David Rasey is a writer living in the beautiful forested hills of upstate New York, but many of his stories are set in his birthplace amid the endless corn fields of northeastern Ohio. He has been writing for most of his life and currently facilitates a writers critique group. He has published in other web publications, including Clockwise Cat, The Monsters Next Door, Liquid Imagination, Literary Fever, and Black Lantern Publishing.

Perchance to Dream (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)

I’m not trying to commit suicide; it just looks that way. Contrary to popular belief, it’s actually very difficult to kill yourself with sleeping pills. You’ll most likely throw up long before you take enough to get really close to dying, and have nothing to show for your efforts but a hangover and a sore stomach. Anyway, death isn’t my goal.

I’m just trying to kill a monster, that’s all.

It’s the dream that’s brought me to this pass, no question. The damnable recurring nightmare.

##

The dream is always the same: I’m in the basement of an old, crumbling, red brick building. The place feels of age and pain and ancient horrors. There is a foul smell, like a mattress stuffed with animal hair that has caught fire, been put out with ditch water, and left to mildew. There is a battered upright piano in one corner; I have no idea why. Other than that, the basement is empty. Situated at eye-level are windows that look out at ground level over a reach of lush springtime grass.

I hear footsteps retreating up a stone staircase that leads out of the basement. I don’t know who the person is, only that it’s a woman. I am her replacement for some task. Her footsteps scratch on the stone; there is a brief silence, a short squealing of old iron hinges, then the thunderous BOOM of a heavy door slamming. Then I hear a sound that makes my blood run cold: the click-thunk-snap of a lock-bolt being thrown. From outside.

“‘Abandon all hope,’” I quote in a terrified whisper, “‘Ye who enter here.’”

I look out a window. The sun is setting in brilliant red-gold glory. Shadows spill into the corners of the basement like black ink. The nasty smell thickens and the air chills. Panic overtakes me. My heart is slamming in my chest and I’m sweating despite the chill. My scrotum shrinks and tightens to the point of pain. As if my fear is a signal, from somewhere above me, I hear a strange buzzing growl and a slithery thump.

I’m not alone.

I can hear heavy, dragging footsteps, like something that hasn’t walked in so long it has almost forgotten how. In a flash of insight, I recognize the smell. It’s the smell of rotten meat and inhuman madness and ravenous hunger. It’s the smell of a monster’s den. The monster is coming now and I know that when it finds me, it will tear me apart. Then it will gorge.

I run to a window. I can see the woman who just left. She’s a pretty, corn-fed blond woman wearing some kind of gray uniform. As she walks past the window, I beat on it and scream for her to come back and let me out. She can’t hear me well enough to understand what I’m saying. I scream until my throat cracks for her to please open the door, please get me out of here. She smiles, sketches a cheery farewell wave and walks on. I beat on the glass with all my strength but it won’t break. I screech and curse until my voice gives out, but she doesn’t pause or look back. She passes from sight.

I hear the growl again, much closer. The panic falls away and a weird kind of fear replaces it. My heartbeat goes from rapid hammering to a heavy, cold, thudding beat, like a frozen, pulsing stone. My breathing slows and deepens. I can see my breath misting in the air. The dragging footsteps are very close and very loud. The last blood-orange light of the sun stains the stairwell. A huge, misshapen shadow appears at the head of the stairs, pauses, and slips down along the stairwell wall. I get a fleeting impression of a huge, lolling head with under-slung jaws, long arms with clawed hands that nearly drag on the floor, and bowed but muscular legs.

The shadow reaches the bottom of the steps and starts across the floor. In a second, I will see the author of the insane shape of the shadow.

“Now, yes, now,” a clotted, growling voice says. “Mine! I’m coming for you now!”

I want to run but my traitorous feet won’t move. I can’t breath; air lies glassy and still in my lungs. I want to look up and see what is coming to kill me but my eyes are frozen in their sockets. I can’t even twitch –

I awaken, screaming.

##

So that’s how it is for me every night now. I wake from the dream before I can see the monster. I can’t go back to sleep, and if I do, the dream just starts all over again. I end up reading a lot, or surfing the internet, or doing whatever I can do to occupy my mind until dawn. I drink gallons of coffee. I drag through my days in a sleep-deprived haze that has cost me a girlfriend I was fond of and two jobs I wasn’t. I can’t hold a normal conversation anymore, or drive a car. Everything I see and hear seems to be coming from a huge distance. I’m living on my savings, and they’re running out.

The Australian Aborigines believe that the world of dreams is as real as the waking world. Anything that happens to you in the dream world happens in the waking world as well. They say that in nightmares, you have to come to battle with anything that is scaring you and destroy it, or else you will give it the power to cross into the waking world. I think they’re right, and I think time is running short for me. It’s that smell, you see, the one from my nightmare.

I smell it in my bedroom when I wake up. I can smell it sometimes when I’m walking down the block or when I’m in the store. Last week, as I passed an alley, I heard that buzzing growl. This morning, I walked past a junk shop and there, in the show-window, was the battered upright piano from my dream, exact in every detail… Except for the claw-marks running down one side. That was the clincher. That’s when I went and got the pills.

I take out four pills more to go on top the ones I already took. I’m terrified by what I’m doing. I toss them into my mouth and chase them down with orange juice before I can stop to think about it. I flop back on the bed, still wondering.

Can a dream monster be killed?

If I lose and die in the dream, do I die for real?

Do I really know what I’m doing, or is this just a fatigue-induced delusion?

As I start to drift off, I realize none of it matters. It’s too late now. I can’t wake up even if I want to. I’m going to have to ride this out all the way to the end. My eyes close and the first hints of the dream tease my vision. This time, I’ll stay asleep until I see the monster and do battle with it.

I hope I win.