Nightmare
My fuzzy brain!! It’s the only thing my brain successfully analyzed in the past 45 minutes.
Hi there, I am Aarya, 15, and I currently reside in jail for a crime I have yet to commit. The funny part is that my own parents paid them to torture me in the middle of this nowhere-place. Well, they call it a boarding school, though.
It’s 18 December 2016, almost 4 in the afternoon. The sun is on full rizz after sucking me dry. I feel sorry for the math lecturer in front of the blackboard as he’s failed miserably to feed me at least an ounce of his knowledge in 1.5 years of my trial. The kids here are not helping either. So noisy, so tiresome, so sleepy.
Boring...
Boring...
Boring... 🚨
There was a buzzy sound down the hall, and when the clock hit 4, the principal rushed into the room. “Sir, it’s an emergency!!” announced the principal, calling out the lecturer. They both discussed something outside the room and left. The whole class fell silent for a good few minutes. Slowly, a discussion emerged about what might have happened, and suddenly, all the lecturers left the campus. A junior lecturer then barged into the room, feeding our curiosity.
“There is a rare lunar eclipse occurring today; however, it isn’t good for health as there might be heavy radiation due to that. So, the school is off today. Go to your respective rooms, make sure to close all the doors and windows, and go to sleep. Do NOT go out during the eclipse. We will call out after the critical period. Understood? Now hurry to your rooms.”
With that, everyone rushed into their rooms, some with joy that they got a day off, some with fear of what might happen (the superstitious ones), and some detectives with their theories that the lunar eclipse might be aliens landing on Earth. But all were on their beds, ready to sleep.
The surroundings took a turn. The bright sun hid behind dark clouds. The wind was howling as if it might uproot the banyan tree in our ground. It felt like a moonless night, and it was only 4:30 pm.
Whatever, I fell asleep the moment I touched the bed.
After what felt like an eternity, I woke up from my deep slumber. The time was 12:00, midnight. WHAT??? Midnight!!! That can’t be!!! I definitely slept well, but not so well that 7 hours had passed. I tried looking at other clocks, but the result was the same. I think I passed out then.
I know this is the wrong time, but I need to use the washroom, and I know that if I cross that door like any other horror story protagonist, I’m dead. So, as a good little citizen, let’s wake my stupid friend because if I have to go to hell, I’m not going alone.
“Hey, little Sherlock, wake up!! I need to go to the washroom. Wake UUPPP...”
That’s new... This girl used to pop her eye open at the slightest sounds I made, but now she won’t even budge. Fine, let’s try others... None are waking upppp...
NOW, I am definitely not going out. Something is wrong, and I am not the curious cat, so I’m going back to sleep. Not waking up till ALL my friends are up.
Did an hour pass? I need to use the washroom badly. What’s the time? 12. Twelve!!! 12 on all the clocks. Time has passed for sure. Wouldn’t a minute have passed by now? What do I do? Something is wrong for sure, and this is the proof that if I go out now, I’m dead. But I have to use the washroom badly and have no guts to go out alone!
Like that, what seemed like an hour passed, and the clocks still showed 12:00.
OKAY! I’ll close my eyes, sprint to the washroom which is right in front of my room, won’t open my eyes, finish my business, and come back and lay back on this bed like nothing happened!!
This is the only master plan I could cook up right now, so let’s just follow this.
I got up from bed...
Opened the door...
Closed my eyes...
Ran to the washroom...
Finished my business...
Ran back toward the room...
Hit something and fell on my butt...
Wait, this is not in the plan!
I know my hostel like the back of my hand. I could roam around the hostel with ease, even if I were completely blind. And for sure I know there shouldn’t be anything blocking this path!!!
Yes, that’s it. It’s my death that is blocking me...
There’s a faint sound of water droplets dripping onto the floor. A mild bad odor, like rotten meat, is floating in the air.
I opened my eyes with the last drop of courage I had left.
I am facing my door. On the right, there’s a huge window, and on the left, there’s the long corridor.
The water-dripping sound is echoing in the corridor. I turned left.
There, in the farthest sight of the corridor, is a silhouette of a woman. There is fog, distracting the sight, and I’m not curious if it’s my eyes playing games or if there is a woman. All I want is to get into the room.
I rushed to the door, banging it like my life depends on it, which isn’t far from the truth.
As a classic move, I banged the door a few times and screamed my lungs out for help. But the response came from the wrong side. It was a noise... no... a voice, like it hadn’t been used in ages. The silhouette became clear and near.
It was the woman. She’s in a white frock, long black and wet locks dripping water, pale bluish skin, skeleton-like body, long stick-like limbs, long black fingernails, sluggish posture. It seems as if she’s dragging her body with great effort. In short, she is scary!!!
Out of fear, I hit the door a few more times, and now it feels like she’s just at a distance of 10 meters. I get it: if I knock on this door one more time, she’ll be in my face. I can see her face now. There is a long scar around her neck, a slit on her mouth, and a huge crack on her skull. Her eyes... her eyes are white; there are no black pupils.
Suddenly, as if I am in a trance, I stared into her eyes. They seem to beg me for help, begging me to follow her, and I did. It wasn’t a voluntary move; it was like she was controlling me. I followed her. My room was on the first floor. Around the corner of the corridor, she disappeared. I ran to the end of the corridor. There are large windows showing the crimson red full moon. I saw the woman standing beside the tree in the hostel’s ground. I sprinted downstairs to reach her. Weird!... The front gate is open; it’s usually locked and double-checked every day, but now it is wide open. I went out to the tree. She isn’t there.
As I said, this place is in the middle of nowhere. There’s an empty plot just beside the hostel. It’s out for lease, but I’ve never seen anyone going there during my stay. My hostel has no compound wall, so it feels like it’s located in the middle of a large barren ground.
On the other side of the plot, there’s a huge banyan tree. Under it, the woman is standing. It’s a chilly night. The wind is howling low. The silver light from the moon reflecting off the woman radiates a sense of anxiety. I started walking toward her slowly. My steps gradually became longer. Movement sped up. Without my notice, I started running toward the tree. Finally, I reached the tree, but the woman was nowhere to be found. I searched and searched for her around the tree and the place, but I couldn’t find her. As I sprinted from one side to the other, the icy cold air filling my lungs started to hurt a little. I stopped at the tree, feeling exhausted. I couldn’t move; my legs were trembling. There was no energy left in my stamina-free body. I dropped down to the ground, resting my back on the tree. I tried to slow down my breathing and heart rate. Slowly raising my head, watching the magnificent red moon. Was the moon always this big? The wind slowed down. It was only the night’s breeze, the leaves rustling. Cold...
.... ttchttt...
There was a sound beside me, a sound like crushing leaves, a sensation like someone sat. I turned my head. The white orbs. Pure white. The cold ran through my spine, pulling me back to react. It was the woman.
I screamed my lungs out for help and started dragging myself away from her. She sat there unmoved, not even breaking the stare. I pushed my body to stand and started running. I had heard that there’s a holy place nearby that many villagers believe in. I knew it was in the direction I was running, but I didn’t know where or what it looked like. I had no clue whether this woman was an evil spirit, a monster, or a ghost, and I had no time or stamina to analyze that. All I could do was run. And the only safe place my brain could squeeze out was that holy place. So RUN...
Suddenly I tripped and fell. It wasn’t a twig or a stone, but I felt like someone caught my leg with a hand. I was terrified, with a trembling body I looked down at my leg, wishing it was not the woman, wishing that I hadn’t been caught. But after I saw what had caught me, I really hoped it was the woman.
The thing that caught me was a hand, that’s it. A hand that was pitch black, blood and flesh dripping down as if it was melting, but on the contrary, the hand was icy cold. And it had grown out from the bare ground.
With frantic horror, I kicked the hand, trying to release myself, and after a few kicks, I successfully freed myself and got up to start running to my destination. But the journey wasn’t alone. The woman stood 10 meters behind me, following me, and many similar black hands started rising from the ground like flames, trying to catch me.
I dodged and kept running but couldn’t find the holy place. I didn’t see anything in my sight. With every step, I was losing hope, questioning myself... Is this the right way? Would that holy place save me? If I reached there and it couldn’t save me, then what? What is my plan B? These thoughts were weighing me down, slowing my speed. I felt like giving up.
As if a slight ray of light in the darkest night, there shone a place. Night was everywhere, but like a spotlight from the sky, there was the place. It wasn’t a big area, hardly a circle to fit one person, but it was enough. Enough to fill me with hope to the brink. With the very last ounce of energy left in my body, I sprinted to that circle of hope, ignoring the woman who started crawling like a spider towards me to catch me. All the hands were scratching and scraping my skin, but I only dodged to avoid getting caught. I ran... I ran and reached the circle, with the woman still following me, her hand stretched out to reach me. But the moment her hands entered the circle, they got burnt, like the light had turned into lava and fell on her hands. Silence... no more hands trying to grip me, not even the cries of the woman reached me. Peace... Only then did I start noticing my surroundings.
The circle of hope had a stone, which looked like it was worshipped with great care. Maybe this was the holy place I was looking for. The holy circle was warm, maybe because I had been in the chilly cold wind till now or because I ran here, but it was warm. Warm like a mother’s embrace, safe. Maybe because I was exhausted or felt relieved, my trembling limbs gave out. I fell to the ground, feeling proud that I had saved myself, that I didn’t get caught by the woman, that I didn’t give up.
I was trying to stabilize my ragged breath while staring at the woman who had stopped screaming. She looked straight at me like she could see through me into my soul. And suddenly, there was a faint smile on her face. A smile like she had caught me, a smile like a predator catching its prey, a smile that kept growing. When the smile reached its creepiest point, the lunar eclipse started. The moon was slowly being eaten by a black snake. With every inch the moon darkened, the light in the circle began to diminish. With every drop in the intensity of the light in the circle, the woman’s smile increased. Even when her lips and cheeks tore, the woman didn’t stop smiling. The red blood from her mouth that dropped onto the ground painted the world black. The last hope within me disappeared along with the silver light from the moon. Darkness outside and inside me. The woman stared down at me.
My already kneeling body looked up to the sky, giving up.
I don’t know where the idea popped up from. A thought that maybe the circle of hope lost its power to the lunar eclipse. If I could run away until the end of the lunar eclipse, then I could get back here to this circle of hope. Maybe it would get its power back after the end of the lunar eclipse. That’s it. This was enough for my body to spring up. I didn’t know if my analysis was true, or if the lunar eclipse would even end in this time-stopped world. But this thought was enough to push me forward.
I pushed the woman back and started running in the opposite direction, wishing for the lunar eclipse to end quickly, to save me. Suddenly the woman appeared in front of me, as if she had teleported. I tried to dodge her but failed miserably, twisting my foot in the process. “No. No. No. No, not now! If I injure my leg now, I can’t run... I can’t go back to my safe circle... I can’t save myself... I will die....” With that, I fell to the ground.
BAM...
I hit my head on the bench in front of me. “What? Shouldn’t I be dead??... Where is this??”
“Aarya... Aarya...”
Someone was calling me.
“AARYA!”
I looked forward. It was the math lecturer. “What?”
“I see the audacity to fall asleep in my class...” he growled.
“In his class?” I hurriedly looked at the top right corner of the board behind the lecturer where we usually write the date. 18/12/2016. Today? I looked at the digital watch on my wrist showing 3:58 pm. “So it was a dream! A nightmare.” I sighed in relief. “Only a nightmare in broad daylight, which will never come true.”
“A sigh? You dare to sigh when I asked a question?” raged the lecturer.
“Oh, I forgot about him...”
“Sorry, sir, I wasn’t sleeping, I was just meditating to increase my concentration in your class,” I tried to reason, which earned me a glare from him.
3:59 pm - The corridor started to buzz.
“Why is this happening again? No, it’s just normal commotion in the hall, that’s it... it should be...”
4:00 pm - “Sir, it’s an emergency!!” announced the principal...
END.........
[You guys find it attractive? My first language isn’t English, so if you find errors, please notify me and please do support.
This is my first completed story and I understood that short stories are my type as my imagination on one story can only be extended this much.
Suggest me if you want a story in a specific genre.]
AARYA.;)
