The Long Everlasting Nightmares

Authors Avatar

                                                  The Long Everlasting Nightmares

The young woman yelped, as she felt the hands stoking the ball of her back. The thin, needle like fingers were icy cold, causing her to shudder violently. Without warning, the two hands harshly clutched her trembling shoulders, and spun her around. She gazed into the two, jet-black marbles above the thin, bloodless lips that began to curl at each corner into a wry smirk. Fear paralyzed her. The vampire took two long, careful strides away from Karen. Still, she stood, almost mesmerized by the two hypnotic orbs that lay in the centre of his face. Her gaze soon lowered, until her eyes rested on the wide grin that seemed to go on forever. Within a second, he bent his knees and lunged, aiming directly for Karen's naked, fleshy neck. Time began to slow down.

"Heeeeellllllp!!" she screamed, as she sat bolt upright, beads of cold sweat matting her disheveled, maroon highlighted brown hair to her forehead. Her pyjamas clung to her quivering skin like scotch tape. She slowly, but steadily swung her legs out of bed, and tiptoed downstairs, careful not to wake her already stirring parents. '22 years old, still having nightmares, and still living with my parents' Karen silently sighed to herself. 'What am I growing into?'

Every night was a repeat episode of the previous. She would have the same nightmare, wake up in the same state of shock and fear, and then make the same journey downstairs, seeking a way to calm herself. This sequence had continued constantly for the past six months, ever since her episodes with the 'un-dead', as she commonly referred to them as vampires. Each dark dream was a reminiscence of the events that occurred 6 months back. Shaun, her fiancé at the time suggested psychological treatment, to which Karen declined profusely. 'Shaun, I haven't the energy, nor the self-esteem to persuade some stranger that I have been in contact with a blood sucking fiend.' She snapped at him. 'I'll get over this in my own time.' The man, two years her senior, stood perfectly still, paralyzed with fear, his eyes glazed with terror. He gazed over her shoulder at the obscenities taking place behind her. As if in slow motion, his mouth opened in a wide, shrill scream. His hand swiftly eased her to the side as the pale being lunged at her, missed, and persevered in attacking the one she loved so much. It devoured him like a fruit; grotesquely and violently, sucking him dry, as if through a straw. His very last words were hardly audible to Karen, yet she knew exactly what he was trying to say. At that point, she broke down in a state of fear, shock, anger and grief, as images of her late boyfriend's corpse scrolled across her mind, imitating a screensaver. Then it happened. Everything that she continuously feared and recollected in her sleep occurred. Two days later, she decided she couldn't spend another day living under the same roof as the essence of the attack. That's when she returned back home to her folks.

Join now!

Karen charily retreated back to the so-called safety of her room, her hideout, or even her refuge from the world, having taken some sleeping pills, and paracetamol. The drugs were beginning to kick in, blessing her with a sudden sense of sub-consciousness. She drowsily stumbled into the four walls in which she inhabited, half in the real world, half in her own fantasy world.

A breeze entered the room through the open window to the left of her. She turned her head sharply towards the gentle wind, unaware that it had been opened. Her senses grew alert, and she ...

This is a preview of the whole essay