Nightmare

"You're joking, right? It's Theresia, Theresia Valeriee. Is she absent today?"

"Theresia Valeriee?" Professor Forrst repeated, her brow furrowing deeper in confusion. The rest of the class exchanged puzzled glances, some shaking their heads in bewilderment.

I scanned the room, searching for any sign of recognition or acknowledgment, but found none. Theresia's absence felt like a gaping hole in the room, an absence that only I seemed to notice.

"I... I could have sworn..." I stammered, my mind racing. Memories of Theresia sitting in that exact seat, the same Theresia who shared a bed with me, flooded my thoughts. Yet, here I was, met with blank stares and uncertainty.

"Maybe you've mistaken her for someone else?" Professor Forrst suggested gently.

"No," I insisted, shaking my head adamantly. "She's always been here. She sits right here, every class."

"Lam, I understand you might be feeling disoriented," Professor Forrst began calmly.

"But Theresia Valeriee has never been a student here. Perhaps you've been under a lot of stress lately?"

Everyone looked at me as if I'm losing my mind, yet I refuse to acknowledge that Theresia is just a part of my hallucination all this time.

Her sleepy face, her turquoise hair, her drowsy voice, her smile, her embrace that night... it was all real. She was real. Even if everyone denies her existence, she's someone who's the realest to me.

With a heavy feeling in my heart, I stormed out of the classroom, slamming the door behind and leaving everyone bewildered.

As I ran through the corridor, I screamed her name from the top of my lungs.

"Theresia! Theresia!"

As I sprinted down the corridor, shouting "Theresia!" at the top of my lungs, confusion and desperation consumed me. Students and faculty stared as I ran past, but I ignored them.

At the end of the hallway, I skidded to a stop, gasping for breath. Where could she be? How could no one else remember her? Memories of her laughter, her presence in class, her warmth—all felt vivid, yet now they seemed like fragments of a fading dream.

"Theresia!" I called out again, louder this time, hoping she would appear and dispel this bizarre reality. But there was only silence, the echo of my own voice bouncing back at me.

My mind raced as I tried to recall our last encounter. She was asleep in my room... but this morning, there was no one there.

Despite my doubts, I pushed them aside and sprinted outside towards the dormitory.

"Theresia, she must be there... please be there," I whispered desperately to myself.

As I reached the dormitory, my heart pounded with anticipation and worry. I hurriedly climbed the stairs to our shared room, my footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. With each step, my mind raced through memories of Theresia—the moments we shared, her comforting presence, and the inexplicable absence that now haunted me.

Unlocking the door with trembling hands, I pushed it open and stepped inside. The room was quiet and bathed in the soft glow of the afternoon sun filtering through the curtains. The familiar sight of our room, with its cozy atmosphere.

"Theresia?" I called out softly, hoping beyond hope for a response. Silence greeted me. I moved further into the room, checking each corner and even under the bed, half-expecting her to appear with a teasing smile.

For a moment, I held onto a desperate wish that she would be there, curled up and sleeping peacefully on my bed. I imagined her stirring awake at the sound of my voice, her eyes fluttering open in surprise, and then replying with a sheepish smile, brushing her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Where are you, Theresia?" I whispered, the question hanging in the air, unanswered.

Frustration boiled within me, and in a fit of anger and confusion, I grabbed my own hair and groaned aloud.

"Arrrgggghhhhh! I am the strongest in the world! Getting played like this, you can't fool me!"

My anger ran amok, and I started to swing my hands across the room. I slammed the desk, kicked the bed, and tried to toss books and a vase on the table, but something halted me in my tracks and startled me.

As my hand swept across the table, attempting to toss the books and vase, it passed through those items as if they were thin air.

Startled by the surreal experience of my hand passing through solid objects, I froze in place, my heart pounding in my chest. The room felt eerily quiet, as if time itself had slowed down. I hesitantly reached out again, this time with caution, and once more, my hand passed through the books and vase as if they were mere illusions.

I touched the surface of the desk, half-expecting it to feel solid beneath my fingers. But to my astonishment, there was no resistance. It was as though the physical world had become intangible to me, as if reality itself was mutable.

"What the fu-" I muttered under my breath.

I suddenly grasped the reality of the situation, understanding what had truly occurred up to this point.

"This is a dream... It's all dream."

Stepping away from the desk, I allowed myself to fall seated onto the bed behind me. I focused on calming down and tried to rationally assess my situation.

Firstly, I'm certain this realm is a dream world; the illusionary and strange behavior of reality confirms it. But how did I end up here? Theresia is a dream mage; she could be the one who brought me here. But why would she? And why would she make me forget if she truly exists in the first place?

None of this makes sense; it's all just too absurd.

"Alright, think rationally, Lam," I muttered to myself. "I can theorize the possibilities later. The most important thing now is to escape from this realm."

As far as I know, the dream realm consists of multiple layers depending on the state of sleep someone is in. A nap usually involves 2-3 layers, a night's sleep is 4-5 layers, and deep sleep due to exhaustion can reach 6-8 layers. Coma or vegetative states involve 9-10 layers. Beyond that is a dead man's dream, a phenomenon where your life flashes before your eyes at the end of your life.

The last moment I can remember was falling asleep last night. Since I was exhausted, I must be on the sixth to eighth layer of the dream realm.

There's only two ways to climb to the top layer: one is to wait for my real-world self to wake up naturally and gradually regain consciousness, or two, I could break the realm as it is.

Lost in my thoughts, I was jolted back to reality by a sudden knock on the door. Someone was calling out to me.

"Lam, are you in there?" The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it immediately.

I hesitated for a moment, then stood up and approached the door cautiously. "Who is it?" I called out, my hand hovering over the doorknob.

Hearing the voice more clearly, I recognized it as belonging to Chancellor Melissa—or rather, a dream-woven version of her.

"Lam, it's Chancellor Melissa. Open the door, we need to talk."

Taking a deep breath, I opened the door, bracing myself for whatever this dream version of the chancellor had to say. 

"Chancellor," I greeted her, trying to mask my unease. "What brings you here?"

Her expression was serious as she stepped inside. "Lam, I've come to help you. You seem to be struggling with something important."

"Yeah, I guess so. You know, Miss Melissa, recently I've been feeling restless, sometimes even drowsy."

"Oh, it must be hard for you. How about we talk about it in my office over a cup of tea?"

"Well, that's a good try. But, the real Miss Melissa didn't drink tea..."

Upon hearing my suspicion, Chancellor Melissa's face contorted in a horrifying transformation. Her features twisted unnaturally as fangs protruded from her mouth, her ears elongated into sharp points, and her skin took on a sickly, greenish hue.

At that moment, what had once resembled Miss Melissa transformed into an abomination of a creature. It let out a deafening scream that shattered every mirror and window in the vicinity.

Instinctively, I covered my ears to shield them from the piercing scream, preventing it from rupturing my eardrums.

The monster in front of me now is a Mara, also known as a Mare, is a creature that roams from one dream to another, inducing nightmares in its victims.

In a swift moment, the Mara charged towards me ferociously, trying to grab me with its claws. I ducked and rolled on the ground, barely avoiding its grasp. As the creature was momentarily distracted, it gave me a chance to slip out the door.

I sprinted down the corridor, my footsteps echoing in the empty halls. Behind me, the distorted form of Chancellor Melissa-turned-Mara let out another deafening scream that shattered windows along the way.

The walls twisted and contorted, paintings and decorations warped into grotesque shapes as I passed. The usual familiarity of the school dissolved into a surreal nightmare landscape.

When i thought the situation couldn't be worse, as I ran, hundreds of doors on my left and right shook violently. Instantly, hundreds more Mara stormed out from inside, charging towards me.

"Fuck this shit!"