilet lid, trying to pry open the bathroom window in an attempt to escape. But the window would not budge and the creeping terror was oozing through the lock on the door. “I don’t want to die on the toilet!” she screamed as the blackness pooled about her feet. “Wake up!” she yelled. “This isn’t real!” She slammed her hand against the door, feeling it reverberate against her flesh. But it was not enough to shock her awake. She opened the medicine cabinet, the blackness creeping up around her thighs. She pulled out a pair of scissors and plunged them into the flesh of her left hand. The pain lanced through her and she snapped awake.

She turned on the bedside lamp and gripped her left hand to her chest. Once she had calmed down she inspected her hand, knowing that she would not find anything, but felt the pain all the same.

“I hate these damned nightmares.” she muttered and slipped out of bed. She wandered into the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of milk and getting a slice of chocolate cake. Not so good for my figure, she said. But I’ve just finished battling the evil unknown, I think I deserve a treat. She let her mind wander over the details of the dream. The thing had gotten closer this time. What would happen if I didn’t wake up before the thing devoured me? She asked herself. That’s silly, it’s just a dream. Nothing can really happen to you in your dreams. It had been a theory, one that she was ready to put to the test.

She finished her midnight snack and returned to bed, leaving the light on to read through a book until she felt sleepy. On a hunch, she pulled out a test tube and set it next to the lamp. She turned off the light and pulled the covers close. Almost as soon as she closed her eyes, she began to dream.

Back in her childhood home, everything swept clean by the darkness of the unknown evil. It would chase her from one world into another if she let it. Night after night it devoured all that she had held dear. It has to stop, she told herself. It has to end here, tonight.

She heard the thing before she saw it, a creak on the wooden stairs announced its presence and she knew it was just playing with her. It has no weight, so how can it make the stairs creak? She asked herself. It slithered and moved forward, taking its time and lapping at the floorboards as if with a large tongue made of shadows.

“That’s just obscene!” she yelled at the thing. “Have you no dignity? I would guess not, since you don’t seem to have a backbone either!” She picked up a vase from the edge of a shelf and threw it at the shadow creature. It disappeared into the blackness like a lake swallows a pebble, it barely made a ripple. I’ll have to try harder, she thought, and retreated to the next room.

Concentrate, she told herself. She summoned another room, one that had never been in this dream before. It was the lab back at her college. Clean linoleum floor gleamed with the overheat florescent lights. Metal tables lined the room and equipment decorated the shelves of the walls. The light of the overhead lights began to dim as soon as the creature poured under the crack of the door. Megan combated this by turning on the Bunsen burners at each of the tables. Come and get me, she thought.

She backed away from the creature, shaking but keeping her mind as calm as possible. It did not seem put off by the new territory it hunted her through. She tripped as she bumped against one of the tables, it sent her to the floor where the shadow hunter lunged at her like a hungry dog.

Now! She thought. She flipped the on switch to a vacuum box, its front door open and jammed it into the shadow creature. The vaporous thing was sucked into the box, where she snapped the door closed and set a test tube into the back. It thumped the sides of the glass box as it thrashed and attempted to escape. “Not this time, you don’t.” she said.

Within minutes it was sucked into the test tube and was trapped by the rubber stopper. A few minutes later she left the lab, and the dream, test tube in hand.

She woke with a start, looking next to her to the test tube she had left on the nightstand. Coiled inside looked to be a worm made of mercury. It will be interesting to see what it tests like in the lab, she told herself. If it’s biological, we might be able to immunize people against it. Or use it for a weapon… Megan closed her eyes for the third time that night. Falling into a deep and peaceful sleep, a longtime personal demon finally vanquished.