Prompt:
The last thing I saw was my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushed her long rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I sat bolt upright, relieved it was only a nightmare, but as I saw my alarm clock read 12:06, I heard my closet door creak open.
---
The last thing I see is my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushes her claw-like rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I wake up, heart beating rapidly and sweating profusely. I throw my covers off in an attempt to reduce the temperature and glance at my tiny clock, expecting a 3:10 am but I see 12:06 instead. My pulse rises even more in an unsuccessful, almost laughable, attempt to ease the silence. The eerie quiet feels unnatural, as though it were made to be silent. I am certain there was a moon pouring light into my room through my half-skylight roof but now there is none. There is only black. Everywhere.
I hear a creak. One so slight and virtually noiseless that I almost miss it. Almost. I listen for the sound to reach my ears a second time but a second time does not come. I grab my pillow and step out of bed, all my common sense pulling me back to the safety of my covers. The minute feel like an hour, the dreamed picture of 12:07 in my alarm clear as the fact that the sun exists. I wait to see what happens next.
'Next' does not satisfy the conditions. It is 'now'.
What happens now.
The wait is not long. The 6 transforms to 7 in the odd way that digital clocks transform numbers.
Not even a moment after, my closet door flies open with such violence that one (or two) of the hinges break. A figure steps out, too deformed to know if it was human but it definitely had arms and legs, though stick-like. For less than a moment, we stare at one another, my own eyes round with fear and suffocation while the dark face, where I suppose there must be eyes, faces me.
Without a second thought, I grab the bat near the door and swing it at her in an attempt to force the situation to become as unlike my nightmare as could be.
The bat is wrenched from my hands in seconds and I am left without protection, too far away from any other pain-inflicting object. A hand covers my mouth and another claws though my skin.
It is different from my nightmare.
This time, it is real.
---
377 words
