Obscura: The Dark Chamber Series Book 1

Chapter 1

        I wake up screaming! Sitting upright on my bed staring steadily at an empty space. “It’s just a nightmare… Just a nightmare.” I repeatedly tell myself to get my mind straight. It takes a few moments for my mind to slightly start to clear up. Enabling me to piece what is true and not but the horrors of nightmare still creeps under my skin. Sweat slides down from different places in my body. It’s just a dream but it seems so real.

        I start to pick up a small voice calling me, so small that it almost resembles a squeak. A few seconds later, the voice starts to grow louder. Then it turns out that someone was calling my name and asking me if I was alright. The next thing I notice are the two hands holding me in both arms, shaking my whole body trying to wake me up even though I was already sitting upright. Then I start to realize that I wasn’t really staring at nothing but instead to a blur image of someone. My eyes were wet with tears. I try to shake the tears out to clear my vision. Seconds later, I am able to make out his chiseled face, black short hair, light brown eyes and his golden bronze skin. It’s my roommate, Jarek.

         “Hey! Are you alright bro?” He says while shaking me.

         “I’m good,” I manage to say between my labored breaths.

         “You don't look good," he comments. "And you scared the freak out of me! What happened?”

        “Just a nightmare,” The horror starts to subside.

        “Dude, I was trying to wake you up for almost a minute! You were literally screaming your lungs out! You were shouting ‘run’ several times.” I shoot him a skeptic look but he doesn’t look sarcastic about what he just said. “If you’ll have nightmares like that every time I wouldn’t survive the next month here,” he continues.

        “Sorry,” I say. “Was it really that intense?”

        “Uh, yeah! I bolted up when I first heard you shout.”

        I hear a knock on the door. “Is everything alright there?” I hear Louie, one of my housemates, says behind the door.

        “We are good!” Jarek says. “Ar-Cee just had a terrible nightmare.”

        “Well, tell him not to have another one!” Louie says. I don’t even know if he is being sarcastic or he is being serious. He sounds serious but what he said is really impossible to do. Nobody can control their dreams. Other than that, Louie is right, if I will be having another nightmare like what I just had a few minutes ago, it will be disturbing everyone nearby.“People might thing we are torturing someone in here.” he adds as I hear him walking away from the door a second later.

        “Let’s go to sleep. They need us early tomorrow morning at the office.” He stands and walks toward his bed and lay. “And if you have another nightmare, just keep the shouting to a minimum.” He says sarcastically then he turns his back on me.

        I take a deep breath and lay on my bed completely back in reality.

        Staring at the ceiling, I start to recount the nightmare. It was so vivid; the items in the work station, the short-trimmed-textured-hair-guy, and the dread in the man’s red lit eyes. “Marco Evangelista”. The name bounces back on my mind. It was just a dream, he’s not real. I try to convince myself that he is just another pigment of my imagination. He is not dead! He is not even real! I lay on my right-side, covering my head with the pillow, trying to get back to sleep and erasing his name out of my mind. My eyes start to get heavy and I slowly drift back to my sleep but his name remained in my mind. “Marco Evangelista.”