A Grove of Shadows and Rot

I’m drowning. Again.

My vision smears as I sink into the murky water’s depths—its surface is too quiet, too calm as it pulls me under and steals off with my screams like a thief in the night. My lungs pack with thick tar-like muck that swallows my organs whole and erupts out from my open mouth when there’s no more space to fill. The lake is a beast long starved, devouring with greed whilst flecks of black prick away at my vision and I fade into unconsciousness, letting its monstrous appetite claim and consume.

Just as I surrender myself to the waters, the world flips, like the turning of a page that lifts me up and throws me sideways—and in the next moment I’m sprawled out in a large courtyard, gasping for breath and retching up the contents of my stomach.

The grey paved floor nips at wet limbs, sending waves of bitter cold biting deep into my bones. My heartbeat quickens, rattles in its ivory cage, whilst the fine hairs at the nape of my neck stand in knowing anticipation of what always follows next.

Hot sharp pain explodes across my scalp, and I’m pulled up and dragged by my hair from behind—by someone I never get to see.

My legs kick out in protest, and I flail my arms behind me in an attempt to thwart off my attacker, only to be jilted once more, the courtyard smearing from vision as I’m flung into the aether. I’m floating now, or perhaps falling to my doom in perpetual darkness. The space feels heavy, foreboding, and static once again creeps up my spine as the energy around me suffocates, like that feeling of being watched, stalked by a shadow. Large blue eyes snap awake in the void and track me as I plummet into the nether, descending at an unsettling speed.

My mouth opens to scream but the fear that lingered before eddies away, and I continue to fall as I stare right back into the cold-blue that observes, watches me as it frosts its way into my very being.

The darkness starts to haze away, like clouds parting on a breeze, and now I’m hurtling down through the open landscape towards a wood, the branches from trees catching my descent like clawed fingers raking open bloody wounds across flesh, as I entwine with the canopy and crash down hard to the forest floor.

As I stumble right-side up, I see that the forest is devoid of colour and instead tones of sepia bleed through like a plague upon the land. The forest is eerily quiet, and the smell of decay stings my nostrils and squeezes tears from my eyes. Terror envelops me once more as I remember what happens next, what never changes.

I take a resigned step forward and let out a pained hiss, my body becoming too heavy as my skin pulls taut and withers, and I hear the protests of my bones as they struggle to keep me upright. Sickening cracks lace with raw screams as both muscle and flesh give way and disintegrate, becoming dust on the wind, and the foul stench of my own body rotting has nausea roil within. The joints of my bones surrender to death’s call next and I crumple to the ground, and much like quicksand I’m swallowed beneath the earth’s surface. The page turns again sharply and I’m churned around and spewed back up from the ground, thrown onto a bed of straw. I sit up to find myself caged behind bars, and my fingers reach to feel the smoothness of an iron collar clasped around my neck that’s attached to a chain bolted to the ground. My prison floats aimlessly through the dark, and I scan my surroundings in desperate search of those icy-blue eyes before bracing myself for the deluge that despite knowing its inevitability, still always takes me by surprise. I gasp as the river of red I anticipated rushes through the bars of my confinement from all angles, a raging bloody torrent that’s coming in too fast and filling the space too quick. I panic as it claims my feet, then my legs, then my waist—and I submerge my hands into its scarlet depths in a futile attempt to try and pull at the chain that I know never comes free.

Those haunting eyes snap back into existence, and strong arms embrace me from behind as I’m pulled into a familiar but foreign embrace, into a scent I think I know but don’t, and my fear ebbs away with the blood. I sink into the chest behind me seeking its warmth, and like how this always goes, I crane my neck in a desperate and futile attempt to see who holds me. The need to know their face takes over any rational thought—and just like it always happens, before my eyes find their target, I’m met with white-hot pain as a strange sharpness tears into my throat, warm blood exploding from the wound and mingling between where our bodies connect.

My familiar stranger is killing me.

I suddenly snap awake and sit up, dead straight. Sweat beads around my forehead and my palms are clammy as I take shallow breaths that seep past trembling lips in a struggle to inflate my panicked lungs. My slick hands clutch the sides of my head, effectively caging me into my turmoil, and the beating of my heart quickens to an unhealthy pace. “Stop. Stop. STOP!” Screams erupt and scatter through the silence of the night, and the sound of myself falling apart rouses me somewhat from the fog that steeps my brain.

Reality slowly blinks to life as I take in the surroundings of my chambers. The moonlight mocks my fears as it casts eerie shadows about the room, making inanimate objects look alive, lying in wait and ready to pounce at the faintest movement, at my vulnerability.

Carefully, I reach down to touch my bedsheets now soaked with sweat. The sensation of damp cotton scrapes across my fingertips, waking me properly from my stupor, and my breathing returns to normal as I lay back down on my bed and wrap myself up in my blankets, as if donning a suit of armor. Sleep quickly claims me once more, and as I slip back into oblivion I tell myself only one thing.

It was only a nightmare.