Dangerous Mind

Dangerous Mind

by Amyrah Graham

The nighttime is so beautiful. Some people are inside getting ready to end the day, some are probably outside now getting the day started. The sky is full of stars and there are busy cars running through the streets, making them look alive. It would be just a normal night, at least for you. In my world, it may look like yours to the naked eye, but there is evil that lurks as soon as the sun sets at 6:00. It makes me afraid to go anywhere, to trust anyone. It makes me cautious, makes me scared of anything. It feeds off my fear.

The sun has just set and I have to get prepared for my nightmares to come to life. I don’t know which fear it will choose for me today considering I have a lot, all I know is that I have to prepare for anything. “Okay River, you can do this. They’re just nightmares that can most likely kill you. Just try to get over whatever fear your mind throws at you today. Okay, you got this!” I say to myself in an attempt to make me feel less scared. It doesn’t work. I set my alarm for 6:00am. I don’t want to get stuck in another nightmare. As soon as my head hits the pillow, it starts.

I’m in a warehouse. The walls and floor are rusty grey and there is no furniture. The first thing I notice is that there are no doors here, no windows, or crawl spaces either. It feels like I’m in a cell. It feels as if I’m on lockdown, like nobody is allowed in or out. It’s so quiet here, the silence is so loud my ears ring. The walls are closing in on me and it’s making it harder for me to breathe, somebody or something is stealing all my oxygen.

My eyes are starting to water, I feel lightheaded, I feel like I’m going to faint. It won’t allow me to faint though because that is an easy escape from here. It knows that if I faint, I won’t hear this painful silence anymore. All I see are these grey walls that are slowly, but painfully, suffocating me to death. There is not one living, breathing soul around to help me. They told me I was going to be fine, but I feel like I’m dying. They told me these nightmares were temporary, that they would help me get through them but nobody’s here. They lied. Suddenly my throat becomes tighter, it feels like there are hands

wrapped around my throat but I don’t see anyone. I reach out to stop whatever is choking me but it just becomes harder to breathe. Just as I’m certain I’m about to die, my alarm blared through my ears. “BEEP BEEP BEEP.” As soon as I get off my bed I run towards my mirror, and then I see it. There are big hand marks wrapped all around my neck. When I look at them it’s like I could feel it all over again. Rough, dry hands is what it felt like. I wish I could call someone, anyone, to help me with these nightmares, but I can’t because everyone is gone. With that I look back towards the mirror and take in a shaky breath.

“Silence was my fear today,” I say in a whisper, still staring at my neck.

I know you’re probably wondering how these nightmares came to be. When I was 16 my family and I were going through a rough patch with money, so my parents signed me up for a science experiment because you would get over $40,000 for participating. The experiment was to try and get people’s dreams to come to life so when they wake up the next day, they will get whatever they dreamed about. But during the test run, something went horribly wrong. Someone messed up the programming and now only my nightmares would come to life, and since I was the only one who they tested on, it only happened to me.

They said that they would find a way to reverse it, that they would help me get rid of them. But it’s been four years now and I’m still dealing with my evil mind and its nightmares. My parents left me because they couldn’t deal with me screaming in the middle of the night and complaining how scared I am to fall asleep. My friends left me because they said I am a “freak.” I have accepted that nobody wants to be around me because of this, but it still hurts to know that I have no one to talk about my nightmares with.

I went back towards my room and grabbed my journal from under my bed. I write every single nightmare I had in here so I won’t forget them. I sit on my bed and flip through the pages until I land on a nightmare. “The eyes,” it says. I remember this one. I was 16 going on 17 when I had this. It was my sixth time having a nightmare. I was scared to go to sleep for a week because of this nightmare.

*Flashback*

The nightmare has me outside in a place I don’t recognize and it’s

nighttime. This is weird because it never takes me outside. It would usually have me inside my house, inside an abandoned building, anywhere, but it would always be indoors. When I look around I notice the streets are deserted, there are no people around, there are no cars parked or driving around, it’s just me. Or at least I thought. I could feel it, I don’t know how, but I could feel somebody watching me, calculating my every move, like I’m their prey and they are ready to strike. I turn once again just to make sure that I’m alone and then I see him, standing there at the end of the block staring at me. Or should I say it, because that thing does not look human. This thing is very tall, looks about seven foot, and it’s very skinny. The skin looks very pale, grey even. It looks rough, monstrous, horrifying. But the thing that scares me the most about this thing is its eyes. They are bloodshot red, they are filled with so much hate and disgust as it stares at me. It’s like it could see right through me, like it knows every single sin I have ever done in my entire life. It looks like it wants to tear me limb from limb. Whatever this thing is, it wants to crush me.

And I know that’s exactly what it wants to do when it starts stalking me with a smirk and its evil eyes. I turn around and pump my legs to run as fast as I can. I ran at least three blocks before I started slowing down. I’m breathing heavily, my lungs and legs are burning as I try to catch my breath as quickly as possible before that thing comes back. “BANG!” I turned around to see what that noise was. It sounded like somebody just took a metal bat and hit something. My eyes frantically search the area to see where that noise came from. I feel a shiver going down my spine as I feel as though I’m being watched again. I turn around, painfully slow, and then I see it, towering over me just staring. I feel like I can’t move, like I’m paralyzed. I’m even holding my breath because even it would be loud to breathe in this silent moment.

Now that it’s closer to me I could see that its eyes are even more red than what I thought. It’s so dark and evil, so sinful. These eyes sent an uneasy feeling in me and I didn’t like it one bit. The weird thing is that it doesn’t touch me, it just stares at me with the creepiest smile I have ever seen, but that’s enough for me to feel petrified. It feels like all the air is gone, that time has stopped and it’s just me and this monster. It won’t let me look away. It’s like its eyes are physically forcing my eyes to stay connected to it. It’s just staring and grinning. It feels as though hours have gone by and the monster is still standing there. Just staring and grinning.

Then my alarm goes off and I wake up but I could still feel its eyes staring at me.

*End of flashback*

As I shut the book and put it back under the bed, I remember the eyes. I remember when I woke up that day and I felt those eyes on me and right now, in this moment, when I put the book back, I could feel those eyes staring at me.

I wonder if I could ever, just once, have control over my nightmares. I wonder if I could ever find a way to end these nightmares.