Before I wake

The story behind it

I'm Cody. Yess I know. I'm te boy with the weird dreams. The ones that become real when I sleep. The nice dreams are... nice. I don't know. I've never seen them. I dream them. But the nightmares are terrible, scary and life threatening. I know that because it has happened before.

I got adopted by Jessie and Mark when I was eight years old after their young son Sean dies from accidentally drowning in the bathtub.

On my first night, they are amazed as multicolored butterflies flutter across the living room, emitting a strong glow. Mark tries to capture a blue butterfly to show to me, because I like butterflies. However, I wake up and the butterflies disappear. The next day at school, I befriend a girl named Annie and antagonizes a mean student. At home, I ask Mark who the child in the picture is, and Mark replies that he is their dead son, Sean. I answer that my mom is dead, too. That night, the couple see their deceased child and try to hug him. When I wake up, Sean disappears. Upon discovering my gift to make my dreams become reality, Jessie takes advantage of it. She lets me watch home videos of Sean and, that night, the couple once again sees their beloved child. Days later, Mark notices the addiction that his wife has found and accuses her of using me for my gift instead of loving me. After the argument, Mark takes down the pictures of Sean.

I fall asleep at school, and a nightmarish creature that I call "the Canker Man" appears before the mean child, as Annie watches in horror and screams, waking him up. Meanwhile, Jessie goes to a doctor and complains that her foster child has trouble sleeping; the doctor prescribes medication. She mixes it with my drink, unbeknownst to her husband. That night Sean once again appears before them but turns into a nightmare. Mark attempts to wake me up but can not. Jessie confesses that she drugged me. The nightmare creature devours Mark as Jessie is thrown across the room and falls unconscious. She wakes up with me on the phone calling 911 for help. Suspecting domestic violence and that I have been drugged, social services take me away to an orphanage.

Jessie steals my social worker's files and talks to my former foster parent. At the orphanage, the staff have noticed that I have not been sleeping for the past two days. That night, I was given a tranquilizer, which I protest against helplessly. Jessie arrives to find the place dark and isolated. She sees nightmarish creatures in every room. Finally, she finds me, but before she can go near me, she is thrown across the hallway by one of the creatures. She pulls out a pillow shaped like a blue butterfly, and hugs the creature. As she holds it, it takes the form of me and disappears. Before it disappears, she whispers to me and asks me to release all the people the creatures have taken. The nightmare turns into a beautiful dream, and all the people taken by "the Canker Man" reappear, though only as dreams themselves. Jessie takes me still unconscious home.

The following day, Jessie gives me the journal my birth mother Andrea had kept, which shows how much she had loved me and my gift. However, she had died of pancreatic cancer when I was just three years old. It is revealed that "the Canker Man" is actually my mother when she had cancer, but I had read the journal wrong and thought a monster had taken over my mother because of what the chemotherapy had done to her. Then she tells him that there is more to his recurring nightmares than meets the eye, and I begin to learn how to control my gift.

I am now 17 years old. I know my gift. I know what I'm capable of. And I can control it. But it always goes wrong at some point.

The story begins December 2019...