Recurring Nightmare Part 2

Author: bigsmile21
Title: Recurring Nightmare: Part 2
Date: 02 January 2020

Glen didn't have to wait long. It seemed like as soon as he'd closed his eyes he opened them in the dream and was looking straight at that monster. He quickly averted his gaze and tried to run. He managed to turn, seeing a dark corridor behind him with faint daylight at the far end. Before he could take a step, the monster grabbed him and began applying the manacles to his wrists, this time chaining them together behind his back. The monster shoved Glen to the ground and began dragging him backwards. There was extra strain on Glen's shoulders from being dragged this way, and he essentially curled into a ball to relive the tension. He looked down and was wearing the same clothes as before: a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and boots. With his body curled, it was easier to keep his jeans completely on this time. With each turn, he felt the tug in the chains a bit more than he had the other two nights. He let out a few moans from the pain, and could hear his voice echo down the corridors. Some of the echoes sounded different, like they came from other people.

He tried calling out, shouting to ask who else was there but by the time he started he was hauled inside the familiar cell. He dreaded being hung from the ceiling by his arms in this position. The monster this time dragged Glen towards the wall he'd barely seen last night. It sat him up, hoisted his wrists high up so that his head was forced down, and chained his wrists to something affixed to the wall. The monster bent down and lifted Glen's chin. Glen saw its red eyes for a brief moment before he looked away, remembering how looking in its eyes would leave him partially blinded. The monster huffed, grumbled, and stood to leave. Glen looked up and this time saw it exit through a large wood and steel door on the other side of the room. Glen tried to look around more but with his head positioned downward the strain was unpleasant.

He slowly moved his boots around until his soles were touching the cell floor. He rose up and instantly felt relief in his shoulders. At this height, he could see that the hook in the wall behind him was only two feet above his hands. He tried whipping his arms up and down to unhook the chain but that didn't help. He then tried grabbing the chain with his hands, putting his boots against the wall, and pulling himself up to where he could reach the hook. If he fell and missed his landing, he could seriously hurt his shoulders. After half a minute, he reached the hook, gabbed up on the chain more to give it some slack, and slipped the chain off the hook on the wall. He stumbled as he came down, but landed on his feet. He felt around and it seemed like the chain was looped and locked in place around the manacles, so no way to loosen it. He walked toward the door and fumbled with the handle. It opened easy enough, but made a loud creaking sound as it did. Glen looked down the left corridor and saw only darkness. He looked down the right and saw the same darkness, only with two small red lights close together and getting bigger. He turned left and began running, his arms still bound behind him but his boots helping him keep traction. Behind him he heard a distant roar.

He turned right and then left and then right again. He was making decisions blindly, just wanting to get away from the approaching roars of the monster. The last right turn had him facing a dead end. He quickly turned around and ran the other direction. From the corner of his eye he could see the red eyes of the monster, only this time they were within twenty feet. He kept running, turning left and the right, ending up facing the doors of a new cell. He turned to open the handle and saw the monster was closing. He opened the cell door and ducked inside, his back against the wall. Inside, the cell looked identical to the one he was always brought too, only this one had someone else in it.

"I knew there was someone else!" the other person called out. They were barely visible on the other side of the cell, but Glen could tell it was a man's voice.

"What's going on?" Glen asked. "Why do I keep ending up here?" The monster was pounding at the door now. Ringing in the distance, Glen heard his alarm clock.

"There's no time." the voice said. "Find me online when you wake. ZekeOliver24. Remember that!"

The sound of his alarm clock grew louder, and then Glen woke up. He was drenched in sweat, and his arms were stiff as boards. He lay there, almost paralyzed by what had happened. Then he remembered the last bit: the other guy in the cell, his username was...It Was already slipping from his memory. He stood out of bed, yep his arms were definitely sore, and he found his smart phone. Glen opened a note and began typing frantically. He remembered "Zeke" but was it Olive? No, "Oliver". He had the most trouble remembering the numbers. He ended up saving the note with "ZekeOliver224", "ZekeOliver24", and "ZekeOliver42".

He looked at the time on his phone and realized if he didn't start now he'd be late for work. He skipped his daily shave, dressed for work, skipped breakfast, and headed out. If yesterday was slow, today was busy. He couldn't recall if most Wednesdays were busy, but he had trouble thinking of hardly anything except his dream (nightmare?) from last night. By trying to run, he'd changed the way the monster had chained him. But before he was even changed, he saw daylight. Could that have been a way out? He'd also been able to escape his cell for the first time, though his arms felt very sore today.

Lost in thought, Glen didn't notice when his boss came up from behind him. Glen jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and his boss asked what was up. He'd noticed Glen spacing out for a few minutes. Glen said he just hadn't been getting much sleep. His boss said to take it easy, he didn't want Glen getting hurt working the machinery or while under the hood of a car today. Glen smiled and went back to work. Throughout the day he'd tried searching online for usernames matching what he'd written down. But given the busy day he didn't have much luck. Back at home, Glen microwave his dinner and thought about how to reach this Zeke person, if they were real. He decided to draft a basic email and send it to the all the usernames with @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, and two others added at the end. The email asked if this person was real and what to do about tonight. Glen felt less certain about this approach as he continued writing. It would seem like a spam message to whoever received it. He sent the email and all but one shot back an auto-generated response that those emails didn't exist. Glen stopped. That meant one of the emails actually went through. He waited. And waited. By the end of the night, around his usual bedtime, he hadn't gotten a response.

Glen felt physically and mentally exhausted. The tension in his arms still wearing him down, and the apprehension of going to bed and facing that monster again was looming over him. Glen thought about staying up late, but didn't feel like he had the strength to. He did set his alarm clock for a half hour earlier, maybe that would help cut the nightmare short. He laid down in bed, closed his eyes, and soon found himself facing the monster again. He didn't turn around, fearing he'd be manacled behind once more, but he did avert his gaze.

"What do you want?" Glen yelled before the monster grabbed his throat as usual. He tried asking more but the monster's grip was too tight to get anything else out. The monster leaned in closer. Glen felt the intensity of those red eyes staring at him.

"No...escape." The monster grumbled. Glen's body shook with horror. It understood him. It spoke to him. The monster lifted one of its paws and Glen saw a large claw curl outward. The monster used it to rips Glen's white T-shirt from his torso. Meanwhile, two other paws were following their usual routine, and Glen's wrists were manacled close together. The paw that had ripped his shirt bundled the shirt and then worked with the other two hands to tied it tightly around his mouth, leaving Glen cleavegagged. The first paw released Glen's throat, dropping him to the ground, and proceeded to drag him to his cell.

This time, Glen kept track of the turns. Right, left, left, right, left, right. Before the last right into his cell, Glen tried to look down the corridor, where last night he'd seen the monster before trying to run away. He couldn't see anything however. He wasn't sure if that's where the monster stayed, or if that's where it just happened to be during its patrol when Glen tried to escape. Like the first two nights, the monster lifted Glen high off the ground and secured his chained wrists to a hook above him. It turned to leave. Glen tried to mumble something from behind his gag. The monster paused, and then turned.

"No...escape...Glen" It grumbled. The monster continued out the door, closing it behind, and Glen heard it move slowly down the corridor to the right. Glen hung there limp. It knew his name. It had hunted his dreaming self each night this week just to lock him in this cell. Glen looked up and saw the hook, but with his boots weighing him down he could hardly lift his feet. He pressed one foot against the other and after some effort managed to slip them off. The boots dropped a few feet to the floor. He looked up again and pulled himself up the chain, gymclass style. He reached the chain, unhooked it, and dropped to the ground. Without his boots, landing on the cell floor hurt but he didn't feel like anything broke or sprained. He pulled the T-shirt gag from his mouth and tossed it aside.

He sat down, put the boots on again, and thought through the turns he'd made coming here. If he reversed those, he'd be back in that first corridor with daylight at the end. Glen thought about trying to find the man from last night, but couldn't remember what right or wrong turns he'd made that led him there. Ultimately, Glen decided to focus on escaping, if he could. He looked at the hinges of the door and they were rusty. He tried spitting on them as much as he could, hoping that would help reduce the creaking. When he opened the cell door, there was still a little bit of creaking, but not as noticeable. He stuck his head out of the cell and looked to the right. The monster's eyes this time weren't staring back at him. He looked to the left, saw the familiar darkness, and started walking down that corridor.

Pacing-wise, he felt we has on track with similar nights, but keeping track of time in a dream isn't accurate. The dream last night seemed to draw out towards the end because he could hear the alarm clock ring a few times before it actually woke him. Either the alarm clock was having less effect on him or the tension of the monster banging of the cell door kept him tethered to the nightmare longer. After the last turn he planned to make, he saw the daylight at the far end of the first corridor. He checked behind and around him before moving, and with no sight of the monster he started moving towards the light. He started to hear his alarm clock, however. It began ringing louder and louder but didn't seem to wake him completely. Between rings, Glen heard the monster roar from deeper within the dungeon. Glen wanted to wake right away, but he had this odd sense that if he managed to reach the daylight he'd be free of this recurring nightmare. He ran towards the light but before he could reach it the alarm clock's rings became too loud and he woke up.