The Last Dream I Ever Had: 2

    I have this annoyingly unsinkable feeling that things will be okay. I say 'annoyingly' because, with how things are going, I shouldn't feel this way. Like so many people right now, our finances are in the toilet and the universe just flushed. Like so many people everywhere, I deal daily with chronic pain from invisible disabilities. Like everyone I talk to (it seems), the brutal happenings of 2017 stripped away any ability to cope in healthy ways with the general pummeling of daily life here in 2018. As in, things were bad and now everything is worse. But in my gut I have a general sense that things will be okay. So... here's my white flag, Universe. You win. Whatever. Things will work out the way they're supposed to if they don't work out the way they should.
    On that note, I'm still going to get my next manuscript edited so I can start querying for an agent. I'm going to miss the Nov 1 deadline I gave myself, but not by very much. Things usually only work well out when the work goes into making things that way. So, I'm tired. *Shrug.* My editing is going to keep being slow, especially with my sore shoulder being angry with extended sitting, because my whole self and soul is tired. But, annoyingly, things will be okay. Today I will keep slowly making them that way. 
    Have a safe weekend - don't let any Halloween ghouls get you!

Did you know I also have some novel books for sale?
(Pun intended :D)

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2. Tearing Awake

​        I fall and scrape my hands and knees again, only to look around and see the faint light bouncing off the granite and marble stones like all the times before; just enough light to let me read the now familiar inscriptions on those stones once more: "This one didn't wake up before she landed!" and "Another for the keeper of the closet!" and "They called this one Crib Death too!"... and then the same on that I always tripped on:
                "He had a dream he was underwater,
                        Then remembered that he wasn't a fish.
                He tried to pretend he was an otter,
                        But for waking up, he forgot to wish!"
        This was the place to which I always returned; with its deafening silence and the silent laughter of that thing sitting just outside the boundaries. This is the final resting place of the Dreaming Dead, all of them collected by whatever is now stalking me. Sleep’s Graveyard.
        This is where, on the verge of hysteria, I remembered that I was dreaming. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The words "this is only a dream and now I am going to wake up" had barely left my lips when that feeling of deja vu returned and I felt the stale air around me shatter as the Graveyard boundaries crumbled.
        The thing howled in triumph, and its smirking bulk advanced out at me from the shadows, its wide-set eyes glowing green. Still on hands and knees, wearing nothing but the boxers and t-shirt I sleep in, I raised one scratched and bleeding hand high on the inside of my opposite arm and pinched as hard as I could. All the while holding desperately to the knowledge that this was only a dream.
        Tears came to my eyes, but still the thing only grinned wider and stalked ever closer. I stopped pinching and just grabbed as much skin and flesh as I could in a tight fist, raising blisters just below my armpit.
        Still, the grin got wider and those green eyes drew ever closer.
        My knees and palms were stinging with sweat, but I didn't notice. I gripped tighter on my arm, digging fingernails into tissue, but still didn't wake. Gravestones snapped in half as the thing passed them, and the ones it stepped on shattered.
        At that moment, I twisted my wrist, ripping the skin under my arm and sending white-hot spears of pain into my brain as I cried out, suddenly sitting straight up in bed. The sheets were soaked through with sweat and clinging to any exposed skin.
        I hurriedly flicked on my bedside lamp, letting the light cleanse the room while I ran my stinging hands through my hair. Then I looked in my mirror, hanging at the end of my bed just above my dresser, and my relieved smile froze on my face… my dirty face.
        I started trembling as I looked at my scratched and bleeding hands and knees, then shaking as I looked at the torn skin and bleeding welts on the inside of my upper arm that were dripping crimson onto my sheets.
        Then a cold wind swept through, chilling me to the bone. My bedside light flickered like a candle and went out as silent laughter filled the room. My bedstand clock glared out the cruel, early morning hour of 3:02am.
        Two, green, wide-set eyes grinned out at me from between the slats of my closet doors.

#~#~#

        As I said earlier, this was the story of my last dream. A dream to end all dreams, if you will. A tale best told by firelight, just before dawn when the night is the coldest, when even the flames seem to hide from the darkness, and morning is the furthest away.