One night, I stayed up late.
It was around three in the morning when I finally decided to go to sleep. I had school the next day. I had just been having a hard time sleeping. It was normal for me, but I'll never forget what happened that night.
What happened that night was far from normal.
I had been on my laptop, all night, just surfing the internet, waiting for something to force me to go to sleep. Nothing ever did, so I simply glanced at the clock and decided for myself. I shut my laptop, laid it on my messy floor, and cuddled up with a pillow. It wasn't long before I was asleep.
I found myself in a dark world, but somehow, I was smiling. There was an old, abandoned building. I ventured up its stairs, only to find my sister and father watching television on a giant screen. It was just them, sitting in recliners, watching a massive television. That was the only thing in the whole house. The walls were bleak, but they seemed like they had once been comforting.
I walked up three stairs into a new room, a yellow room, with grimy walls. I could still see my family through an opening in the wall. As I looked around, expecting to find nothing but the oppressive walls and dark wooden floors, I saw a clock. A swinging pendulum hanging from its brown-green brass base, it seemed to haunt me. But through all this, I still wore a grin.
This is when things grew wild.
Let's backtrack for a second. My nightmares always have a recurring pattern to them. They always involve me, either in an extremely normal setting, or in an unheard of world, where everything seems mystical. In these strange worlds, there's always a particular cat. I don't know why, but there's always an orange, wide-eyed floating cat that follows me to no end. These magical nightmares don't truly scare me, they just drive me to the point of insanity until I wake up.
So, this is when I became conscious. I thought to myself, I hope that cat doesn't show up and insanity ensued.
Suddenly, I had a great pressure on my chest, and I could see myself, lying flat on the bed with my hands shaking, slightly off the bed. My mouth hung, barely open and my eyes were wide. I noticed that I was screaming. But this was not in the living world, no, in the dream world. I was standing there, in the yellow room, with my hands cast over my ears, screaming as the walls came closer. Just screaming, until I fought my way out.
I could see myself, in both worlds. I could hear the hum I made in the real world. I could hear the piercing scream from the dream world. And I saw the "spirits". The "spirits" (for lack of a better word) were in my room - in the real world. One sat on my chest, looking down at me, smiling, and cackling. The other, stood at the foot of my bed, simply grinning.
Their pure black bodies consumed any hope I had of being freed from this screwed up out-of-body feeling I was having. Their red eyes bore through me, swallowing my heart, or so it felt.
And then it was over. I woke up, clutching my throat, and sweat dripping down my forehead. I have never been so mentally exhausted. I just felt like I saw a light after everything had gone dark. It had been 30 minutes after I checked that clock. 30 minutes after I had decided to fall asleep.
