Dream Thread

"It starts peaceful, but isn't that how everything begins?"

It was a reoccurring dream of mine, and if you asked me what it means, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I'm shoving my way through a throng of people. I can't see their faces, but I have a strange sense that they lack them, or at the very least, they're expressionless and empty. The crowd never seems to end, but I keep going anyway. I'm not sure what I'm following, but I know that I have to keep going this direction. I'm beginning to resist the strange urge to continue in the opposite direction of the strangers. As my mind wanders, I begin to notice things. Like, even though I'm headed upriver in the ever flowing stream of people, there never seems to be an ending. Nor does the crowd thin out at all. An image drifts to the front of my mind, and somehow I know this is the person I was following through the swarm of people, but lost them. I'm not sure how to describe this person, but I'll try my best.
It was a shadowy figure, rather small, almost childlike. There's no way to discern if it's a female or male. Its eyes are a darkly glowing amber, pulsing with life. The shadows seem to be rolling off of the character in waves, and melt into the air. I have no idea what this thing is or where I'd seen it before, but I know it's important to me. After I think this, the thing beckons to me, and I can see what might be an attempt at a smile purely from the fact that there's the soft glimmer of white teeth below the amber eyes. It turns and walks away and I feel myself start walking again, almost in a trance.
I've had this dream so many times, I know what's going to come next, but there's no way to stop the inevitable. The pale, almost gray hand that I was dreading reaches out with strange catlike agility and slaps itself onto my shoulder and tries to pull me towards it. I resist to some success, but the owner of the hand just uses me as leverage to pull themselves to me instead.
"You must go back."
I turn to the owner of the hand, who is peering at me with wild eyes that twinkle with a wildness. "You can't go on," he presses, clenching my shoulder between meaty gray fingers as he says this.
"Get off of me," I mutter, shouldering his hand off of me and pushing forward. He steps towards me and suddenly the sea of people are gone. They've just...disappeared. I look around in astonishment, although I'm not sure why; I've been through this dream too many times to be shocked by this action, but it doesn't appear to have lost its luster yet.
The man limps forward, reaching out at me again. "Please. This isn't a safe place for someone like you," he seems to be begging with me, pleading for something...what, though?
I shuffle backwards, wary of him. "Leave me alone," I start, putting up both hands in a defensive motion, and cast a quick glance around, looking for something, anything.
I seem to have caused something in the man, as his crazy eyes widen and his jaw slacks to open his mouth into a slight ovular shape. He begins to back up slowly, before turning around and performing a limp sprint that I can't help but snicker at, even in this situation. But that is cut short when I realize that he can't possibly have been running from me. I freeze, and I know the thing that had appeared in my mind was behind me. I don't know how I knew. Maybe because, as I might've mentioned before, I've had this dream before, but I don't think that's the reason why. I don't know what possesses me to turn around either, but I do.
The figure is practically right behind me, give or take a few feet. Its pulsing amber eyes bore into mine, and I'm transfixed. I can't be sure how long the two of us stand there. I'm not even sure if this thing is standing, or floating, or if it even has legs to begin with. I'm sure to any passerby, the pair of us would be a sight indeed. But this is my dream, or nightmare, or whatever it is, and there aren't going to be any passersby.
What could be a minute later or an eternity later, a slow grin crawls its way across the face of the shadow creature, and the ground below me begins to tremble. Slow at first, but then the ground begins to tremble more. It almost seems to be resonating from beneath the stranger. Of course it would be.
Suddenly and without any warning, a crack just wide enough for me to fall through, shoots out from the creature and opens its maw beneath me. Internally I'm rolling my eyes, because only in this dream would that happen. But before I know it I'm falling. As I get farther and farther down, the crack widens up, and I wait until it's just wide enough to brandish my secret weapon. Unfurling my wings, I quickly spread them wide to catch the air and drift my way down, or wait for the danger to pass and fly back up.
"You really think you can cheat your way out of death?" A lilting voice snarls into my ear, and even though there's no one around me, I know its the thing that caused this in the first place. Before I process that thought, I feel a searing pain across my back. It takes me a moment to register what just happened, but once I do, I let out a bloodcurdling screech as I begin to topple faster into the yawning darkness below me.

"As I fall, I thought nothing would catch me."

 

Author's Note:

This story is not told from my own point of view, nor is this a dream I've had.