Scary Stories and CreepyPasta's!

Winter Thoughts (A Few Bad Apples Spoil The Bunch)

On that night Nathan Hoffman had a dream.

He dreamed he was in a vast apple orchard. But it was not akin to the apple picking spots of his childhood, which were fairly moderate in size and suited his adolescent love for the autumnal seasons in those times. Instead of short, stubby trees, these trees were gargantuan, bearing the same height and width of any redwood located halfway across the continent, but from what Nathan could see the trees had a standard apple tree feel to them - he saw no apples in the trees as they stretched up over the skyline, but the branches were jagged and dead, spiking out of the tree's trunk which seemed to be a thousand years tall. A few apples were on the ground, but they appeared to be normal sized. In the dream world Nathan had seemed to take this with stride - in dreams you never seemed to take much seriously. At least that was in his experience.

He began walking and when he had walked a few yards or so he saw it. Above the fog in the cyclopean apple orchard was an almost perfectly rounded black shape, stretching for impossible size above the skyline. The fog's sudden and unnatural dissipation at one point, where it had cut off completely in a perfect diagonal line, fully unveiled the eldritch substance. It was a full black sphere of incomprehensibility, and Nathan could discern no immediately noticeable earthly feature. For a second panic had actually set in the dream - something Nathan had never experienced in the outer realms before. Or just "realm", because as far as Nate knew dreaming was the closest thing to an outer reality. He could not react bizarrely because as soon as he had taken in all of the anomaly's features he had awoken with a jolt.

That dream was three weeks ago. December was now approaching fast. The chill of autumn had blossomed into the freeze of winter, and the cold would soon transcend into endless night. A night that seemed endless, anyway. When day ended at four, it could truly seem like the darkest depths of hell in the season and on a winter like this Nate had known that.

Nathan had over the weeks experimented with each food group. His eyes had reddened with deprivation as the days dragged on, but he was making do. Any explanation for it yet? Of course not. He didn't have a permanent doctor, because he knew it'd probably be the same old shit; "drink lots of water and take aspirin every day", insert rational explanation, blah blah blah.

He hadn't told Milly. He'd been wasting away by himself, and besides if he told her he'd get the "loon" reaction. No doubt about that. He had the notion that the taste would disappear with time, or at least fade until it was only a sliver, and he held on to this hope. Time, he knew, healed all wounds. He'd listlessly experimented with different food groups until he found the ins and outs. Meat, vegetables, and fruits were all toxic, poison to his taste buds. Strangely, wheat was only just barely edible and dairy had a faint disgust to it, but carbohydrates, namely sweets, tasted the same as ever. Certainly not a good sign; he'd given no acknowledgment to his weight in a long time, but it would soon make him consider.

When he spoke to Milly he'd attempted at normality, but difficulty came clearly. His voice droned and trailed off, and it had become faintly hoarse, raspy, and unclear. His eyes began to redden and sometimes his walking limped. Hallucinations, either visual or auditory, had not yet started, and that was because of his twisted new "diet" forced unwillingly upon him. Milly had noticed a personality change in him as well but she said nothing, presumably figuring he was just in another one of his "weeks" (thinking too much about his mother and father).

On some nights he remembered that dream. He couldn't clearly make out the entity and strangely enough only remembered the apparently irregular cluster of the stars that lay eons behind it. These stars were not spread out, rather, they seemed to gather in a jumble all across the sky. He did not immediately see any recognizable constellation. On some nights he thought of that dream and wondered why he couldn't make out what the unknown anomaly was. But why the stars? Maybe it was their strangeness in that particular dream, their irregularity, and the dream had told him to only comprehend what his mind could. But he should have been able to comprehend some mental entity in a dream, should he not have?