Last night, I was stuck in this endless chain of rooms; every time you left a room, you went right into another one. I remember seeing all these other people with me, running to and fro. I saw friends and family and sometimes faces I couldn’t recognize. We were all walking through these rooms. I felt in me this intense mission to search for something—even though I didn’t really know what. This unease felt like a growing hole in the pit of my stomach; it was a dark figure that wrenched through my guts as I went from a walk to sprint from room to room—searching.
Finally, this urgency subsided when I landed in this one cubicle. I immediately realized it was small boy’s bedroom. Void of all personal belongings, this room held empty carcasses of furniture. Suddenly, no one was at sight anymore. It seemed like the room was breathing along with me; slightly shrinking with my inhales and lightly expanding with my exhales. The floor, empty shelves running across the wall and closed closet doors were made out of a light wood; the walls and curtains out of light baby blue. The room seemed immaculate.
Even though the urgency of my search had left me, something felt off. My breath started to slowly leave me—like it had been sucked right out of my lungs. Looking past that, I moved to the center of the room to have a better look around. Suddenly, in a blink, all these horrendous faces appear neatly placed in the once empty bookshelves of the left wall. They seemed to be the decapitated heads of those bizarre vintage dolls you find in the old houses. They were all around me—staring at me with a haunting gaze, expecting me to do something; but I didn’t know what.
They had piercing eyes: some blue, some brown, some green. They had artificial rosy-colored cheeks, abnormally long eye lashes, tight smiles and no bodies to match them. For a couple of seconds there was a tension as I stared at them, and they stared right back. It felt like ages of holding my breath when they started to chuckled. First a few and then it grew into this vociferous chorus of mocking hilarity.
A shiver of horror went down my spine. I tired to scream but it felt like there was a firm, sturdy hand around my neck—choking me. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs and panic started to swell through my veins. I reached out and grabbed one of the heads: it had long black hair with bangs parted on both sides, big black eyes to match, freckles dotting all around and a mouth far too big for its small size.
This doll seemed to be the one laughing the hardest of them all. The war for oxygen only become stronger and stronger. My knees grew weaker the more I fought, until I was flailing my arms all around in hopes of reaching for someone that would get me out. I tried screaming but it felt like rock was blocking my air passage. My lungs started burning from trying to get something in or out. There was dampness on my cheeks from hot tears.
The roar of laughter still resonated around the room, until my vision grew blurry in the corners and I dropped to my knees. The head of the doll rolled across the floor as it kept laughing. In the floor I jerk and wrestled.
Just as the my view was about to completely obscured, I was startled awake, panting, staring at the darkness of my bedroom.
Nightmares
09