The Shadow Men

Chapter 1

"Oh, no. Not again."

It was real. This nightmare of mine. I didn't understand it, but it was real. The one I had just survived was a fun one. The memories it brought back were not the worst I'd experienced at the hands of this nightmare, but not particularly pleasant either.

Tonight, I woke up behind a dumpster, stinking of rotten food and overflowing with unimaginable horrors that might once have passed for Italian take-out, but were now barely recognizable.

I knew where I was this time, at least. I was on the corner of Valley and 18th, behind shitty Vince's Italian Restaurant. I worked there as a waitress a few summers ago before I got fired for punching the owner's son Vinny — yeah, the restaurant is named after that douche bag — in the throat. Maybe he'd think twice before trying to grope another girl against her will behind a dumpster. Probably not, but a girl could dream.

The last time this stupid dream happened to me, I woke up in a field, in the middle of what I later found out was Fitz's spinach crop. Mr. and Mrs. Fitz were that sweet old couple that we saw at church every Sunday, until one Sunday, they just didn't show up. A bunch of people were worried because they hadn't missed a service in almost 20 years.

Then the truth came out. Turned out, sweet old Mr. Fitz was actually Buster Cunningham, bank robber and murderer extraordinaire. He changed his name, and settled into a quiet life, living off his "earnings" until a relative of one of his victims hired a shady private detective — my uncle — who made me sneak into his house to get hold of some fingerprints. My uncle matched them to more than seven unsolved murders of bank tellers across the US and immediately turned the prints over to the police. It was a complete accident, as fate would have it. The police's main suspect was actually Fitz's neighbor, and they had had drinks the night before. Fitz's prints were still on the whiskey bottle they had shared. If not for that twisted stroke of luck, Fitz might still be fooling us all to this day. Mr. Fitz still sends me death threats from prison. Lovely man.

My nightmare always starts the same. I fall asleep in my own bed, but then in my dream, I'm jolted awake by a loud crashing sound coming from my living room. My apartment is tiny and I don't have many belongings, but the crash sounds as if an entire library's worth of books have all fallen at once along with the shattering of all the glassware in my cupboards.

In my dream, I get up to check it out, armed with only my cellphone's flashlight. Rational me wishes I could just conjure a freaking baseball bat or a gun, but that never occurs to me in my dream. Then every time I open my door, I am instantly transported to a new location where I am forced to fight for my life against at least a dozen faceless foes. I fight and I fight, but the outcome is always the same; I am eventually overpowered and pummeled until I blackout and wake up for real in a weird place, injuries and all. That's right. Very fun.

Ya-Ya, my boss at the club, keeps asking if she should send Trey, our bouncer, to rough up the dude who keeps hurting me, but how can I explain that it is a dozen "dudes" who have shadows for faces and live only in my nightmares.

I wished they would cut that shit out. No one wants to tip the stripper with bruises covering half her body. Ya-ya's been letting me wait tables instead of dance some nights, but I can't exactly wear long sleeves and pants on a regular basis and expect to make her any money. I'd worn an old Halloween Catgirl suit in the past that hid the worst of the scrapes and bruises, but it got unbearably hot and I needed to keep taking breaks to open the suit and cool myself off. I preferred not to faint on the sticky STD-soaked floors in front of all the creeps that came to gawk at the girls.

I touched my ribs and winced as I inhaled too deeply and a stabbing pain in my right side confirmed my suspicion that I had finally cracked a rib this time. That would take a while to heal. My head was throbbing, but there was no blood. My long black hair was a mess, but nothing a long, hot shower couldn't fix.