I am looking for some feedback on this story. It is supposed to be horror. I am hoping I pulled it off.
Anyway, please let me know what you think of this and be as specific as possible. If you like it, that's fine, but please don't just tell me "it's great! I loved it!" Please give me some sort of feedback as to what exactly you liked so that I know what not to delete when it comes time to cut down 38 words.
D*mn word limits. Likewise, if you hate it, that's fine too, but please don't tell me that it sucks and that's why you hate it. Tell me where the weaknesses are and I'll try to fix those parts.
Saying "It sucks" or "it's really awesome!" is not useful feedback. I am really looking for specific information about where the strengths and weaknesses are so I can improve the story.
Thanks for your help!!!
Once Upon a Nightmare
11:55 PM
It was a nightmare more terrifying than any other I had ever experienced. I jumped up out bed so quickly that I very nearly hit my head on the low ceiling in my grim, dingy apartment. The slope of the ceiling in that one corner of the room had made it seem like the most logical place for my bed when I first moved in, but now I realized a desk may have been a smarter option. My 6 foot frame makes it so that even just sitting in bed, I often grazed the ceiling.
In a dazed panic, I rolled out of bed onto the floor in a tangle of blankets and sheets. Gasping for breath I tried to unravel myself, but in my moment of terror I instead tightened the bedding into knots around my ankles. I cried out in fright. I hadn’t quite yet fully awakened and so I saw the blankets around my feet not as what they were, but as hands that had reached out to grab me and pull me into the sea of blankets on the floor.
That is what I had been dreaming about before I crawled out of bed: Disembodied hands that reached out to pull me to my doom and, more specifically, they were child sized hands reaching and clawing at me.
I finally freed myself and stumbled to my feet. A knock at the door snapped me back to reality. The blankets were suddenly blankets again and I sighed in relief. It was a neighbor, I noted, who was at my door. My hands shook violently as I unlocked the door and removed the chain.
“Hey! Is everything alright in there?” my concerned neighbor questioned.
“Yes, yes, everything’s fine,” I reassured him my heart still pounding hard in my chest. My hair clung to my damp forehead.
“I heard a scream.”
“Nightmare,” I mumbled sheepishly running my hand through my thick, black hair a bit embarrassed. “Last time I eat Chinese so late at night,” I continued convinced my late night snacking was to blame for my vivid and disturbing dream.
My neighbor nodded knowingly. “Alright. If you need anything, let me know. I know it’s your first night back....” he trailed off without finishing his thought.
“It’s okay. Thanks.”
My neighbor nodded and strolled off towards his door as I closed mine and locked up.
Without skipping a beat, I flicked the light on and the television as well. The more light and noise, the better. It was childish, but it seemed to drive my demons away. I started breathing more normally.
Needing a better sedative than Chicken Lo Mein, I poured myself some whisky on the rocks and sat down in the easy chair in front of the TV. My face stared back at me from the screen. The woman on the news channel was reporting that I had fully recovered after the fire and was singing my undeserved praises. I groaned in protest.
Some nights ago, I had happened across an abandoned shipping warehouse that had been set on fire. Some protesters had burnt it down not knowing that a small group of children had been playing inside. It was, I imagine, meant as a message to the drug lords who were using the empty warehouse as a place to do their business. No one was supposed to be hurt.
I called 9-1-1 when I heard the children shouting for help, but the fire was burning furiously. The building would be ash before the fire department arrived! The children would be dead! I raced into the building to get them and pull them to safety.
It was true. My efforts had saved most of the children, but there was one who had gotten herself trapped under some fallen debris. She was a tiny thing with long brown curly hair and freckles dotting her tiny face. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. Her tiny hands clutched mine, but she slipped out of my grasp. She sobbed and reached out, but pieces of timber fell down around her. Once I did finally pull her out of the rubble, her tiny tear-stained face was covered in burns and blisters and her breathing was shallow and labored. She died in the ambulance before they reached the hospital.
Suddenly, they showed her face on the screen as the reporter offered her condolences to the family. I flipped to a different channel, but to my dismay, my act of courage, as it was being called, was being reported on the next channel. I switched channels and there it was again on that channel and again on the next one after that and the next after that! I hung my head in sorrow as they called me a hero.
“If I really were a hero,” I grumbled with my head in my hands. “I would have saved them all!”
I got up from my chair and yanked the cord out of the wall. I refilled my glass with some more whiskey and decided to take the bottle to the chair with me. It wasn’t long before the bottle was empty at my feet and the whiskey had lulled me to sleep.
1:10 AM
I was engulfed by darkness. I walked forward with my hands in front of me not able to see the path before me. “Help! Help us!” A small group of children were crying ahead of me. The road on which I was traveling suddenly appeared in front of me and the children were there at the end of it huddled together. “Help! Help us!” they cried again. It began raining balls of fire down upon them. “Help!” they shouted louder.
“I’m coming!” I answered. “Don’t be afraid!” I ran to them along the path with the rain of fire pouring down upon us all, but as I ran, the distance between myself and the children looked the same as before. Actually, it looked longer than before. And it was! The more I ran towards them, the farther away they appeared. The faster I ran, the faster the distance grew between us. “No! No!” I shouted in frustration. The fire rained down harder than before; so hard that I could no longer see them, but I could still hear them sobbing and crying for help. “Where are you?” I cried, but they did not answer.
Balls of fire landed on the path in front of me and.....
My heart skipped a beat as I jolted awake. I heard the sound of shattered glass at my feet and stifled a scream. After a few gasping breaths, I realized that I was still sitting in my easy chair slumped over in a drunken stupor. As I was dreaming, I must have dropped the glass I had been holding in my hand. I could feel blood pooling under my toes, but the room was dark.
A crash of thunder made me jump again and a bolt of lightning lit up the room. The sudden summer thunderstorm must have knocked off the electricity in the building. Attempting to reach the sink and my emergency battery powered lantern, I stumbled around my living area kicking over things I was sure were going to cost me my security deposit. My only light source was the occasional flashes of light from the lightning.
Once I reached the sink, I pulled out my lantern and turned it on to inspect the damage. On my trip to the sink, I had managed to knock over the small round end table, the floor lamp, two wilted potted plants, and the entire contents of my briefcase in that order. "You're such an idiot," I chided myself as I righted my belongings all the way to the bathroom to bandage my foot.
I tended to my wound to the sound of the rain pounding on the roof of the building. It sounded much like my landlord does when he comes looking for the next month's rent. I dabbed the drops of blood away from the cut and cleaned up the shards of glass. Luckily, the liquor hadn't quite worn off yet so I hardly felt the cut on my foot. That is, until I poured alcohol over it to disinfect it. I have never sobered up so quickly in my life!
The sound of squeaky footsteps from the other room caught my attention as I began bandaging my foot. Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak. I froze in place listening to the steady rhythm of the squeaky intruder. I locked the door, didn't I?, I thought to myself not daring to say anything out loud lest I be heard. I tried hard not to make any noise. I didn't even move. Maybe the intruder would take what he or she wanted and be gone.
The squeaking continued for many minutes and then I heard another sound. A crash! Another crash! More squeaking! A scream!
That last sound, I realized, I had made. I slapped my hand over my mouth dropping my lantern in the process. How could I have been so stupid to scream? There was silence now just the steady roll of thunder and rain. A damp, cool breeze wafted through my apartment. The sudden silence, for whatever reason, scared me more than the squeaky footsteps had. I stood for what felt like hours in my bathroom with a half bandaged foot and my hand clasped over my mouth. My heart pounded in my chest not just because all of those unknown noises had scared me half to death, but also because I knew I couldn't stand in my bathroom like a fool all night. I had to go out to the rest of the apartment eventually. In fact, it was high time I did just that.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath finally removing my hand from my mouth and, as I all of a sudden realized, finally swallowing for the first time in about fifteen minutes. Then, I very slowly picked up the lantern and took a few hesitant steps towards the door of the bathroom. I felt like I was in one of those slasher films as I rounded the corner half expecting to receive a knife in the chest. I didn't see anything at first. My little studio apartment was the only one that had a small hallway leading to the bathroom. Whatever....whoever...was making all that racket was not visible from where I was standing.
A shadow caught my eye before I took another step. It moved to the left, then to the right, then to the left again. Someone IS in here! I thought to myself, my eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
"H-hello?" I called out.
Stupid! I thought to myself. Why would the intruder answer you?!
I’m not entirely sure what made spirits cross my mind, but I suddenly started imagining all sorts of crazy scenarios involving spooks. I guess the liquor hadn’t quite worn off yet. I could feel my chest tighten with my anxiety as I began wondering: Had that little girl returned to haunt me? Had she felt like I had killed her? She was so young...perhaps she died not understanding what was happening.
That is just ridiculous! I told myself. You left the door unlocked like an idiot and now someone has broken in!’
Mentally kicking myself for my stupidity, I continued on down the rest of the hall. Suddenly, the lights came back on and I was able to see that I was standing right in front of the closet where I kept my revolver. I tried to move slowly so as not to make a sound, but it seemed like every little thing I touched made some sort of noise. The hinges of the closet door creaked when I opened it, the box in which I had locked my gun was underneath some rain coats that rustled when I moved them, and I, in my infinite wisdom, kicked over the lantern that I had set down by my left foot. It rolled over with a loud clang and then, before I could catch it, it rolled out to the rest of my apartment! I winced at all the noise I had been making. I had to make a move before the intruder did!
I jumped out from my hiding spot brandishing my weapon and shouting, "FREEZE!" at......absolutely no one.
"S**t," I mumbled lowering my weapon. The window had been open when I fell asleep. The powerful gusts of wind from the storm had blown my table over and had made my rocking chair rock by itself. I also had a desk by the window with a small desk lamp that had fallen over and whose light bulb had smashed with the impact. More glass to clean up. Well, that accounted for both crashes and the squeaking. As for the shadow, some loose papers had swirled around the room with the wind and had landed atop the floor lamp. They waved in the wind.
With my heart rate returning to normal, I put everything back to the way it had been and, thanks to the return of the electricity, I could see to clean up all of the glass from my carpet.
I sighed in disgust. I really had acted like such a nitwit! Cursing myself, I attempted to brew myself some tea to calm down. I really have to get a hold of myself, I thought. I enjoyed my piping hot cup of tea and watched a blank TV set. I knew if I turned it on, the story of my "heroic rescue" would be on every channel just like before and to get to the channels that weren't showing that same story over and over again, I'd have to pass the ones that were. I couldn't bear to see that little girl's face one more time.
With my tea finished and my hands no longer shaking, I decided I had enough excitement. I needed to get to sleep. I faced a hard day at work in the morning if I didn't.
2:30 AM
I found myself standing at the edge of a pool. A girl lay at the bottom of it looking up at the surface of the water. She was drowning, but no one seemed to care. At second glance, I realized, the pool didn’t have any water in it....it was filled with fire! Not knowing what else to do, she tried to swim through the fire, but she was unable to move and now she waited to die. She tried to reach out for me. I could see her from where she lay in the pool and I wanted to help, but my arms felt like lead. They wouldn’t move. She yelled for help, but her voice was muffled by the flickering flames. No one else jumped in to help either. They all stared and watched her die. She drowned alone at the bottom of the pool.
I opened my eyes wearily. I didn’t even get out of bed this time. I decided to just try to fall back asleep. I closed my eyes again and within minutes I had drifted off to sleep again. This time, instead of a pool, I was back in that room in the warehouse watching the little girl burn to death. This time it wasn’t a nightmare....it was a memory. A memory that I did not plan on reliving. I sat up in bed and hit my head on the low ceiling.
I was too tired to even care. My body ached from my head to my toes. My eyes burned with the need to sleep, but it was hopeless. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that little girl’s face staring back at me. Every time I closed my eyes, it was another reminder that I had let her die. I knew now that it wasn’t my late dinner that had given me nightmares nor was it the fault of the whiskey. It was my guilt. Survivor’s guilt is what the shrink at the hospital had called it. I was guilty for having been in the fire and come out alive when the youngest of the children had perished.
“It should have been me,” I sobbed. “I should have died in that fire.”
I had fought back the tears for so long, but the lack of sleep made them flow freely and without my consent. I flopped over onto my side and cried into my pillow for what seemed like hours.
3:00 AM
I lay on my back on my bed, but I couldn’t fall asleep. My eyes were closed, but sleep never came. I rolled over onto my side, but I still laid there wide awake. I tried the other side, but still no luck. It was as though there was not a single inch of my bed that was comfortable enough to lay on. My eyes grew heavier and heavier, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t sleep.
“Please,” I wailed speaking to no one in particular. “Please let me sleep! I just need to go to sleep!”
Finally, I could take it no longer. I got up out of bed and rummaged through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The psychiatrist that I worked with at the hospital gave me some sleeping pills to take for the first few days after my return from intensive care. I pulled off the cap and knocked back the bottle swallowing a few pills.
The effect was almost instantaneous. I practically fell into bed.
Please don’t let me dream, I begged silently as I drifted off to sleep.
4:30 AM
I found myself walking down a long, lonely path. There was no end to the path in sight and there was nothing interesting on the path; no flowers, no trees, nothing. It was a path surrounded by nothingness. After some time, I could see a dark figure moving at the other end of the path. It moved slowly towards me. As it got closer and closer to me, I recognized the little girl’s face. The girl from the fire! I froze in my place as she approached me. For the first time since the fire, I didn’t turn my head away when I saw her.
Her face was solemn and pale. Her breathing was slow and labored as it had been when the paramedics put her on the stretcher. She frowned at me disapprovingly. And then, to my horror, she spoke!
“You killed me,” she accused.
“No!” I explained. “I tried to rescue you, remember? But you were stuck. I did everything I could do.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
When she spoke these words, the path in front of me lit up in flames! The fire crept towards me menacingly. I raced away from the inferno as fast as I could. I looked over my shoulder behind me and noticed the girl was gone, but the fire continued to creep closer and closer.
I skidded to a halt when I turned back around. There she was in front of me!
I didn’t know what to do. A violent conflagration was blocking the path behind me and the little girl was blocking the path in front of me.
“Please try to understand,” I begged her. “I didn’t kill you! You died,” I insisted attempting to explain the difference, but not knowing exactly what to say.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she said again. Now, another fire was burning brightly in front of me!
“Why are you doing this?” I cried over the roar of the blaze. “Please stop!”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire” was the only explanation she would give.
I couldn’t run ahead nor could I run in the opposite direction, so I did the only thing I could do which was follow the path that had suddenly appeared off to my right. But just as before, I ran off in that direction only to be stopped by another wall of fire. I turned around to run in another direction, but at this point, the path where I had just been standing had erupted in flames too. I was trapped!
The fire crept closer and closer to me devouring everything in its sight.
“Please! Help me!” I cried.
“Liar, liar,” the girl replied back.
“No, please! I’m not a liar! I’m not!” But still, the fire grew closer.
“HELP ME! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!!” I screeched in panic. I could feel the heat from the flames now and I fell to my knees watching the fire come upon me.
“Okay okay!” I finally called out. “I DID IT! I STARTED THE FIRE!”
All at once, the flames disappeared and there were ashes left in their place. The girl crept down the path in the front of me with tears streaming down her face; tears of fire. Fire poured out of her eyes and down the side of her face looking much like blood.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and I was sorry. I was deeply torn apart by what I had done. I couldn’t forgive myself. “I didn’t know you children were in that warehouse.”
Before I could say another word, her face began to melt off.
“NO!” I screamed.
I awoke with a start. My mouth was dry. My hands were shaking. I crawled out of bed to get some water. At the far end of the room, I noticed a small, dark figure standing without a sound. When it stepped into the light, I realized it was the girl again. She had returned to haunt me for my crimes! Her face was ghostly white and the flaming tears streamed down her face as it had been in my dream!
I decided in that instant that I couldn’t stay in that place anymore. Forgetting my thirst, I dashed over to the door to my apartment hoping to escape from that place of nightmares, but the door was stuck! I yanked and pulled and pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t budge!
“HELP!” I screamed. I should say, I tried to scream. I opened my mouth and formed the words, but no words came out! I knocked on my own door and jiggled the handle. I pushed my entire body against it hoping to break it down, but to no avail.
I tried to call out for help again, but not a single sound came out. I turned around just to see if I had been imagining things. The girl was there with the fire streaming down her face and as it did so, it burned and blistered the child’s face and hands. I sobbed and opened my mouth again to speak, but I was still mute.
I looked around at my apartment and realized it was completely empty. The bed was gone, the table was gone, the kitchen was gone! I wasn’t awake at all! It was another nightmare! I had woken up from a nightmare and found myself in another nightmare! This sort of thing only happened to those most damned souls on Earth I was sure of it!
I banged on the door again frantically and cried out desperate to be heard, but I now knew the truth. My body would rot and decay on my little bed off in the corner where I had so often hit my head on the low ceiling above it. I would rot there while I stayed trapped in this nightmare of all nightmares. I would never awaken. The small, dead child watching me silently from a distance with her tear-stained and boil-ridden face. No one would know of my fate for days, maybe weeks.
Please, I beg of you. Please find my body. If you see the door of an apartment that hasn’t been opened in who knows how long, it just might be my little studio apartment with the low ceiling in the corner and an empty bottle of pills in the bathroom. Please open the door and wake me from this nightmare.
That was amazing, I 