It's Never A Simple Nightmare

Waking Nightmare

Darkness. It always starts with darkness. Then a noise. A soft scratching noise approaches, slowly. Methodically. Like clockwork. Then a feeling of dread. I feel around. I can feel something soft and moist under my fingers. A cold sweat is running down my back, sending chills throughout my body. The noise has gotten louder now. I try to scramble to my feet, but my body is numb. I can taste a familiar taste. I taste my own blood.

I awaken in my bed to the sound of my alarm clock. My eyes dart around the room. The same dream. With a sigh I slowly sit up on the side of my bed, turning off my alarm clock in the process. I rub my now tired eyes, and a voice pierces the bliss silence.

"Time to get up, Nick!" says a shrill and groggy voice. This voice belongs to my mother, Alice. "Morning, Mom." I reply. I was slow to move, still frightened by the dream. "Have a bad dream?" she ask. I noticed my posture was hunched and defensive. "Yea, but it was just that. A dream." I reply, half knowing, half hoping what I said was true.

I get up, lumbering towards my closet. So, what to wear today? White shorts and black shirt, or black shirt and white shorts? I grab a pair of white shorts and my black shirt. With that, my day starts.

I start out the door, same as always. As always, about two houses down, my friend Luke is heading my way. Luke has been my best friend for years now. He never really changes, with short buzzed blond hair, blue jeans, and a white t-shirt.

"Hey lil' Nicky!" He exclaims while patting me on the back. This name has always aggravated me. Luke is easily 6 feet tall. He towers over just about everyone I know, and he's 14, a year younger then me. "Hey Luke, how's Darth Vader doing?" I reply back. We start down the street after exchanging a few more corny jokes. We continue down a few blocks till we pass a certain house referred to mainly just as "That House".

"Hey Nick, there's your dream house," he says playfully, knowing this house always freaked me out. It's an old house, with all of it's windows broken, most likely by some of the neighborhood's kids. The previous owners of the house, or more, squatters, were a bunch of junkies. One night people reported that they heard screams from inside it, and the junkies were said to have disappeared, but that's for a different time.

I chuckle at his joke, but we both stopped dead in our tracks after we heard a faint noise from within the house. Scratching... Very methodical scratching.. My dream suddenly came back into mind. I shiver at the thought. Me and Luke resumed walking, perhaps a tad bit faster then before.

A few minutes later, we arrive at an old baseball park. There we run into a few more friends, such as Dave, Tony, Jack, and Andrew. After a while of saying "Hi" and asking what's been going on, we start playing baseball. This goes on for a few hours. 

The time is now 4:36 pm. After a few games, my team has been losing against Luke's pretty hard. I was starting to get tired, so I called it quits. Me and Luke break from the teams, and the others keep playing. I was getting a bit hungry, so I decided I was going to go get a snack. I told Luke to not wait up for me, so he headed home. I head into a nearby gas station, using my last 2 dollars to get a Snickers Bar. After paying I start off toward my home.

I take the same route home as me and Luke took to get to the park. It's now 5 o'clock on the dot, and its starting to get dark. I start to walk pass That House. I pause here, waiting. I don't know why, or for what, but I do, as if something was willing me to. Unknowingly I open the gate leading into it's overgrown lawn, and time seems to freeze. After doing this, I ran. All the way home.

Somehow between now and then, a route that normally only takes a few minutes to complete, I had lost an hour. It was now 6:22, and dinner was sitting on the table. Mom was sitting at the table, waiting on me. Instantly my stomach sinks.