The looming figure drifts from the darkness of the shadows. Like a predator it watches its prey, me, with a demonic fury. Its intense red eyes showing no signs of remorse, no humanity, only a hollow emptiness. The piercing gaze never wandering from my chest, it opens its mouth inhaling. I try to scream but my constricted chest won't allow it, I try to shout but no sound will escape from my lips. I can't breathe. It feels like I'm drowning, desperately trying to breathe in air that doesn't exist. I am dying...and then I wake up.
My eyes break open to find myself yet again locked in my mothers suffocating embrace. "Caleb!" She pleads "It's ok, it's over, just another nightmare,sshh... The inhalers will work just hold on..." Her voice echoes around the room , "just breathe." But her comforting words are drowned out by my laboured panting. 'Just another nightmare.' I try to convince myself, the same nightmare that had been plaguing my mind, preventing me from sleeping, from escaping.
I clutch to my inhaler trying to calm my breathing. I'd had asthma since I was seven and my share of attacks, only these nightmares don't feel like I am suffering an attack, it is as if my soul is bring ravenously ripped from my chest, like someone was dying of thirst and I was the only liquid that could save them. Crazy, I know. Looking at my alarm I decide to get dressed for school. I attempt to comb my intangible hair into some sort of style but a flicker of a chalk white face leaves me paralysed, fighting against my body I start to turn to see the figure. Colour draining from my face I feel the dark circles under my eyes sink deeper in to my skull, in contrast to my pale skin, I know there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse, just a mirrored reflection of what's standing in front of me.
The same drowning feeling engulfs me. It was her. The woman from the dream. Levitating a foot off of the ancient rotting floorboards , the pearly white...