My Own Creative Writing
The Nightmare
(Based off an assignment for my English class during the Stephan King unit- I wrote this. It's purely fictional, and kind of horrific and gross. Very descriptive. Read it and let me know what you think)
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I had a dream once—and I’ve had some pretty strange dreams—in which I stood before a mirror. It was one of those dreams where I was aware of the fact that I was dreaming, but was nonetheless subjected to my fate of staring at myself in the mirror. I had no control other than my conscious thought. I just stood there, and I could not look away. The world around me was bathed in dark shadows, though I was dipped in that small pool of fading light, and still I couldn’t look away.
It was grotesque—that image of me—and distorted. The image was graining and polluted with something I couldn’t name; some feeling or dark essence. I could feel the heat and the anger, the panic, of which my dual selves fought and thought it utter madness. There was the me who was aware of the dream, my consciousness, and there was the me who was the nightmare. The latter being was the me who felt absolutely nothing at all…
In the reflection, my mind accepted the “facts” that were given to me; the history of which became my reality. And in this terrifying reality, for some reason, I became aware of the fact that my stomach was cut open. After that realization, I saw that it was true—my midsection was being split in half—
I was so afraid, standing there, hands hung limply to my sides, looking at my reflection; watching as my stomach tore itself open. On the other side of the mirror, I couldn’t see my fear or my body shaking. I was repulsed by the sight of it, though the worst part was the waiting. I was expecting the blood and the gore, I was expecting my insides to fall out or for something dramatic to happen, I was waiting for it all to happen. That was reason, that was logic. I kept standing and staring and waiting for me to fall dead as I stood before the mirror as that’s what should have happened, but nothing did. I was just stuck waiting and shaking in terror as my gut shred itself apart.
Time seemed to move only for me in that space before the mirror. My heart beat fast, yet my ragged breaths were painstakingly slow; the rise and fall of my chest irregular to the rest of my body. I could see my insides hanging out slightly thorough the wide incision that parted half of my body from left to right. And there was a smell: faint, putrid, and somewhat like antiseptic and formaldehyde. Weathered with rust.
As my stomach ripped open, my flesh seemed to become substantially thicker and flayed. Teeth-like mounds of skin and muscle shaped the gaping mouth of my stomach, and it dripped pus out of its jaws like a hound drools at the mention of food. And I kept panicking, standing and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was opening up, I could see my intestines, and I was so sure that I was going to bleed out. This lesion would surely kill me— why wasn’t it killing me?
But it was a dream.
It was a dream.
And my hands moved as if possessed by some alien thing: they gripped and they squeezed the two parts of my middle back together, trying to make them one again, but only succeeded in squeezing out more pus and mucus lumps that formed beneath the skin. These things coated my hands, and I could feel the texture—slimy, mucus—round, popped and oozing—before I glanced back into the mirror. My eyes burned as if I was ready to cry, but the face in the mirror stayed blank. I was horrifyingly cold, and that me in the mirror could feel nothing at all. As I watched, I began to rot. Sickly green and purple bruises formed, and I appeared pasty, a thin sheet of sweat and grime coated my skin. My hair thinned, balding my head, and what was left became as coarse as wheat. My skin cracked and dried, and my lips peeled back in some semblance of a grimace, but became a sneer. My eyes yellowed, bulging of their own accord, and the iris’ lost their pigmentation, instead becoming a haunting milky white. Those eyes met my own, speaking words I couldn’t hear.
My fingers reached up to touch my reflection, long and crooked and bony claws that hooked down. Inside I was screaming as my reflection lost its fleshy tones and the sharp teeth of my stomach puckered out in a sickly grin. Throughout this, there was no blood and only my intestines unraveled the slightest to hang out of my stomach like a tongue licking its lower lips.
I kept waiting for it to happen.
I kept waiting for myself to look away, to blink my eyes—
For myself to wake up.
All through the while I dreamed, I stared and I waited, and in that perverse way that nightmares are wont to cause, I wanted to die—because that was the only way to wake up, and this dream was undeniably my reality.
I hadn’t noticed the actual mouth of my reflection open at first, so focused was I on the chasmal lesions of my stomach. Inside this mouth, no teeth peeked out: just rotting gray gums where those teeth should’ve been and a tongue that lolled out of my mouth for a moment before licking the top of my starving lips seductively. Hungry. Thirsty. Those jaws fell open and those claws on my hands reached through the mirror for me, the open abdomen nearly spilling the open contents of my body as it—we—leaned towards each other. Those hands reached, and the mirror cracked—
I felt cold, and then when my mouth closed—
I looked down to see—
I had to see—
And then I woke up.
For a moment, in that sparse time I had before convincing myself to get on with my day, I reveled in the horror left over from such a dream. I wondered from where in the dark corners of my mind it could’ve come; how it could’ve come to me in the scant hour or so I actually slept that night. As strange as it might have seemed, the words burned on the edge of my tongue; I felt the need to tell of this dream to someone, anyone, and everyone. I had to get the words out, yet moments later in the aftermath I couldn’t get that strength within me to spit them out. I kept my mouth shut. I realized that to utter these words to anyone would take away that delicious surrealism that captivated my mind. This was my dream to have, it was my nightmare, and these were my words. I don’t often have any of these things. But there was also the thought that to share this dream with the waking world would be the real nightmare, for who could hear of such a dream and not think it a nightmare? For who could hear of such a dream and not think it a cry for help?
For who else could hear of such a dream and see it for what it is—beautiful?
And besides, it was my secret to keep.
This dream was mine.
Those were the thoughts that snapped me back into reality completely, the sleepy haze having dissipated. Rubbing my eyes, I sat up and looked over to my little hanging mirror. Perfectly healthy; albeit exhausted looking. No wounds, no scabs, teeth intact. I had smiled just to check, keeping it there on my face when I realized I meant it, and shook my head. It sometimes felt like I were two different people. There devil on my left shoulder, and an angel on my right; both whispering these words to me when I sleep.
I resigned to the fact that perhaps my dream was a nightmare, but in that horrific, grotesque way that things sometimes are, it was beautiful. Macabre.
It made my list of the strangest dreams I’d ever dreamed; it made my list of horrific, beautiful nightmares.
And in that way, the me in the mirror smiled while its reflection suffered in silent agony, and this was the dream.
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