Note: Just something I wrote for my Creative Writing class. I have a lot of nightmares.

Nightmares, dreams, demons in the dark. The old fear, gripping. Just your mind, just your mind, a chant, a mantra as you fall asleep. Darkness, pressing, cloying, fuel for the imagination, itself gone wild, objects friendly by daylight suddenly sinister. To sleep now, to sleep, dream again. The faceless man, then children with no eyes and your teeth are falling out, he's smiling sadly and walking away, you'll never see him again, you're being chased by something you can't see, you are about to be dismembered and eaten, it happened in the staff room . . . maybe you cry, in your sleep, but you do not wake.

Bats, spiders the size of your hand and oh god snakes mice rats. The ninth circle of Hell, frozen faces staring up at you petulantly, yours among them, waiting. You've killed her; the blood is on your hands, on the floor, the beads from that damn necklace scattered everywhere, crushed under your feet, shards turning already into sand, and into nothing. The floor gives way, you are falling, about to hit the ground. Your coworkers have gone mad, they've cornered you in the back office, you're next you're next you're next. Someone's pointing a gun at your head, the world is ending, your car is crashing, the house is on fire, you're trapped in your own coffin, they're throwing handfuls of dirt onto the lid while you claw at the top, scream silently in your sleep--I'm alive, I'm alive.

Wake from one of the above, same as always, covered in sweat or tears or both, breathing hard, the details of your dreams already fleeing into the gray dawn morning.