Kelly woke abruptly, sweating and scarcely holding back her screams. She sat up and threw off the blankets, remaining on the edge of the bed until her ragged breaths had calmed down and her heart no longer sounded like irregular drumbeats in her ears. She’d been having nightmares for months now, and each night they dragged on longer and stuck more vividly in her mind. A few nights ago she’d woken her parents up crying for help in her sleep, and although she couldn’t remember the dreams when she woke up, they always left her terrified and exhausted. She could barely sleep at night and was ill at ease during the daylight hours. However, she also felt childish and stupid when she realized how afraid of her own dreams she’d become, and so she hadn’t revealed to anyone just how disturbed by them she was.
Deciding she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, and having no desire to anyway, Kelly stood and walked over to her dresser. She brushed out her hair and changed into school clothes, looking at the clock for the first time that morning. It was six twenty-five; the alarm would have woken her in five minutes even if her dreams hadn’t. Turning the alarm off, she headed downstairs to find something to eat.
In the cafeteria at school later, Kelly waited in line behind her best friend Jessica and chewed her lip indecisively. She wanted to confide in her friend, to ask for advice or just seek reassurance about her dreams, but she was afraid to. What if Jessica told her she was being a baby and that they were just dreams she should get over?
Later, as she got ready for bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had shadowed her every night for the past months. She climbed into bed but left the lamp on, feeling just a little bit better, as if nightmares couldn’t disturb her with the light to keep them away. This was untrue, of course.
She dreamed that she was walking down a street at night; all the buildings around her were deserted, abandoned, the windows shattered, paint peeling and frames crumbling. A dark shadow moved behind her; she turned to face it and her terror was so great it paralyzed her and rendered her unable to unleash the horrified scream tearing at her throat.
The thing that was stalking her was just inches from her. Its form appeared human and it was clad in a black cloak, the hood drawn over the face. However, when she saw it the creature revealed its face, which was hideously scarred from fire and covered in blood but not wounded, as if the thing had just finished smearing the stuff on its face. It was bald and barefoot, and wherever bare skin showed, the scars from being burned were evident, as was the fact that the thing was barely more than a skeleton; its skin was stretched tightly over bones that were grossly apparent.
The scarred, blood-smeared, skeletal face opened its mouth wide to reveal jagged, broken teeth also coated in blood, and released a deep rumbling laugh as its hands reached for her and scraped at her arms with claw-like fingernails. This time she managed to move her feet; she ran with terror beating in her heart, but didn’t hear the creature following her. She ran past dark buildings and down empty streets until she had to stop, had to breathe, had to rest her aching legs.
And then it grabbed her from behind.
She tried to scream but its bony hands covered her mouth. There were more of the creatures now, and they all reached for her, drawing blood as they raked her with fingernails. Then she was dragged away, kicking and screaming, down the abandoned street. When she managed to twist out of their grasp and run, they caught up with her and bound her limbs so she could barely struggle.
On they marched, and eventually she gave in and grew limp in their grasp. Tears stung her eyes. Suddenly the creatures stopped; the one holding her took a few paces forward and before she realized what it intended to do, the thing hurled her into the air. This time no one was muffling her screams as she plummeted over the side of the cliff and towards the jagged rocks and dark water below. Just when she would have hit them, she woke.
Her hands were balled into fists; her hair was tangled and she felt suffocated by her pillow, so she threw it to the floor, drew her legs to her chest and leaned against the wall. She sobbed until her eyes hurt from crying and her body was sore from it. Only then did she allow sleep to claim her once more; but this time there was darkness, for which she was grateful. She did not dream again.
The next night was worse. It was a repeat of the previous dream, only with some alterations; this time after she was thrown over the cliff, she hit the swirling black water and felt the pain of it like a giant slap. She’d missed the jagged rocks but felt herself sinking, deeper and deeper with no way to free her limbs from thier binds. As she struggled in vain and water invaded her mouth and nose, choking her, blackness crept over her vision and she awakened in terror.
* * * * *
Kelly could no longer sleep. She had lain awake in bed the previous night, exhausted beyond belief but refusing to fall asleep. The next morning she rose and dressed for school, but her actions were those of a robot; she was so tired that she barely noticed what she was wearing and didn’t taste her breakfast. Nor did she feel the cold rain outside or hear the conversations of other kids on the ride to school.
By lunch hour, her friends had definitely noticed her unusual quietness, how red and puffy her eyes looked and how she stumbled through her classes half-asleep. When she sat down to eat she felt sick to her stomach and picked halfheartedly at her food. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep, but how could she with nightmares to torment her mind and physically exhaust her?
There was a new kid at their table today. This fact did not immediately register in Kelly’s mind, but when it did, she felt a slight spark of interest. When Jessica introduced him as Don’s friend Chris, she was compelled to introduce herself and engage in a short conversation. She didn’t miss the relieved glances Jessica passed to all her other friends, and realized that she’d basically ignored them the past few days due to her prolonged fatigue and depression.
The next day she scrambled onto the bus and found a seat in the far back. She knew that her physical condition was deteriorating: her eyes had dark circles underneath them and they were constantly bloodshot: she’d lost the battle against sleep and had woken close to screaming a few times now.
She began to doze as the bus made its rounds and woke suddenly to find Chris sitting beside her. For a moment she stared at him, disoriented and upset that shed been woken from the only dreamless sleep she was likely to get for a while.
“Kelly,” Chris began.
She waited expectantly for him to continue.
“I know you haven’t been sleeping,” he told her. “Or more importantly, I know why you haven’t been sleeping.”
“I have nightmares,” Kelly whispered hoarsely, hugging her bag to her chest. “I can’t remember most of them, but they wake me up every night, and I can barely sleep… For a while I tried not to, but I was too tired.”
“I know. Kelly, I had the same dreams.”
She looked at Chris in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re not the only one. And your dreams aren’t going to stop until you do something about them.”
“What can I do? They’re terrible, but I can’t make them go away.”
“Here,” Chris said, handing a folded piece of paper towards her. “This is an incantation for protection; if you remember to say it when your dream begins, it will drive the creatures away.”
She unfolded it; one word was written across the paper in a foreign language.
“It’s very simple to remember,” Chris told her, “but also powerful–it means ‘Surrender’. It will make the dreams end.”
Desperately grasping at any means to end her horrified dreams, Kelly, unfortunately, placed her trust in Chris. Little did she know, this would be the last mistake of her life.
That night sleep came slowly. She didn’t feel tired; she was charged with fearful anticipation. When she found herself in the dark, deserted street once more, Kelly stood her ground and tried to focus her thoughts. It took her a moment to remember the most vital piece of information: she was dreaming. She was dreaming, and she must stand her ground when the creatures came; she must remember to say the word that would drive them away.
When the wraithlike creatures appeared this time, with salivating dogs at their heels, she did not turn and run. Instead she faced her foes and tried to keep calm as she drew breath to utter one word. Emboldened, she suddenly screamed it at them.
the creatures stopped dead: the dogs whined and glanced at their masters as if in search of permission. Then a gaping hole broke wide beneath her feet, and Kelly was plunged downward through scorching-hot air, down, down, until-thud-she smacked into solid ground. Pain flared through the side of her body that she’d landed on, and she realized she lay upon a huge slab of smooth black stone. She spun around frantically, searching the underground cavern for an exit. Why wasn’t she waking up? Chris had said…he’d told her…he’d promised that she would awaken after facing the creatures.
And then she saw him.
Sitting on a throne carved out of the same kind of stone she’d landed upon, two cold dark eyes stared down at her. A spiked crown sat atop his head, and between his fingers he held a razor-sharp spear. A wicked grin broke across his face as the unmistakable Greek god Hades rose to his full impressive height and answered her unspoken question: “Yes, Kelly, your friend Chris has betrayed you. And you are now enslaved to me forever; you will never again awaken.”
Credit To – Weeping Willow
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How can anyone old enough to be posting on here not have heard of Freddie Kruger, especially if they like horror which they must to be posting on here? That seems highly improbable, unless you’re from a different culture. *shrugs* It started out well, but the ending was pretty abrupt.
Felt like a rip-off of Nightmare on Elm Street if you ask me…
Could be better. Writing falls flat in places, Chris has no actual motivation, the ending is largely given away by saying trusting him was a mistake, and Hades is possibly the least appropriate mythological figure to have be behind this for a number of reasons — He’s actually not particularly malevolent or deceptive (The Ancient Greeks hated him, but because they hated and feared Death, not particularly because he did anything especially terrible), dreams aren’t his domain, and he’s had such widely diverging portrayals that it’s hard to imagine him being “unmistakeable.”
Yep… this seems too much like Freddy Krueger.
I almost laughed in the beggining when she was being chased by the burned man because he sounded so much like Freddie Kruegar, and the story was about nightmares. This is pretty offtopic from the rest of my post but I felt it needed to be said :P.
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Anyway, it reminded me of the story that goes with the Smiley Dog picture. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you do, but I’ll give a brief summary.
When a person sees the picture they are haunted with nightmares. In the nightmares they are told that if they show someone else the picture, they will no longer be haunted in their dreams. In the end of the story, the author posts the famous smiley dog picture for everyone to see, and you can sort of guess why that’s a little freaky.
Anyway, your story was like that only not as good. You didn’t give us any sort of origin for the nightmares, and linking all of Kelly’s dreams to the Greek god Hades was a very odd choice, as Hades is a god of the underworld and is not affiliated with dreams in any way (at least according to my knowledge).
I also agree with CMT when he said that it would be difficult to “unmistakably look like Hades”. He isn’t exactly a consistent looking character, and depending on what story you are reading, he could look many different ways. If I saw an evil looking man in my dreams who “looked like Hades” I would think more “OMYWORD ITS SATAN” simply because satan is a more relevant character than Hades.
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Overall you had an interesting (but unoriginal) concept, weak characters and execution that wasn’t awful. 6/10
Yes, I do agree that Hades is quite an odd choice to be involved in dreams.
Considering that Hades doesn’t have any interest for the living as he is the god of the Underworld, and he who ruled over the dead.
Unless of course if Kelly happens to be the incarnation of Persephone, that is another matter entirely.
So, to lure and capture a living being through dreams and nightmares is hardly his style.
Hades according to mythology is not evil, he’s just passive and more altruistically inclined.
Firstly, to be honest I’ve no idea who Freddie Kruegar is, so any resemblance between him and my character is purely coincidental. Also, no, I haven’t read the Smiley Dog story either, but thanks for the summary.
I realize that Hades may have seemed like an odd choice, and I do somewhat regret using him now but obviously the story’s been posted so I am not going to change it.
Thanks for your comment and rating.
It felt like you got bored with the story so you just threw an ending together. The character of Chris comes out of nowhere and his betrayal is never explained.
I enjoyed the story but I think Chris and her should have worked together instead.
You don’t know Chris’s background. Maybe giving her the incantation was the only way to save himself from the dreams, or maybe Chris is a minion of or incarnation of Hades himself. When you know so little about a character, you can’t assume he had any motive to assist the protagonist.
The story was interesting and there was suspense building each time she dreamt, which drew me into the story.
Alas, everything fell flat when Chris was introduced. It felt so cliché. An acquaintance she only knew a few hours ago told her he knows what troubles she is facing and she does not question that? “Little did she… in her life” That sentence was quite unoriginal and completely killed the little suspense that was left.
The ending felt very abrupt and unexplained. It was completely disconnected from the earlier part of the story. Why would Hades want to draw a mortal girl into his realm? How did she instinctively know he was the god of the Underworld?
What the writer could have done was to make Chris more vague, mysterious and persuasive to get her to say the word. Next, the writer could have elaborated on how and why Hades wanted to trap her. Was it a twisted retelling of his kidnapping of Persephone? Who exactly was Chris? Or perhaps, since she was trapped in her nightmares, a better villain would be Hypnos, the Greek god of dreams and sleep.
Lastly, sentence structure and proper usage of grammar. While there were few errors, one glaring one is the use of abbreviations (he’s instead of he is). Abbreviations should only be used in dialogue and not in other sentences. Next, certain sentences were a little redundant or grammatically incorrect.
Overall, not a bad effort, but the story can be improved. 6/10
The ending was meant to be abrupt and unexplained, because I wrote a sequel to “Nightmares” which will hopefully be posted sometime within the next couple months. It will go into more detail about Chris’s betrayal and how Kelly is being imprisoned, etc…
A lot of people have commented about Hades being a poor choice for the role I gave him, and while I admit I probably made a mistake in calling him “unmistakable”, the personality I gave to the Hades in my story isn’t necessarily supposed to be derived directly from how he’s portrayed in other stories. It was my idea that, “Well, here’s a mysterious mythological character, how can I turn this into something useful for my story?” not “How could I accurately explain and describe the Greek God of the Underworld?”
What I’m trying to get across is that no, Hades in this book didn’t really follow the traditional Hades of Greek stories, but if it did, I’d just be copying the myths other people wrote down… I wanted to come up with an original personality for him. So…
I would be glad if you could point out which specific sentences you felt were “redundant” and “grammatically incorrect”. It would help me pinpoint what the readers want to see changed, so I could do it better next time.
Thanks
I enjoyed the story (and the way it was written, just a few minor typos, no misused tenses/POV, …) more or less until you decided to let us know in advance that trusting Chris was a mistake. I see no reason for that, but aside from this the story goes a bit downhill from there on. The ending seems rushed, and with little to none connection to the previous events. There’s no explanation as to why Hades would want to lure a girl, and through dreams, that aren’t even his domain (BTW, what’s so unmistakable about him? I could mention at least four different way he’s been portrayed).
In the ending, also, Kelly does something she apparently wasn’t ever able to do before: realize she’s in fact dreaming. This alone, technically, would have allowed her to wake up. Probably not in this case, as her dreams weren’t natural, but maybe it would have been nice not giving her this self-consciousness all of a sudden. You could have had her lucid-dreaming in a previous instance, realizing she was not able to wake up in spite of knowing she was asleep.
Pretty good Pasta, I enjoyed it. Was a nice and original idea/I loved the plot twist.
_S_
it was good until she met chris..then it fell completely flat (and predictable)..5/10
Chris is such a jerk.But I wish that the story was alittle more detailed.To me it just seemed…rushed, to say the least.I feel like it was missing important chunks, like where did her nightmares originate? Exactly how long had she been having these nightmares?
It’s little things like that that make the story, other than what the whole plot of the story is.I’m not trying to sound like a jerk, trust me.I just would’ve liked to read a bit more as to how she’d gotten these reoccuring nightmares and what she could’ve done to help make them go away.
As for the sentence ‘the creatures stopped dead’, it could’ve been ‘The creatures stopped dead in their tracks’.And in the end of that sentence, it’s not supposed to be a colon, it’s supposed to be a semicolon.But I’m sure it was a mistake.I’m sorry if it sounded like I was bashing the story, I was just giving my honest opinion. :)
Well, it’s sort of implied that the dreams are caused by Hades; this is made a little more clear in the sequel, Part Two, which I recently submitted to the web-site. And the dreams were made (by Hades) so that she couldn’t break away from them, once they started. It was designed to ensnare her permanently.
No, it didn’t sound like you were bashing the story; I am glad for anybody’s opinions and tips. I hope the readers will like the second installment (if it gets accepted to the web-site) and find it a bit less lacking than this first part.
Appreciate the input!
Man fuck you chris
Great buildup. I loved the creatures from her nightmares. But the end was lacking a lot. It just seemed lame that she would fall into Hades. Also, I don’t think a Greek god would speak in the manner he did here.