Present

I can’t breathe.Cold, frail hands wrap around my throat and suddenly squeeze with so much power, my vision blurs into a haze.I thrash, and my fist connects with someone’s slack, frail jaw—a loud crack echoes through the hut, and then I hear the slick, obscene wet sound of something dripping on my floor.

Open your eyes!!I urge my brain and thrash my head around, but I can’t open my eyes, and the hands around my throat won’t stop tightening.I can feel them tighten more and more with every second passing by, and my lungs burn to the point of anguish.My mind darts towards the gold coins sitting in my closet in a large bag, and sorrow clouds over my heart in the form of thick, dark rainclouds when I realize I probably won’t live to bathe in their luxury.

A fuzzy feeling fills my head, and I’m sinking—I don’t know where—just sinking.I can’t draw breath, and I can’t open my eyes, and just as I give in to the inevitable, the hands around my throat suddenly pull away.I sit up, coughing and choking on my own spit like a madman.

My eyes are open….My heartbeat accelerates painfully fast as my eyes take in the plush, cream-colored bedsheets and the corners of the gauzy white curtains blowing into the corner of my vision and trailing against my cheek like the comfort of a lover.

It was a dream…I am safe….I blow out a breath of immense relief, will my heartbeat to calm down, and lift my eyes to scan my room in the dull light of early dawn.

I look to my left towards the curtained windows, and my eyes connect with bottomless white sockets staring dead into my eyes….I can hear myself gasp, but I can’t move—I need to wake up!My eyes move down the beast’s face, following her sunken pale cheeks and settling onto her slack, open wide jaw, dripping blood onto my carpet where my fist connected with her jaw and chills wrack my body.

I’m screaming. I can hear myself screaming in my head, but the sound only pounds against my own skull and won’t leave my mouth.I force myself to look at her mouth again—slack, open wide, and curled into the most terrific, bloody, sharp-toothed smile ever.

Tendrils of her thin, black hair wrap around my body, pulling me impossibly close to her, and I thrash again—I scream in my head, and then her hands lift—Longer than my whole body and as thin as a branch, with the sharp points of her nails—no.Blades.She has blades for nails.

My body begs me to get up and run, or scream, or just wake up from this awful nightmare once and for all, but then she lunges—It’s so fast and horrifying, and I don’t have a moment to catch my breath before she sinks those deadly claws of fate into my chest…

And then I feel nothing…..