Most people think they know fear.

  A nightmare here, a scary movie there.

  But they don’t know what it means to wake up screaming—and still be in the dream.

  I’m not so lucky.

  Every night, when I close my eyes, I fall into something deeper than sleep—something darker.

  My nightmares aren’t just visions.

  They’re places.

  Places that feel as real as the world I wake up to.

  Places that hurt.

  I tried to tell my parents once, but they didn’t believe me.

  They just shrugged it off as stress, or my imagination running wild.

  But they don’t know what it’s like to wake up gasping for air, the ghost of pain still throbbing through your limbs.

  They don’t know what it’s like to carry the terror with you, long after the dream ends.

  Tonight will be no different.

  My mom peeks into my room as I’m slipping under the covers.

  “Good night, Alan. Sleep tight, sweetheart,” she says, her voice warm, safe.

  “Good night, Mom,” I reply, forcing a small smile. She leaves, the door clicking shut behind her.

  I exhale slowly.

  Then I let sleep take me.

  ---

  White.

  Blinding white.

  The darkness doesn’t come.

  Instead—light. Cold, clinical, endless light, humming above like dying fluorescent bulbs. The kind that burns your eyes the longer you stare.

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  I blink, disoriented. This isn’t how it usually starts.

  The nightmares always begin in darkness. In places where things hide.

  But here, the air feels too still, too clean, like a place waiting to be ruined.

  I take a cautious step forward.

  The ground yields beneath me.

  Soft. Wrong.

  Like I’m walking on flesh.

  A sharp exhaustion crashes over me, dragging at my limbs, my muscles screaming for rest I can’t give.

  And then—

  Thud.

  I hit the ground hard, pain erupting through my body. The lights overhead flicker.

  And then—

  Darkness.

  The cold seeps in instantly. The kind that crawls beneath your skin and wraps around your bones.

  My breath fogs the air as I push myself up. My fingers press into something damp and uneven.

  I look down.

  And freeze.

  The ground isn’t dirt.

  It’s faces.

  Hundreds of them, fused together in a mass of pale, slack flesh. Their mouths gape. Their eyes stare blindly. Some twitch. One blinks.

  I scramble back, bile burning in my throat, my pulse slamming against my ribs.

  “What the hell is this place?” I whisper, my voice shaking.

  A sound.

  Click. Click. Click-click.

  Like broken fingers tapping on bone. Like something trying to remember how to walk.

  I hold my breath.

  The noise is coming from the trees—if they can even be called that. Their bark peels away in curling sheets, revealing raw, red muscle beneath.

  And standing among them is it.

  Tall. Spindly. Its limbs bent at impossible angles. Empty eye sockets scan the air as it sways gently. Its arms hang low, too long. The fingers taper into needle-like points, twitching like antennae.

  Then, it moves.

  A low, rattling breath escapes it as it tilts its head.

  Sniffing.

  I press myself against the nearest tree, barely daring to breathe.

  It doesn’t see. But it can hear. It can smell.

  I reach for a rock. It’s warm. Sticky. I grip it anyway, my nails digging into my palm. With a silent prayer, I hurl it toward the opposite end of the clearing.

  CRACK.

  The creature twitches. Its head snaps toward the sound.

  Then, with a jerky, insect-like motion, it scuttles forward, limbs clicking against the ground.

  My chest tightens. I move carefully, inching through the shadows.

  But just as I think I’ve made it—

  A mouse.

  It scurries past my foot, tiny body pressing against the flesh-ground.

  Before I can react—

  SHRIP.

  The thing lunges.

  Its arms whip forward, impossibly fast. The mouse doesn’t even squeak before it’s torn in half. Blood spatters across the clearing.

  Some of it lands on me.

  I freeze.

  The creature stiffens.

  Then, slowly, it turns.

  Sniffing again.

  This time, in my direction.

  I don’t think. I run.

  It screams—a high-pitched, warbling sound, like a recording played in reverse.

  The air splits as its needle-arms lash through the trees. I hear them snap and fall behind me, its limbs carving clean through them like paper.

  Up ahead, the ground opens.

  A pit. Massive. Bottomless.

  Inside: a shifting, writhing sea of bodies. Hands reaching upward. Fingers clawing. Mouths opening and closing, voiceless.

  The stench of rot hits like a wave.

  It’s either the creature… or the pit.

  I choose the pit.

  I leap.

  For a moment, there is only weightlessness.

  Then—

  Agony.

  I slam into the mass of bodies. My arm twists with a sickening pop. A scream rips from my throat as the hands pull me down. Clutching. Grabbing. Devouring.

  Above, the creature watches.

  Its head tilts.

  It doesn’t jump in.

  It doesn’t need to.

  It just smiles.

  Not with a mouth.

  With its eyes.

  The sockets split open, stretching like wounds, revealing rows—rows—of jagged, chattering teeth.

  And as the pit pulls me under, swallowing me whole—

  I wake up.

  ---

  Sunlight.

  My room.

  Sheets soaked in sweat. Breath ragged. Pulse hammering against my ribs.

  My mom stands by the window, concern in her eyes.

  “What happened, sweetheartt? Did you have a nightmare?”

  I nod, swallowing hard.

  I survived.

  This time.

  But the worst part?

  I know that when I close my eyes tonight,

  I'll be back there.

  And it will be waiting.

  Smiling.