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Description
The grass brushes up against the skin of my forearms, crossed beneath my head as I lay on my back staring up at the sky. Large, fluffy white clouds roll across my view like tumbleweeds. A gentle breeze rustles the hair on my forehead and the shirt on my chest, moving the grass in gentle waves. My body feels far away, my senses muted like a foot that’s fallen asleep.

Relaxed.

I guess you could call it relaxed. But that’s not what it feels like. It feels like anesthetized relaxation. Drugged. Like it wasn’t my choice to be lying on the ground.

Trapped? (Hostage)
Placed? (Chosen)

The grass rustles next to me. I turn my head slowly to see a young girl knelt beside me. Her long chestnut hair falls on either sides of her face, framing two stunning blue eyes staring down at me like faceted diamonds. Her face feels angelic, inhuman. An unconscious fear begins to well up far down in my gut, too far for me to even recognize its presence. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t do anything. She just sits there and looks at me with those eyes. God, those eyes. Those deep, swirling pools of blue that seem to ebb and flow with light like a soap bubble. And I can’t stop looking at them. They’re hypnotizing. And after what seems like an eternity, a thought fires deep inside the numbness of my brain and slowly swims its way to the service of my conscious. It passes to the tip of my tongue and...
“What do you want?” I ask.
“That depends...” she replies. “What answer are you looking for?” My brain allows me no response; my tongue is stuck like a broken motor, and I can only lay there and look questioningly back at her. And I think she knows that. I think she knows that I can’t respond. I can see it in her eyes and the smile that tugs at the corners of her cheeks. She’s amused by my inactiveness. The fear that once welled up deep inside me is now being washed over with a new anger that pools inside my chest. And I can feel it this time. I can feel it twisting and writhing like a bundle of angry snakes. I keep telling myself to move, get up, do something, anything. But I can’t. My body still feels lost, my senses still feel numb. So I can only lay there in my blind fury and stare back at her.
“Why are you angry?” she asks innocently, almost endearingly. Her question surprises me. How could she not understand? I was lying there powerless at her knees while she just knelt there beside me, practically taunting me. What’s not to understand? Her ignorance just ignites more anger within my chest, fueling the already blazing inferno there. “Why do you waste such time on such a useless emotion?” she asks again, like she expects an answer. “Anger is such a pointless feeling. It gets you nowhere. Haven’t you figured this out already?” she says, and before I have time to think of a response...
“Of course not. I can see it in you. You want to hurt me right now. You want to wrap your fingers around my neck and squeeze until you watch the life pass from my eyes. You want to stand over my cold, dead body and smile, smile and think ‘That’s what you deserve.’ Don’t you?” she asks curiously, but she already knows the answer. We both know the answer. This time though, I can only nod and confirm her analysis. That is what I wanted to do. But my anger was beginning to fade to fear this time. Somewhere deep inside me, somewhere too deep to be felt by the conscious mind, something was telling me this is wrong. That something bad is going to happen.
“I know you want to. But what will you gain from your few seconds of release? What can possibly come from your anger? A clear mind? A clean conscious? No. Nothing will. Your anger will only blind you. Turn you into something not even you could recognize. Something even you would be afraid of.”
“This is what your anger can turn you into. This is what you become.” And as she says this, her face begins to change. The hair on her head starts to lose its sheen and shrivel up in a matted mess around her ears. The features on her face begin to slowly merge, her nose becoming no more than a slightly-raised ridge between her eyes, the nostrils now nonexistent. Her mouth begins to elongate, widen, her flimsy jawbone now hanging lazily at least half a foot below her original chin. Her lips have fused into the rest of her mouth, leaving only a wet, dripping line where the upper lip used to be and a loose, sagging one where the lower one was. Her eyelids have now combined into two long, thin folds of skin on either side of her barely noticeable nose (or what used to be one). And as I lay there and gape in fear at what is transpiring in front of me, something begins to move under those folds of skin. A bulge that crawls around like a bug. A dark, thick fluid spills out onto her sagging cheekbones as the flaps of skin open to reveal two, bright red circles where her eyes used to be. Those two red orbs glare at me, through me, and pierce the mental barrier of my sanity. And as her wilted cheeks turn weakly into a smile, my mouth opens wide to a scream that doesn’t exist. I scream until I jerk myself awake, a thin film of cold sweat layered on my skin.

I’m sitting straight up now, completely awake with no traces of sleep whatsoever. I check the clock. 3:47 AM. I don’t think I’ll be going back to sleep again this time. At least not with my heart racing the way it is and my chest heaving the way it is. So I just lie back down and try to calm myself down.
This is the third time I’ve had this dream now, and still scares the shit out of me. I wake up every time in the same cold sweat, with my heart running a marathon and my lungs pumping like an air compressor. And each time I have it, it takes me forever and a day to get back to sleep. And that’s if I do get back to sleep. It seems that way tonight as well. I’ve calmed down a bit more now, so I turn over onto my stomach and begin the long process of bringing myself back to sleep. Many times during this period, I swear I can see her face contorting in the shadows, the grin still pinned on her sagging cheeks. And each time I see this, I shut my eyes tight to the fear that ignites in my chest and spreads through my body in waves. Surprisingly though, I am able to find sleep again. But it’s restless and incomplete. And I wake the next morning with tiredness caked on my body like sludge...

Description
The grass brushes up against the skin of my forearms, crossed beneath my head as I lay on my back staring up at the sky. Large, fluffy white clouds roll across my view like tumbleweeds. A gentle breeze rustles the hair on my forehead and the shirt on my chest, moving the grass in gentle waves. My body feels far away, my senses muted like a foot that’s fallen asleep.

Relaxed.

I guess you could call it relaxed. But that’s not what it feels like. It feels like anesthetized relaxation. Drugged. Like it wasn’t my choice to be lying on the ground.

Trapped? (Hostage)
Placed? (Chosen)

The grass rustles next to me. I turn my head slowly to see a young girl knelt beside me. Her long chestnut hair falls on either sides of her face, framing two stunning blue eyes staring down at me like faceted diamonds. Her face feels angelic, inhuman. An unconscious fear begins to well up far down in my gut, too far for me to even recognize its presence. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t do anything. She just sits there and looks at me with those eyes. God, those eyes. Those deep, swirling pools of blue that seem to ebb and flow with light like a soap bubble. And I can’t stop looking at them. They’re hypnotizing. And after what seems like an eternity, a thought fires deep inside the numbness of my brain and slowly swims its way to the service of my conscious. It passes to the tip of my tongue and...
“What do you want?” I ask.
“That depends...” she replies. “What answer are you looking for?” My brain allows me no response; my tongue is stuck like a broken motor, and I can only lay there and look questioningly back at her. And I think she knows that. I think she knows that I can’t respond. I can see it in her eyes and the smile that tugs at the corners of her cheeks. She’s amused by my inactiveness. The fear that once welled up deep inside me is now being washed over with a new anger that pools inside my chest. And I can feel it this time. I can feel it twisting and writhing like a bundle of angry snakes. I keep telling myself to move, get up, do something, anything. But I can’t. My body still feels lost, my senses still feel numb. So I can only lay there in my blind fury and stare back at her.
“Why are you angry?” she asks innocently, almost endearingly. Her question surprises me. How could she not understand? I was lying there powerless at her knees while she just knelt there beside me, practically taunting me. What’s not to understand? Her ignorance just ignites more anger within my chest, fueling the already blazing inferno there. “Why do you waste such time on such a useless emotion?” she asks again, like she expects an answer. “Anger is such a pointless feeling. It gets you nowhere. Haven’t you figured this out already?” she says, and before I have time to think of a response...
“Of course not. I can see it in you. You want to hurt me right now. You want to wrap your fingers around my neck and squeeze until you watch the life pass from my eyes. You want to stand over my cold, dead body and smile, smile and think ‘That’s what you deserve.’ Don’t you?” she asks curiously, but she already knows the answer. We both know the answer. This time though, I can only nod and confirm her analysis. That is what I wanted to do. But my anger was beginning to fade to fear this time. Somewhere deep inside me, somewhere too deep to be felt by the conscious mind, something was telling me this is wrong. That something bad is going to happen.
“I know you want to. But what will you gain from your few seconds of release? What can possibly come from your anger? A clear mind? A clean conscious? No. Nothing will. Your anger will only blind you. Turn you into something not even you could recognize. Something even you would be afraid of.”
“This is what your anger can turn you into. This is what you become.” And as she says this, her face begins to change. The hair on her head starts to lose its sheen and shrivel up in a matted mess around her ears. The features on her face begin to slowly merge, her nose becoming no more than a slightly-raised ridge between her eyes, the nostrils now nonexistent. Her mouth begins to elongate, widen, her flimsy jawbone now hanging lazily at least half a foot below her original chin. Her lips have fused into the rest of her mouth, leaving only a wet, dripping line where the upper lip used to be and a loose, sagging one where the lower one was. Her eyelids have now combined into two long, thin folds of skin on either side of her barely noticeable nose (or what used to be one). And as I lay there and gape in fear at what is transpiring in front of me, something begins to move under those folds of skin. A bulge that crawls around like a bug. A dark, thick fluid spills out onto her sagging cheekbones as the flaps of skin open to reveal two, bright red circles where her eyes used to be. Those two red orbs glare at me, through me, and pierce the mental barrier of my sanity. And as her wilted cheeks turn weakly into a smile, my mouth opens wide to a scream that doesn’t exist. I scream until I jerk myself awake, a thin film of cold sweat layered on my skin.

I’m sitting straight up now, completely awake with no traces of sleep whatsoever. I check the clock. 3:47 AM. I don’t think I’ll be going back to sleep again this time. At least not with my heart racing the way it is and my chest heaving the way it is. So I just lie back down and try to calm myself down.
This is the third time I’ve had this dream now, and still scares the shit out of me. I wake up every time in the same cold sweat, with my heart running a marathon and my lungs pumping like an air compressor. And each time I have it, it takes me forever and a day to get back to sleep. And that’s if I do get back to sleep. It seems that way tonight as well. I’ve calmed down a bit more now, so I turn over onto my stomach and begin the long process of bringing myself back to sleep. Many times during this period, I swear I can see her face contorting in the shadows, the grin still pinned on her sagging cheeks. And each time I see this, I shut my eyes tight to the fear that ignites in my chest and spreads through my body in waves. Surprisingly though, I am able to find sleep again. But it’s restless and incomplete. And I wake the next morning with tiredness caked on my body like sludge...