Short Stories

Nightmares: Demons Of My Waking

The prompt for this was to write a short story that begins with 'Let me tell you about my worst nightmare'.

Let me tell you about my worst nightmare. A nightmare so vivid and real I can hardly tell the difference between it and my waking life.

It plays on repeat, like a VHS tape on a loop. The familiar crackle of my waking life resurfaces before I am once again plunged into a seemingly endless pit of despair. A nightmare that feels like an eternity squashed into the dark hours of the night. A nightmare that gives me deja vu every time I enter the mental cage of sleep, but unmemorable when I've clawed my way to sudden consciousness.

I close my eyes and with a soft click, I'm forced into another world. Adrenaline pumps through my veins and my breathing quickens. It's behind me I can feel it. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and a shiver crawls its way down my spine, like a million tiny spiders. And I run. I run, I stumble, I fall, I get up. The city I find myself in is unfamiliar and yet I recognise it, but how? Perhaps a place lost in my childhood memories, and yet now is not the time to reminise. The glass buildings tower above me and the bright white streetlights blind me. They illuminate the dark, but I don't want to see the festerings of the night, I want to go home. A place warm and forgiving and safe and not here, never here. I turn the corner, street on street, road on road, I run. My blood pounds in my ears and my feet echo against the road in the empty street.

Tears begin to prick my eyes as fear crushes my fragmented soul. I try door after door after door: they're locked. Panic sets in and it's there, still there, always there. When I think I'm a street ahead it reminds me of its presence. The whisperings and mutterings and snickering. It invades every corner of the city and of my life. I hear its voice of soft, cutting, malice. "Failure. You were never smart, never quite good enough, weird, ugly, unworthy." They are repeated and resounding as they echo in the vast endlessness of the city. Before long they are no longer whispers but a roaring in my ears. The sound becomes muddled and distorted then a deafening quiet settles on the city like freezing snow.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the glass buildings. I'm hideous. I am the things I've heard. The glass of each high-rise shatters and as the glittering glass rains down I'm showered in cuts and left bloody. I turn trembling and with my eyes closed I face this demon, I'm ready for it to swallow me whole. I can't run anymore, I'm tired and the floor is littered with broken glass.

I see no monster, demon or fiend. I see 'friends', I see enemies, I see strangers and myself. The once-empty city is filled by a crowd of faces blank and staring. Their hateful eyes seem to pierce through my mortal body and ground my soul to dust. They tear me limb from limb as a blood-curdling scream escapes my mouth.

I bolt upright in a cold sweat. I'm in bed and for the first time I remember. I remember the fear that wakes me at the night's darkest hour. I find paper and pen and write down the nightmare before it can fade into distant memory.

My nightmare is my social anxiety. Except it lives on beyond my sleep and plagues my reality. A reality that means I cannot wake up.