I bolted upright from sleep, breathing hard and sweating. I glanced at every corner of my room, checking for hidden dangers. Nothing. I was safe.
Slowly, I eased myself back down, reaffirming reality by checking my phone. 3AM. There was still time to get some shut eye before my work alarm went off. I tried to slow my heart with deep reassuring breaths.
“I’m OK,” I told myself. “It was just a dream.”
What had I even been dreaming about? I couldn’t remember much beyond a terrible roar, a high-pitched squealing and terrible pain. Whatever it was, it was over. I was safe.
“I’m OK.”
Something creaked in the hall.
The chill of fear froze my skin. I lived alone. No pets. The floorboard creak was distinctive; it was the one by the bathroom. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt. There was no way that was it house settling or pipes making noise. That floorboard only creaked when trodden on.
Someone was in my house.
For several moments I was paralysed by fear, unable to think of anything beyond the most terrible outcomes. This person was a murderer, a torturer, they’d kill me horribly and there was no escape. This was it. This was the end.
Remembering my phone, I grabbed it from the nightstand, knocking a glass of water as I did. The glass fell and shattered on the floor.
Silence, heavy with my dread, followed the racket. Whoever was out there, they knew where I was, and they knew I was awake.
I bolted for the bedroom door and, in the same instant, booming footsteps came up the hallway towards my room. I had no time to make a barricade. All I could do was throw myself against the door, just as whoever was outside tried to open it. They pounded on the wood with terrible force, each thump jolting the door behind me. Crying, yelling in fear, I pushed back desperately, sliding forward then scrambling back with each impact on the door. I couldn’t keep them out. I didn’t have time to call the police. This was it. I was going to die.
The wood splintered under the rain of blows, and I looked up at the jagged split. A terrible face fixed its eyes on me through that hole, twisted in rage, barely human. Its mouth opened, wider and wider, far further than a human mouth could stretch, and a blinding light shone from inside. The sound it made was blaring, loud and urgent.
I thrashed against my sheets for a moment before I realised what was happening. It was morning. Sunlight came in through my blinds. My alarm was blaring in my ears. I was safe. It was just a dream.
As I calmed, I realised the phone was beside me on the bed. I must have fallen back asleep with it in my hand after the first nightmare. The glass of water was intact on the bedside and there was no sign of damage to the door.
My second alarm – the “you’re late now, get your butt moving” one – went off and I scrambled from the bed. There was no time to pick apart nightmares. I had to put it behind me and get to work.
#
At my desk, hours later, the nightmare’s spectral grip still clung to me. Even the heavy blanket of office tedium couldn’t quite shift the echoes of terror. I jumped at small noises, like cans being dropped in the recycling bin, paper being stapled, and phones ringing.
“Get it together,” I muttered to myself.
I stood and stretched, trying to physically shake off the lingering shroud of fear. A short walk to the water cooler might do the trick. My throat was horribly dry.
The blast went off just as I turned around. By sheer chance, I was facing away from the searing light. It lit the office like a flash photo and Ryan, who was looking directly at it, fell to the ground clutching his eyes and screaming.
The shockwave hit a second later and blew all the office windows in. Jagged glass pierced my back as I was hurled across the room, slamming into office furniture, and tumbling across the floor. I came to rest against the wall. My body was broken, organs pulped, and bones turned to gravel. I couldn’t move. I could barely think through the agony.
That was when I saw the mushroom cloud rising. It was distant but still so bright, darkening the sky around it as it bloomed, the flower of annihilation.
“No,” I whimpered.
The city came apart into tiny pieces as the fire raced towards me. The heat ripped through me to the core, and it was over before I could scream.
#
I jolted awake at my desk, nearly tipping out of the office chair.
Another dream? I felt the heat on my skin and the broken bones for just a moment before the phantom sensations left me. What was happening? I’d never fallen asleep at work before, and I’d never had such visceral nightmares. Was it stress? Anxiety? I didn’t suffer overmuch from either.
My heart was still pounding, and I was gripping the armrests white-knuckle tight. I was shaking.
“Hey, Steve? You OK?”
I looked up into the face of Jenny, my manager.
“Are you feeling sick? You look a little pale.”
I blinked a few times, trying to calm myself. “Just not sleeping very well.”
Jenny frowned. “Maybe you should head home. Work is pretty quiet. We can manage without you. Get some rest.”
Just for a moment, when I looked at her, I saw her face as a burnt ruin, flesh boiling, eyeballs melting down her cheeks. Then it was back to normal.
“Maybe you’re right,” I gulped. “I think I need some sleep.”
“Good. Don’t worry about me, I can get a bus back. You probably shouldn’t drive.”
I normally gave Jenny a lift, since she lived nearby. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Feel better, OK?”
#
I staggered from the office building, feeling twitchy and weird. Sounds were too loud and lights were too bright. I felt off-kilter, like the world was lurching underfoot. Jenny was right, I was in no condition to drive. I’d pick up the car tomorrow.
“Get it together,” I told myself.
That sense of wrongness wrapped around me, tilting me off balance. I couldn’t shake it.
A flock of birds passed overhead. For a moment, I mistook their cries for sudden screaming.
I passed an alley where a homeless man with terrible burns sat slumped, murmuring at nothing. Behind him, nuclear shadows danced on the wall.
I passed by a shopfront and all the people inside stared at me. Light poured from their mouths and eyes and a horn sounded in my ears.
“Just dreams.” I marched past it all. “They were just dreams.”
I’d never been more relieved to shut my door on the world, locking out the chaos and retreating to safety. Rubbing my eyes and shaking myself, I poured a glass of cold water and took a big gulp.
Immediately I felt terrible scratching and squirming in my throat. Dropping the glass I staggered back, coughing and spluttering as the sensation worsened. Black beetles sprayed from my mouth, the sound of their wings like a roaring engine. I clawed at my neck. There were more still inside me. Their legs wriggled. Their pincers bit into me.
Retching and panicking, I stumbled through the swarm to the bathroom mirror. Pinpricks of pain fired inside my mouth and my throat grew hot. I tasted blood. It spackled the sink as I continued to cough. As I opened my mouth to look in the mirror, one of the beetles punctured my cheek, wriggling its way into the thin flesh there and out the other side.
I grabbed at the taps and wrenched the water on, but more bugs came pouring out instead. Their buzzing filled the air as they swarmed, so loud it rattled the room. Still gagging and choking I stumbled away, the pain turning to agony as the beetles gnawed my insides. I swatted the air but there were too many. They landed on me, their little pincers biting and tearing.
I tried to scream but blood flooded down my throat.
#
I came to in the alleyway. My skin was raw from the burns. The heat never went away. Every person walking past was a charred corpse, but they acted like they didn’t know it. How could they ignore their terrible wounds?
“Just a dream,” I murmured to myself. “Just a dream.”
Radioactive ghosts danced on the wall behind me.
#
I woke up at my desk.
What was real? What was a dream?
I moved to the window and touched the glass, afraid it might break under my fingers, afraid of the nuclear bloom I’d seen before.
I jumped back as a body fell past, plummeting to the street.
“What was that?” Jenny was horrified. She already knew.
“I think it was a man,” I said, numbly.
I turned to her as she stepped forward and stabbed me in the gut. She pressed me against the glass and held me there while she stabbed me again and again. Light poured out of her eyes, blinding me, and her breath was a blaring horn.
#
I fell out of the bed and scrambled to the wall, looking for anything solid, anything I could anchor myself with. My apartment was dark and cold. I was soaked through, like I’d been asleep in the rain. My heart was beating so loudly that I couldn’t listen for creaking floorboards or buzzing bugs.
I lifted my palm up to check why it was hurting and found a piece of glass stuck there. The floor was wet and covered in shards. I’d broken a glass, I remembered, but there was far too much glass for that. It was everywhere and, I realised, my body was cut in dozens of places.
I started to bleed. I started to scream.
“Steven?” A voice called through the door. “If you can hear me, try to blink or make a noise. Can you hear me, Steven?”
Outside my window, the nuclear blast lit the horizon again. Hideous light and devastating heat.
“Please,” I begged. “Please make it stop.”
#
I was on the edge of the building. I didn’t remember how I got there, I just knew I had to make it stop. It was too much. Falling from nightmare to nightmare endlessly was the worst kind of hell I could think of.
“Just a dream,” I told myself as I stepped off.
Before I hit the ground I heard the squeal of brakes, the scream of metal and the breaking of glass.