Gutiérrez Mejía Margarita Rosa, Somnum

SOMNUM

Written by Margarita Rosa Gutiérrez Mejía

Prologue

Isometimes wish life were like video games. Now, I know what you are thinking and the answer is yes, that is a geeklike comment but I am not. If you think about it, video games always have a story to tell, a quest, something that leads you to have incredible adventures, a price, and hopefully, an incredible ending. In this perspective, life is similar to them. There is nothing more exciting than to live a breathtaking experience with someone you care about, even if it is not as epic as fighting against a final boss. These moments can still manage to make us take a deep breath and feel more alive than ever. However, the difference is the fact that unlike real life in video games you can undo your actions. You can just press pause and restart your match. I just wish we had opportunities to undo things because by the time we realize our mistakes it might be too late. If you die, you are gone forever, and you will never recover that time you’ve lost.

Let me get something clear though. I am (thankfully) not dead, but I was about to be. You may be wondering what happened and lucky for you I am about to tell you, but not just yet. It will be boring if I gave you all the interesting stuff at once don’t you think? Let me introduce my past first, so you can understand my present. My rage.

Childhood

I was about 10 when my brother Liam and I became close. He is just 2 years younger than I am, but the fact that we were able to bond after years of barely talking to each other was impressive. I guess we just started to understand each other a little more. He has always been the same arrogant, annoying, funny, and shady dude, but I know that somewhere inside him he is very sensitive and caring. Anyways, by that time we

started to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to hang out at our local park. The “spot” we liked the most was the little space between the lake and the big tree next to it.

It was isolated and it was our little ideal world, it felt as if we were the only ones in the entire universe when we were there. Our parents had never been there for us. We were forced to be independent since we were younger and I was naturally the one who was in charge, being the oldest. Sneaking out most of the time was not a problem; we just had to make sure that our neighbors did not see us getting out of the house just in case they told our parents. We usually did what we were not allowed to do inside the house at our spot. Things like playing with our soccer ball. We used to hide our candy in there as well, our parents although they were not there most of the time they still managed to be very strict and we were not allowed to eat any sort of candy to avoid cavities. Everything seemed normal until now, but things are about to get a little twisted.

It was a chilly Sunday night and one of those rare occasions where our parents were actually home. That did not stop us anyway because they went to sleep around 9 pm, meaning that by 10 pm we were able to get out. We faked to be asleep for about an hour and a half before we started to get ready. I was wearing purple pajamas that had little white circular patterns in it and a big drawing of a sleeping cat on my chest. I put some white sneakers on and got my long black wavy hair up in a ponytail. I opened the window just to check how the climate was outside, and as soon as I opened it, a cold wind came towards me like an avalanche. I felt shivers on my whole body and thought that maybe it was a good idea to get something cozy to cover myself with before going out. I grabbed my favorite jacket, which was a plain padded white one, and got out of my room. My house had two floors, Liam’s room and my room were on the first one right next to each other. I

knocked on Liam’s door to see if he was ready, and as soon as I knocked, he opened it. He was wearing his favorite pajamas; they were completely grey with a red car pattern all over it. He had a grey and blue striped beanie and a jacket just like mine, only his, was black. He mumbled, “let’s go” and I followed him to the entrance.

We carefully opened the door and went outside. The street was empty and the neighborhood was silent. The air was very dense; neither of us could breathe properly as if someone was strangling us very lightly. The overall vibe was similar to the one you get from a thriller movie, very tense as if something wrong was happening but we could not see it.

“What is it?” Liam asked fearfully. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Do you feel it as well?” he answered with a hand on his chest.

“Yeah, could be the fog” I responded reassuringly.

He looked at me with a confused face, but he just nodded and gazed at the floor.

It took us twice as long to get there, but when we finally did, it felt safe. Nothing bad could happen to us there. We were craving something to eat so I went ahead and looked for our chocolate bag while Liam climbed the tree to find a good branch to sit on. All of a sudden he started yelling my name with the most desperate tone I had ever heard coming from him.

“Nila! Come right now!”, “Please come here now!”, “Nila Nila Nila”.

I tried to calm him down because he has always been a scary cat but he would not stop. I started to feel annoyed and told him to be quiet yet he was still screaming. I snatched the bag from the hiding place and climbed there; I thought a squirrel or something scared him.

“Could you shut up? You are going to wake someone and get us into trouble”

“Nila, look!” Liam answered.

He grabbed my arm and started to shake it while pointing at the distance. I looked in that direction and what I saw had me completely stunned. The clouds were pink. Yes, pink. They were shining and they were bright pink. It was 10 pm. I am not going to lie, it’s the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. I still have a vivid memory of it. There was a full yellow moon surrounded by pink clouds. The clouds were illuminating the dark sky creating an overall light blue to navy blue gradient effect in it. The stars shined as diamonds despite the light that was emerging from the moon. We could see the entire lake from there; and the reflection of the sky was completely neat on it, like a mirror.

“Oh my God,” I said after a while.

I looked at Liam. He was staring at the scene amazed. I could see the reflection of the sky on his jet black onyx eyes. I remembered I still had the bag in my hand and decided to pull out two chocolates from it.

“Here,” I said handing one to him.

We unwrapped the chocolate and noticed something weird on it. It was pink, so we thought it was some sort of optical illusion because of the sky. I regret being so naïve. We ate it, just to discover that the weird thing on it was some sort of mold. We swallowed it anyways for some reason I don’t remember.

Ten minutes passed in complete silence. We were both in our own thoughts, admiring the beautiful scene we did not question or felt frightened about. I was listening to the relaxing sound the breeze makes when it passes through tree branches, and I wondered if that was how paradise looked and felt like.

“It’s amazing,” Liam said looking at me.

I turned towards him so I could answer, but as soon as I saw him in the eyes they went completely white and my vision went dark. An unbearable headache invaded me like a parasite. The only thing I could see was some random flickering lights, like the ones celebrities see when paparazzi attack them with their cameras. I could just hear my head pumping like my heart was, I started to feel dizzy and all I felt was the pain of my body hitting the ground.

I woke up in my room feeling very tired. My body was heavy and I could barely move. As I recovered my consciousness I realized that I was no longer sitting on the tree branch, I was in my room all covered in sweat. I hardly got myself out of the bed to have breakfast, I would have stayed there all day but I had to get ready for school. As Liam and I were on our way to class, I asked him about what had happened last night at the park.

“What do you mean what happened there? Nothing I guess?” he said with a nonchalant voice

“Weren’t we there, last night?!” I answered shockingly. and then I added. “No? I… think we did?. Well it might have been a dream but everything seemed so real though” I said this while I caressed my arms to cover my shivers

“Aww, little tiny Nila had a nightmare and she’s scared,” Liam said with a high pitched whiny voice.

“Hey, that’s not what I said!”

“So it had been all a dream thankfully”, I thought to myself. The rest of the day passed as usual. My parents were going to stay for the rest of the week so we could spend time together. They sent me and my brother to bed at 8 pm but I wasn’t sleepy so I decided to read a book in my room.

Time went by when I realized two hours had passed and it was time for me to get ready. I was wearing purple pajamas that had little white circular patterns in it and a big drawing

of a sleeping cat on my chest. I put some white sneakers on and got my long black wavy hair up in a ponytail. I opened the window just to check how the climate was outside, and as soon as I opened it, a cold wind came towards me like an avalanche. I felt shivers on my whole body and thought that maybe it was a good idea to get something cozy to cover myself with before going out. I grabbed my favorite jacket, which was a plain padded white one, and got out of my room and I wondered why all of these actions seemed so familiar.

I knocked on Liam’s door to see if he was ready, and as soon as I knocked, he opened it. He was wearing a completely grey with a red car pattern all over pajamas with a grey and blue striped beanie and a jacket just like mine, only his, was black. He mumbled, “let’s go” and I followed him to the entrance.

While we walked and went more through our street I had a vague feeling that I was having a deja-vu and I started to feel strange.

The street was empty and the neighborhood was silent. The air was very dense; neither of us could breathe properly as if someone was strangling us a little too much. The overall vibe was similar to the one you get in a thriller movie, very tense as if something wrong was happening but we could not see it.

“What is it?” Liam asked fearfully. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Do you feel it as well?” he answered with a hand on his chest.

And this is when it dawned on me that I was having the same dream again, and as soon as I noticed I abruptly woke up covered in sweat again. I looked at the watch on my nightstand and the hour marked 3 am, meaning that I had fallen asleep.

The Loop

I thought this was all a funny coincidence the first three

times that happened. I had this dream for what it felt like years. The same exact dream. Every time I went to bed I saw the same scenarios and spoke the same conversations. The more I dreamed about it, the more sinister details started to show up. There was something I couldn’t identify following us during our walk, the moon and the clouds formed a triangular form, I started to hear voices randomly but when I asked Liam he would completely ignore me and continue with his default actions and as much as I begged him to pay attention to me he wouldn’t and I would feel random punches or scratches all over my body and feel very scared. Each time I woke up even more tired, with a little less sense of what was real and what was fiction. The only things I started to live were waking up, a complete blur, having dinner, and having that same scene all over again. I became a zombie during the day that would have lucid dreams overnight.

The only thing that turned me back to reality was that little fuzzy pink chocolate and I became addicted to it. All of the dream stages showed different changes, but the only part that stayed intact was when Liam and I ate the chocolate and all the side effects that came after. It represented my ticket to freedom, the end of my endless nightmare. It was like a drug, I thought it was my only path, I even felt like having it when I wasn’t even on my dream. Little did I know it was actually that, what had me kidnapped from my reality. My body began to deteriorate. I turned skinnier, paler, and weaker, it seemed as if I was going to vanish anytime. I felt lifeless. I started to go crazy.

Solutio

I was desperate for it to finish. Whether I was asleep or awake didn’t matter anymore. I needed a solution, and fast before I got lost in my head. I decided to take control of my

dream, I decided it was time to break the loop. Before I started to get ready I thought of the ways I could change my actions so I could break my chains. I concluded that the only way was to not eat the chocolate since it was the only thing that had not changed at all during the nights. So I went through the whole thing again. I looked at Liam. He was staring at the scene amazed. The tree had now spines in it and the lake had a crack in the middle. The sky was no longer pink but ruby red with some purple clouds surrounding the moon. I could see the reflection of the sky on his jet black onyx eyes. I remembered I still had the bag in my hand and decided to pull out two chocolates from it.

“Here,” I said handing one to him.

We unwrapped the chocolate and noticed the pink fuzz all over it, but I decided not to eat it this time. Liam put it in his mouth and made a grin, but he swallowed it.

“It’s amazing,” Liam said looking at me.

But he noticed I didn’t eat my chocolate. As soon as he saw that he grabbed my hand really strongly and said “Nila, what have you done?” and his body started melting in front of me along with the entire scene. An unbearable headache invaded me, just like the ones I got before I woke up, only it felt like an eternity this time and I felt as if I was falling into a bottomless pit. It was really long, but I finally woke up, and I found myself a little less tired than the other nights.

Finis

I went on and on with this and I eventually unchained myself from whatever had me trapped. I slowly started gaining a little more sense of reality and a little more control over my actions. It’s been ten years since I had a lucid dream, but I can still feel a presence whenever I go to sleep. As if something was stalking me, hungry for my life and my body,

something like a parasite, asleep parasite. I am sure I am not the only one, everyone believes I’m crazy but I know it’s real. I feel it’s real. I still don’t know what it is, but I will find out and take revenge for all the years it took away from me. If you are actually reading it, whatever and wherever you are, I just want to let you know that I hate you and that I am coming for you. Stop caressing my back and try to fool somebody else, I am not afraid anymore. When I figure it out, trust me that it’ll be every man for himself.