Redeemer

Chapter Nine

Remington

     I wish the world in my dreams was a reality. Every night, I could be closer to getting the sweet release I craved than I ever could in my counciousness. The faceless creatures that haunted me everytime I closed my eyes were the demons that brought me to the edge. The edge that would finally bring an end to all of this. The edge that would silence my brain. The edge that my restless body ached to fall off of. In my dreams, everything was darker. It was always night, the moon only gave light, not the beautiful illumination and reflections.

      Everything felt so cold, like it had just snowed but without the flakes that in reality would layer on the ground. It looked like a scene from a Tim Burton film, to many it would seem eerie but to me it felt like a memory. It looked like what I imagined death felt like, but I wasn't afraid of dying. Almost every night I died in said dreams. I would fall off of the edge because that was where the world met it's end. There was no horizon, just the never ending black that no matter where I turned surrounded me like a galaxy with no stars.

      The night after I had spoken to Dan, the edge was only a few inches from my feet. If I took even a small step I would fall off and finally figure out what was at the bottom of it. I looked behind me to see the still spacious island, but I couldn't back away from the edge. I was terrified of the void, but my restless legs still refused to bring me away from it. It felt like days before I broke down, I cried like a scared child. I felt so weak and vulnerable because I had absolutely no control over my body, it could have very well threw me off. The echo was earsplitting, somehow sounding like the distorted figures that have plauged my nightmares since childhood.

     In my mind, there was nothing scarier than the monsters. I hadn't seen them in years, but tonight they were everywhere. The sky, the ground, the few inches of space right in front of me. When they got closer they towered over me, and I could very clearly see the gaping hole where on any human there would be a face. The void was almost screaming for me to jump, like it did every night, but for the first time I was going to jump. Finally give in to the calling from the last several years.

     My feet were going over the edge when I finally woke up. The sheen of cold sweat was visible on my bare torso, as well as the strong shaking in my entire body. It felt like the anxiety attack I had when I was in middle school. My shaky breathing was the only thing I could hear at the moment, but it was slowly returning to the pace it was normally at. I hadn't felt this petrified from a dream in years.

         I felt painfully alone at the moment. When I still had these dreams I could still run into my mother's room and know that I was going to be okay, everything would be fine. I felt the desperate need to do that right now; feel the body heat of someone else, see a different face other than the terrifying creatures that had burned themselves into the backs of my eyes, hear something other than the deafening sounds that still felt like they were only a few feet away from me. I needed something that wouldn t fill me with dread like my dreamland always succeeded in doing.

       I felt the same helplessness I did in my dream, the same feeling of being a terrified child. I got out of my bunk and went to the bunk across from mine because I knew that Emerson would help me calm down.

"Emerson?" I asked, my voice sounded as weak as I felt. The curtain to the bunk opened, and my obviously sleep deprived brother looked at me with confusion, but quickly turned to worry. I guess I actually did look as bad as I felt. "Are you okay?" He asked, and all I could do was shake my head. I hated how weak my voice sounded and I didn't want to hear it anymore.

-

        Emerson moved over and patted the space next to him, silently telling Remington to get inside the bunk. He hugged his shaking brother tightly, feeling his almost unnatural heart beat.

       "What happened?" Emerson asked, still hugging the boy tightly to his chest.

         "The nightmares came back," Remington stated. Emerson has vague memories of his brother running out of their shared bedroom when they were little, crying and violently shaking while he went into their mother's room across the hallway. He could also remember the child cowering in the edge of his bed, gripping onto a blanket that Emerson was pretty sure he still had to this day.  Emerson could picture the way he looked then, and it seemed almost identical to the way he looked now. This just led to him holding the older brother to his chest tighter, because he rembered how frightened he was then.

         Remington was clinging to the man's chest, finally feeling something other than the cold dead hands of the figures that he could still feel ghosting around his entire body. The memory of it made his entire body feel numbingly cold, like frostbite. He finally had something real to grasp on to, but he still found himself missing the person who was usually there for him. He genuinely missed Daniel.

(Here's an extra long chapter for being late, also sorry for the repost, I made an unforgivable typo)