The dreams

I stared at my best friend Marie as dropped her ice cream tub on the table to pick up the latest addition to my crazy portfolio.

"so let me get this straight, you've been drawing in your sleep for a couple of weeks now and you're only telling someone now?'

I roll my eyes at her, before sitting back on my bed and tossing a plushie to her " of course, the only reason you aren't declaring me crazy or even giving me the benefit of doubt is because of how well you know me, do you think I want another nickname? I barely got rid of the one from high school" a prank gone wrong got me branded with the nickname 'her royal crazzo' HRC for short, with some people actually believing that I had some screws loose.

"ok, I get that but Brenda I haven't seen you draw since we were 10 and you weren't this good back then so your skills are meant to regress and this sketches are as life-like as can be"

"I know" I laid down face up "at first I was weirded out but then I got excited that I drew that" I sat up quickly to ruffle through the sketches to get the first sketch, it was done in black ink, handing it to her I continued "you've got to admit if you came up with a sketch of that kind of face you'd be happy too"

"Brenda..."

"fine, fine I went off-track as I was saying, I was excited about it and I wanted to tell you that day but I couldn't recollect the dream well apart from the fact that I saw that face in it, and I was still trying to figure out how I got up from my bed, walked over to the reading table and sketched that face. Then it got worse when I kept waking up to new sketches in my notepads with vague recollections of them in my dreams I didn't know what to do. so I got a sketch pad from the store and tried to recreate the drawings and guess what I couldn't even match up to an eight years old standards." taking a deep breath I stood up to pace around my standard sized room, God I miss home, this dormitory isn't cutting it.

"I was trying to understand how this was happening, I started googling stuff on the internet and got different kinds of answers each one crazier than the last, bearing in mind that I had to drop by the restaurant for my shift and the assignments from my classes I was overwhelmed. I didn't know how to explain it to you or anyone so I decided to ignore it for now at least till the end of the semester".

"so what made you change your mind? and you know you could have just told me anyway, we'd have tried to figure it out together instead of driving yourself to the wall"

what made me change my mind? at this point the panic from this morning came crashing down again and instinctively I took hold of my now melting tub of ice cream and took a few spoonful, the contrasting smoothness of the cream and chewy marshmallow mixed with the nuttiness of the Rocky road ice cream calmed me down again.

"Well Marie, I decided to tell you because when I woke up this morning it was different, first it isn't one drawing today" I picked up the latest drawing and flipped it over to stare at the drawing on the other side of the paper even knowing that I was the one that drew it gave me major creeps. The red reptilian eyes peeking out from the black mass made the hairs on my hand stand up as I hand the drawing to her.

"ok, why does this make me feel light headed and afraid, this doesn't make sense, it's just a drawing so why does it look like the devil's staring me down" she dropped it on the bed looking at me for answers.

"don't look at me like that, I don't have any answers for you, as impossible as it is I was hoping that you would have some kind of answer for me, you're the smarter one"

she gave me an odd look before furrowing her brows "you said first, that means there's more, what else's different this time?"

I sat back on the bed " I recalled most of what's been happening in the dreams. It's mostly similar every night. It mostly starts with me being in a black room, I don't mean dark, I mean painted black from floor to ceiling and there's nothing else there except a door that's also painted black then the scene would change I'd be tied to a tree in the woods, and it's the strangest forest ever, I can't even recognize any of the plant species there but that's not the strange part the vines binding me to the tree are part of it and seem alive as they keep binding me tighter and tighter and when it's almost too much to bear I see him." My eyes fall onto one of the many sketches of him on my bed.

"He was always there right in the middle of the trees staring at me with an expression I can't quite put into words, then he'd walk up to the tree restraint me with his right hand outstretched and in it he's holding an amulet, the light from the amulet dress me and I wake up to the sketches. The reason I said that it was mostly similar is because last night I saw an additional scene, I saw what chased me into the woods, Marie it was a black formless mass way bigger than most 8 storied buildings projecting hate, terror and spine tingling killing intent. I woke up disoriented not even bothering to look at the sketch I went to the bathroom to douse my face with water and I saw this." I parted the unbuttoned shirt I was wearing to show Marie the left part of my chest.

"Oh my God, is that?"

Nodding my head in affirmation I replied "it is"