Nightmare

It was an uncomfortable sensation, feeling that tear resting on my cheek. It was cold, but I didn’t wipe it away. Instead, I sat, silently enjoying the feeling of memories rolling down my face, like acid burning a hole in my reminiscence. For once, it hit me just how much I was wasting my life away, one tear at a time.




The radio blasted as Erin drove barely above the speed limit down the hot, desert highway. She clutched a mug of lukewarm coffee in her right hand and steered shakily with her left. Her eyes were bloodshot, the result of having slept no more than an hour at a time in the past week. Or was it two? Time held next to no meaning for her anymore.

This also explained why, at two in the afternoon, she was doing everything she could to keep herself awake.

It was because of those damned nightmares. Nightmare, really. She only ever had the one. Sometimes, it changed, the ending altering slightly to cater to her current fears. But always the same beginning, always the same setting, always the same voice…

She shuddered violently, just thinking about the voice. The voice that literally haunted her dreams. She nearly spilled her coffee as she fumbled to turn the radio up even louder, a vain attempt to drown out her thoughts.

Are you afraid, Erin?
Her eyes grew wide as the words whispered across her thoughts. She could just hear him, hear it, hear the way his calm, soothing tone turned heavy and harsh, taunting her, dragging her down, farther and farther into the realm of her deepest fears.

It’s not going to stop…it won’t ever stop…

The mug fell from her grasp, dousing the seat beside her in sticky liquid. She began to lose control of her breathing, nearly hyperventilating, and her eyes slid out of focus as she struggled to keep her sight on the road in front of her. Erin jerked the car off the road, into the desert sand, threw it in park, and barely twisted the key out of the ignition…

That’s it. She’s dead. Did you hear that, Erin? You’re dead.
Her mouth moved into the shape of a silent scream. She writhed in her seat, fighting the seatbelt, desperately trying to escape the voice in her head. A few long, anguished seconds passed before sobs came spilling from her throat and tears poured from her eyes. She could never get away from the voice. It followed her, everywhere…

A few more seconds passed, then minutes. Erin continued to howl, tears and screams flowing from her as she worked herself into hysterics. She could feel the effort in her tired limbs, each second making it harder to keep her eyes open. But she couldn’t sleep. Not now. She had to get to Jared before nightfall. He was her last hope, the only person who wouldn’t cast her out into the street and call her crazy. Jared would listen to her, like he had listened before, on the phone...But she had to get to him first.

Her struggle was useless. No matter how hard she tried, the darkness slowly encompassed more and more of her consciousness, an effect of the excruciating lack of sleep. And the voice was soothing once again, calling her, pulling her towards it, toward the nightmare.




She stood in a vast expanse of nothingness. All around her, nothing, an existing place that consisted of nothing at all. It was just…there. And she was there too, but she could not feel, could not move, or speak. There was nothing to touch, to feel, to see. Just…nothingness.

It was also…green.

Mint green. Pale, mint green, the color of old plastic school desks. But in this place, she had no concept of color, of green. She knew what green was, but she had no word for it, only understanding the abstract concept of the color around her. Her mind was all emotion, and at the moment it was blank.

A black dot appeared before her, obscuring a small span of the nothingness, but the distance between it and her was impossible for her to perceive. Fear enveloped her completely. It rose, filling her, spilling over, and she opened her mouth in a silent gasp. Her eyes leaked tears.

Erin.

The dot grew. Harsh, flowing black lines began to emerge around her, weaving through the nothingness, covering up the green.

There you are.

The voice was unmistakable. She knew it. It was the only comforting part of the nothingness; it knew who she was, it knew all about her. She wasn’t alone.

The black lines, like vines of ivy in how they twisted, covered more of the space.

Are you listening to me, Erin?

She looked around wildly, trying to find the source of the voice. Of course she was listening. She wanted to see something other than the awful, wild vines that spun a dark web around her. But the voice also surrounded her, echoing and vibrating, with no discernible speaker.

Are you afraid?

The voice had changed. It was still the voice she knew, but it was no longer the voice she longed to hear. This was the voice she longed to escape, even now, even as all her memories and thoughts fled her entirely.

It’s not going to stop, Erin. Never.
The fear was nearly crushing her now as the black encompassed more and more of the expanse. There were only small spaces of green left, little havens for whatever the emptiness was before. Though she knew nothing about it, she desperately wished for it back, wished for anything that would save her from the black.

And then there was only one small sliver of green.

As she watched, a sharp, pointed vine inched toward this last sliver. If Erin could have pulled together any sort of coherent thought, she would have recognized it as moving in slow motion. But she had no coherent thoughts, nothing to ground her to the world she knew when awake. Here, there was only emotion. Here, there was only fear…fear and an overwhelming helplessness…she couldn’t stop the vine from moving. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, and each passing second brought her closer and closer to some unspeakable, utterly horrifying destiny. Her instinct was to cling to this last sliver, to crawl into it and find herself in a place she knew. Her consciousness yearned with the desire to be close to the green, be in the green, away from the black that was moving, slowly, slowly toward her.

And then…

The sliver was gone. The last vine had sunk into place. A loud click filled her senses, and it was then that she knew, then that she felt the sinking, dooming feeling of what was happening to her. She was finally able to conjure one word into her mind, the word that was associated with all the feelings of helpless, devastating fear. One word that the great voice, booming with its taunting, deadly authority, confirmed…

Dead. That’s it, she’s dead.

No. It couldn’t be. It was a nightmare, she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t going to die, she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t, SHE WASN’T, NO! SHE WASN’T DE—




I didn’t start worrying until night fell.

That isn’t true. I was worried the entire time, but I didn’t get worked up over it until it was dark and there was still no sign of her.

She had called me around eleven in the morning. I was already at work, but I still answered. It wasn’t often that I heard from my old college girlfriend, and I was grateful for that. She only ever called when there was an emergency.

There was something wrong with Erin. I had known that since about the third week we were dating. The first time she fell asleep in my car and woke up, screaming. I thought she just had a nightmare, but this, this was much worse. Throughout the entire time we were together, which really only ended up being about a year and a half, she always had those…terrors. Not every night. Sometimes not even for weeks. But when they came back, they came back in full strength. We both said that they had nothing to do with our breaking up, but…for me, they were definitely a factor, and I’d bet anything they were for her as well.

And now, six years out of college, she was still having them. We didn’t live too far away from each other, only about four hours driving distance, but most of it was through stark desert. Neither of us made much of an effort to keep in touch after graduation, but every now and then, she’d call me. Sobbing. Terrified. And I’d know exactly what was wrong the moment I saw her number on the caller I.D. There wasn’t anything I could do to help her, if there was I certainly would have found it long ago, back when we were together and I tried so hard to fix her. I even convinced her to go see some doctors, and short of sleeping pills, nothing worked.

So I just went on with my life and every so often I’d answer the phone and I’d talk to Erin, try to calm her down. It was always left at that. Always. Until now.

I don’t know if the nightmares had gotten worse or if they were finally driving her crazy, but she was near hysteria on the phone. She pleaded with me, begged for an escape, and I told her to come see me. I didn’t know what else to do, what else to say…but maybe if she was here, we could work on it, finally figure something out.

But somehow I doubted that.

I wasn’t sure I should wait to do something. She should certainly have been here by now, even if she got lost or there was traffic (which there shouldn’t be, not on that route). But should I call the police? Would they do anything? Maybe I should report her as missing…or maybe I should go find her myself.

That probably was the worst idea of them all. I knew the road, but it was long and not the safest to travel in the dark. Besides, even if I found her, what if something was wrong? What could I do? Best to call the police.

“911, please state your emergency.”

“Yeah, I have a missing person to report…”




The blackness was comforting. What was more comforting was that she could recognize it as blackness. It was more than a concept or a feeling. She knew the name, the word.

She smiled. Black. Quiet. Warm. All these were things she could name. It made her very, very happy.

And with that, Erin let it all go. She let it all fade into the blackness.




They say there wasn’t anything that could have been done about it. Not sure I believe that, but it doesn’t matter now.

Nearly a day later, and I couldn’t stop crying.

The images from it would be with me for a long time. As the person who reported her missing, I was the only one they called to identify Erin’s body. To identify what was left of it, really.

The coroner said it wasn’t very quick. She ran her car off the road. A plain, level, straight desert road, no other cars in sight, nothing to stop her, or scare her, or get in her way. It’s unknown why she crashed. Why she was steering so erratically that her car rolled three hundred feet before stopping, upside down, her body trapped inside, most likely not yet dead. She wasn’t quite crushed, only trapped. Trapped and bleeding and hopefully, I prayed, unconscious. By the time I called 911, she had been trapped for hours, and very, very dead when they reached her. Dead from bleeding out.

I sat and wondered what else I could have done. Probably nothing. But that tear, it rested on my face, and burned. The tears would always serve as a reminder to what had happened, what could have happened, and what will never be.

I didn’t wonder, like the police did, about what had caused her to run off the road. I knew. Deep down, I knew.




That night, it took me a long time to get to sleep. But once I did, I had a nightmare.