Don’t Wake Up

I wake up feeling a small pain on my upper back. It’s tiny, but noticeable. I know what to expect now. It’s going to be yet another small scratch that seemingly came out of nowhere. My logical mind tells me that it was only me scratching my back while asleep, or my skin just being too sensitive for the sheets and getting cut. I believe my mind, but I still have an eerie feeling about these small scratches. I get up, hobbling over to my bathroom door, sliding it open, hopping up on the counter, and pulling down my sleeve to see what this scratch looked like. As I’d expected, it was long, thin, and not deep. Just like every other one I’d gotten. As always, once I saw the scratch, I heard the soft, scratchy voice that whispered in every dream I’d had for a year. Every night, without fail, I’d hear a voice hiss in my ear; “Don’t wake up…”

At first, it really freaked me out, but by now, I’m used to it. I wake up every morning and live my life like a normal teenager does: Wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, go online, eat, sleep, repeat. Now, in summer, there’s even less to do: Wake up at noon, get online, eat, sleep, repeat. Being alone in my room used to be relaxing, but now I can’t stand even sitting in there to watch T.V. I have to leave and go into the living room. My room has a dark feeling to it. I haven’t told anyone because I’d be told I’m being dramatic, but whatever.

I walk out of my bathroom, and instantly leave my room, as fast as possible. Even in the daytime, it creeps me out to be in that room. – I had tried to sleep in other places when the eerie feeling in my room first began, but I could never sleep, and was always drawn back to the comfort of my bed. I always fell asleep without any problems at all, which was strange, since I couldn’t even eat a small meal in there. – I trek my way to the kitchen, not bothering to throw on people clothes.- My Deadpool t-shirt and night shorts were good enough, I mean, who am I trying to impress? – I get cereal, watch T.V, and other exciting things. Eventually, I end up back in my room again. It’s getting dark, and the only light in my room is the light shining from my computer’s screen.

I go from being wide awake on Tumblr, to drowsy and falling asleep sitting up in ten seconds flat, which isn’t strange to me anymore. It’s been like this since I started having those dreams. I shut my computer down and crawl under my covers, laying there, staring into the darkness, pondering about the voice for a small amount of time. I guess I never did wake up when It told me not to. I can slightly remember darkness for a long while after the voice spoke. I always woke up in the morning, never at night, so I guess it’s just my mind telling me to sleep through the night.

As I let my mind wander, the empty feeling of being awake fades as I fall asleep. As soon as I fall asleep, I awake in another world; My dream world. I look around, in my own room, standing next to my bed. My room is lit up by an unknown source of light, as always. Sure enough, the first words I hear whispered in my ear are “Don’t wake up…” I look around to try to see the source of the voice, to no avail. I can never see who it is, which really does frustrate me. Whenever I come into the dream world, I remember every other dream. They’re all the same. I wake up in my room, hear the voice, ignore it, everything goes dark, and I heard tapping around me, then I wake up in the morning. So, I sit down on my bed, waiting for the darkness to come; which, surely, it did. The room grows dark, and my dream self crawls back under the blankets, waiting for the tapping to begin. I wait for a while, but it doesn’t come. ‘That’s strange.’ I think. ‘It’s usually here by now…’

Once I finish thinking that, as if on cue, the room begins to slowly lighten, which isn’t normal. This dream isn’t like the others. Once the room lights up dully, I can make out a dark figure in the middle of my room. I stare at it for a minute, expecting terror or dread to fill me, which, strangely enough, it doesn’t. I await the room to light up fully so that I can see the owner of the raspy whisper that has been haunting me for so long. The room finally lights up, and what I see surprises me.

It is a teenage girl who looks about sixteen, with long, flowing white hair. She stares at me with beautifully wide red eyes, her pale skin reflecting the white light shining from an unknown place in my room. She shifts her dainty feet just an inch across the smooth wooden floor, causing her pure white dress to move only slightly. I feel my lips twitch upwards into a smile as I begin to walk toward her. She looks friendly. Maybe she had just wanted to play. Maybe she wanted a friend. As I move forward, that sense of dread I’d been waiting for begins to fill me. The closer I get, the less willing I feel to be nearby her, but my feet just keep moving. I am not in control of my body. I reach out to her, stopping only six feet away to stare into her beautiful crimson eyes. Her beautiful smile causes me to melt and relax, my other emotions fading away. The longer I stare, the more beautiful she became in my eyes.

As I feel my eyes glaze over from staring at her without blinking, I begin to notice her lips start to curl down in a terrible grimace. I begin to feel confused, unsure of why the beautiful girl is frowning. As I stare, her grimace just gets worse, almost as if her face is melting. After a second, I notice with terror. It is. The skin on her face is beginning to slowly melt, the first splat of her pale flesh lands on the floor in front of her, followed by more splats of blood, veins, and muscle. She melts, her beautiful dress falling to the floor, her stunning white hair falling out in clumps as blood begins to pool around her. The end result was nothing I could have imagined. It was horrifying, covered in pulsing veins, a human skeleton attached to a twisted looking, inside-out neck. Its skeletal teeth are stuck in a permanent frown, and its back was bent in a hunch. The only thing that I could see from what I had imagined was the long, sharp, black fingernails, which sprouted out from inhuman skeletal fingers attached to an abnormally long, almost spider-like, arm. Its elbow is twisted the wrong way, in a painful-looking direction.

I begin to back away now, feeling unsafe in my own mind; in my own dream. Just as I back up, I heard that soft, raspy. “Don’t wake up…” again. I’ve been watching the creature’s mouth. It did not come from it… I want to look around, but I can’t bring myself to turn my head, or let my eyes stray from the terrifying creature in front of me. It begins to slowly move closer as my back hits the wall, walking with a large gait, its long spider-like appendages making cracking and snapping noises with each slow step. I gasp, frozen in place as it crawls closer, opening its jaw to an inhuman length. Its jaw makes a loud cracking noise, and the wooden floor beneath it creaked, only adding to my terror. It stops right in front of me, staring into my soul with its pure red eye sockets. It pauses, then moves closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing myself for excruciating pain and loud cracking noises.

Everything is quiet. I can only hear the sound of my racing heart and heavy breathing. I sit there in the silence for long while before slowly letting my eyes open. I am surrounded by a choking darkness, deafened by the silence. As I begin to let out a sigh of relief, the voice comes louder than ever before, screeching in my ears; “DON’T WAKE UP.”

I bolt upright in my bed, letting out a startled scream before muffling myself, not wanting to wake anyone up. I look around, not able to see anything. My room is pitch black. I close my eyes for a moment, sighing with relief once again. I’m glad to be awake, away from whatever had scared me so badly. That voice couldn’t have been good all this time. It was telling me not to wake up and leave that horrifying dream, which is actually beginning to fade away in my mind. I can’t quite remember what it was about.

I hear my closet creak, which creeps me out a bit and prompts me to slip out of my bed to walk over to my light switch. I flick it on, and is horrified at what I see. In that moment, I begin to wish I’d listened to that raspy voice in my dreams. On my wall, written in fresh dripping blood, I read:

“YOU WOKE UP.”