Dream Caught

I wrote this for a creative writing class in high school, the hat and coat wearing figure is an accurate, if vague, description of me, and the room number is that of the class.

He woke up again, into the real world this time, he hoped. He’d been having this dream for a while, and the dark circles under his eyes were only growing bigger every time he woke up; he didn’t know how to get out. The walls of his room were purple this time, was that what they were like in the real world? He wasn’t sure, it had been so long since he was last there. It made his head spin. He wondered if he was in a coma.  Lucid dreams and comas went together, didn’t they? It made sense in his head, but then again, that might just be because that’s where he was. He decided to try the door, so he walked to it and gently put the back of his hand up against it. He’d been burned a few dreams ago, and while the scar was almost gone, he was still cautious. One thing he’d learned in here: caution saved. He was getting a little too used to this. Coming back to himself he stood up and gingerly pushed down the door handle, as if it were a lion crouched to strike, and peeked through the crack in the door at... a brick wall. Well, he knew how to deal with this. He opened the closet door and looked in at the secret entrance he knew was waiting, a surge of victory pounding through his veins before they turned to ice. He was still dreaming. “D-mn it!” That meant “It” was catching up to him! He didn’t know what “It” was, only that last night when he’d gone to sleep, or so many nights ago, a message on his dream wall had said “It is hunting you” in neatly-written, green pen, and he’d started looking for a way out ever since. He sprinted back to the bed, the only way he knew to escape a dream, and closed his eyes.

He snapped out of his day-dream staring down at his phone, and once again wondered where he got such a vivid imagination; looking up at his backpack, he pulled out his textbook and his mechanical pencil and began the grueling effort on next classes homework. Having worked out the third problem in his math assignment, he had the nagging feeling that something was... off. He looked over his paper and didn’t see anything wrong with the work, or the answers, but as he turned his head away comprehension dawned. The work, theoretically done in mechanical pencil, was all written in green ink. He was still dreaming. How long had he been in the dream this time? How close was “It”? He had to get moving! He had to run! “No,” he barely whispered, “act natural.” He casually looked up from his textbook and noticed, a few tables away, someone not-quite-looking at him. He took in all the information he could, the black trench-coat, the triangle hat, he vaguely noted the brown hair, all the while getting up and walking towards the library exit.  That must be “It.” I can’t believe “It’s” gotten so close! He was sure that his mind hadn’t come up with anything that strange, or at least it hadn’t before, to his knowledge. Just out of view of the library he broke into a sprint, heading for the bed that he knew was somewhere in the school, he charged up the stairs and down the halls taking wild glances into every classroom he passed. “209, nope.” A quick left past the bathrooms “not on the stairs.” A right turn at the corner “no, no, no, where is it?!” He sprinted past room 230 then spun around to a stop, darting back to the door. There, in the middle of the room, ignored by everyone, was the bed. He tugged on the door and darted into the classroom, jumping into the bed and pulling up the covers in two disjointed movements. The door was pulled open again just as he fell asleep.

Waking up in a familiar room with full memory of all that had past, he wondered if he had reached the end of his journey. Looking around he realized that, no, this room was familiar for another reason entirely, it was where he had first received his warning, it was where he had started to rush. As if in a trance, he moved over to the door and grabbed the handle then flinched back quick as lightning from the heat that left a burn on his hand. He walked to the wall and carefully wrote “It is hunting you” in green ink before walking back to the bed, and lying down. Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep, and, possibly, salvation. He woke up again, into the real world this time, he hoped.