Out of Depth // Phan AU

03

Phil grew up on nightmares.
His mum said it was because he had an overactive imagination, his dad told him to 'man up'.

They started the night after the incident. He always forgot what the bad dreams were about the moment he woke up, usually crying or sweating, and he always had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.

They seemed to get better as he grew older and his memory of the forest faded. But he still was never able to recall a single dream and occasionally woke up with the bad feeling in his stomach, a familiar gut feeling that left him sad and afraid.

He got the feeling again every time he broke eye contact with the creature. He tried to keep his gaze away long enough to get his senses together but the pull was so strong and nearly impossible to resist.

"You don't need to be afraid," He told Phil for the hundredth time. But Phil wasn't afraid. How could he be when Daniel's voice was so smooth and soft. Of course his teeth were slightly frightening, their jagged edges deadly to the touch.

As the night got later, Phil found it harder and harder to think. He felt his mind slowly slipping away and he wasn't sure if it was because he was tiring from lack of sleep, or if whatever it was that was controlling him was getting stronger.

"Why did you come?" The creature whispered as Phil rested his head on the rock, his eyelids drooping.

Phil didn't know what the creature meant by this. He hadn't chose to come. He was sleep walking. It wasn't like he got out of bed in the middle of the night on a mission to revisit the location he nearly drowned thirteen years ago.

Not knowing how to answer, and being overwhelmed by the urge to sleep, Phil let his eyelids close, ignoring the creatures question. Daniel. Daniel's question. The mermaid man. Phil chuckled at the thought but was too tired to actually laugh, so he chuckled inside his head. Fancy that. He was sleeping on a rock while a mermaid man watched him. Phil found this idea very funny. The whole situation was very funny.

Suddenly he jolted upright. Why was he letting himself sleep. He needed to be careful, he was an easy target if he was asleep. An easy target to creepy half fish creatures that might eat him while he slept.

But when he sat up, the creature was gone. He looked around, surveying the lake area for the merman. Instead he found only stillness. The lake was like glass, not a single ripple, and the trees dared not to move.

Phil found himself completely alone.

The feeling was back. The horrible feeling in his gut. It was worse than it had ever been and he suddenly felt the need to get very far away.