Nightmare

Chloe's eyes shot open and she sat up in the bed sharply as the thunder shook her house. Her heart was beating rapidly and there was a pain in her chest. Her entire body was cold and clammy. She was breathing heavily, trying to catch the breath that wasn't in her lungs as she awoke.

The rain beating on the windows of her room left a haunting beat in the redhead's ears. She looked to her bedside table to look at the clock, but couldn't quite make out the bright red, pulsating numbers through the tears welled up in her eyes. She looked back out into the darkness surrounding her and let out a small whimper as the tears flooded her cheeks.

She placed her head in her hands and sobbed until she had no more tears formulating in the corners of her red eyes. Her cheeks stung from the salt and constant, hard rubbing away of the tears that fell for more than ten minutes.

She wiped her eyes one final time and looked to the clock again. 2:01 am the clock read. She had been asleep for a mere two hours before the thunder woke her from the nightmare that had overcome her. To say that Chloe Mitchell-Beale was exhausted was an understatement.

Lately, the nightmares had been waking her up more constantly and causing her to cry harder than they had previously. She didn't know what to do to make it better, to make them stop. She felt hopelessly trapped in her own mind.

Over half of the time, she couldn't even remember the nightmares, yet every night she knew exactly what, or, more specifically, who was causing them.

It wasn't like the young woman could actually stop them from happening. She had no control over the nightmares at all. No control over what happened in them, how she woke up from them, or even what she remembered when she woke up.

Some nights she would wake up just minutes after finally dozing off with the image that haunted her every being engraved into the front of her mind. Other nights she would wake up hours later with not a clue as to what happened in the dream to make her awake, yet she would always know that it was a nightmare from the pain in her chest and her cold, sweaty body.

The dreams were really starting to take a toll on Chloe's mental and physical health. She was getting less and less sleep, eating less, and when she did eat, she'd get so sick to her stomach that she would have to run to the bathroom only to give back to Mother Nature what she had just consumed.

Chloe was getting thinner and thinner and more sickly looking. She wouldn't go out anymore, she wouldn't pick up her phone, even for her old best friend, Aubrey. Aubrey would come to Chloe's house to try and get the woman to talk to her but all she would get was an "I'm sick Aubrey," or an "I don't want to talk about it." Eventually, the blonde girl gave up hope and stopped coming around. Every now and then she would text Chloe, or have one of the other former Bella's do so, but they always got the same reply: radio silence.

Chloe missed them, she did, she just couldn't face any of them. She couldn't face her best friends of 10 years. Not after what had happened 6 months ago. She blamed herself for it every day of her life since.