Book Three in Her Destiny Series ||| ❝And she thought they were heartless monsters.❞
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She had nightmares about the creatures that lurked in the night and howled to the moon. One of them nearly killed her once and since the accident, s...
ephialtes (n.) || a nightmare, often caused by demons
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She woke gasping for air in complete panic.
Her bed creaked, her body violently jerking, and she wrapped her arms around herself in some sort of comfort. As if it would ease the terror freezing her blood. Every time she blinked, she could see the forest behind her eyelids. She could see the darkness - feel the sinister cloak that surrounded her.
It was too vivid, too real.
She shakily turned on her beside lamp when her limbs calmed a bit and the luminous light pierced the early dawn glow. Her bed was a mess of tangled blankets as she flung them away, sweat drying against her skin upon exposure to the cool air. Her head spun, tilting her vision, and she stayed seated in the side of her bed for several moments.
She didn't dare close her eyes, staring at the floor until her head stopped swimming, and then she took several deep breaths. It wasn't the first time she'd woken severely terrified, this nightmare had haunted her every waking moment for two years after her accident. No matter how many therapists her father sent her to, they could do nothing for her. She developed PSTD and that threatened to take her life again until her father decided to move their lives - for both their sanity's.
Within the first month, she had been able to sleep peacefully for the first time, and it had been four months of bliss. She hadn't had the nightmare in so long, it almost paralyzed her in her sleep when it finally made a reappearance. She was lucky not to suffer from sleep paralysis.
She planted her socks on the bare floor and slowly made her way into the hall. The house creaked beneath her, protesting her early rising, and she hugged herself tighter as she nervously glanced at the shadows in the corners. She constantly checked over her shoulder the entire way to the bathroom, paranoid that the nightmare was reality and she had never woken up.
In the bathroom, she splashed cold water onto her face and took another deep breath. Usually, her Dad would rush into her room and hold her upon her first cry of terror, but she felt utterly alone as she knew he was miles away at work. She didn't have anyone to comfort her and as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror, she could only see a broken, lonely girl.
For so long, she suffered from this nightmare. This world that crafted its way into her mind from reality. She couldn't tell herself that it wasn't real because it was. The nightmare was a version of her accident, a constant torture; and because of it, she lost so much of herself.
She had tried to overcome it, she truly did believe that she had finally beat the nightmare, but she was only fooling herself. It was always there, lurking in the back of her mind, waiting to come back as it had and destroy what she had tried to rebuild. She wanted to scream and cry, curse the world for its cruelty, but she had already tired; she never won.
