Waking Nightmare

This is based off personal experience

You wake up. Your groggy eyes flit instinctively to the neon green numbers floating on your nightstand. 3:36 AM. You curse your internal clock noiselessly and try to shut your eyes. But you can’t. your eyelids, feet, arms, and hands can’t move. The only thing you can move are your eyes themselves. You don’t know what to do, so you try to call for help. Your mouth remains motionless. You’re panicking now. All you can mutter is a wispy whimper. You hear a creaking behind you. the closet door swings open, and you can’t see why. Worse than the creaking is the silence that follows it. Was it the wind? Is someone in your room? Are the tales you heard around the campfire true? You don’t know. You try to raise your hand to the lamp located on your nightstand, but it refuses to comply. You try to yell, but the same whimper escapes your lips. You can feel eyes looking at you. You don’t know how, but you do. And you’re terrified. A coldness overcomes your entire body and you feel a hand approach you. Your right hand fidgets. Finally. You try to move it, and you succeed, although barely. Limp, your hand glides under your heavy blanket. It nears the nightstand, but it’s too late. A rough hand grabs your shoulder and roughly turns you around.
You wake up. You quickly rise, making sure you can. You breathe a sigh of relief. You look to your closet door. It’s closed shut. Just how you left it. You look to the digital clock on your nightstand. 3:36 AM. A soft thump echoes in the room. Your heart, still pounding from the nightmare. Your throat aches. You turn on your lamp, and stand up, only when the whole room is illuminated. The stairs creak below you and you hope you don’t wake your parents. A familiar coldness envelopes your body as you open the refrigerator door. You twist open a water bottle and down it in one big gulp. Satiated, you close the door, and throw the bottle away. As you climb the stairs again, you notice a slight breeze. You look behind, and see the front door slightly open. It was closed when you first descended. You dash up the stairs and throw your parents door open. They’re in their bed, on their sides, sleeping. But something seems wrong. Their shoulders aren’t moving. Slowly, you raise your hand to the light switch. Bright light momentarily blinds you. once you can see again, you slowly walk to their bedside. Placing a hand on your father’s shoulder, you gently shake him. His body leans towards you and he rolls on his back. Blood is seeping from his open throat. You don’t shake your mother to see if she’ll do the same. You walk backwards, shocked. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to think. You bump into somebody. You turn around and look up.
You wake up. A glance at the clock on your nightstand reveals the time. 3:36 AM. You turn the lamp on, and slowly walk out of bed, and down the stairs, just enough to see the front door. Closed and locked. You open your parents door and watch them closely. You can barely see their shoulders rising and falling in a steady rhythm. You breathe a sigh of relief and walk back to your room. You close the door behind you and walk towards your bed. But suddenly, you feel something grab your ankle. It pulls, and you fall to the floor. All you can see is the darkness under your bed, and a spindly purple arm with sharp green nails at the end of each finger wrapped around your ankle. You open your mouth to scream for help. It pulls, and you’re enveloped by darkness.
You wake up. You look at the clock on your nightstand. 3:36 AM. The door to your room opens slowly. All you can see is a black shadow standing behind the small crack. You try to move, but you can’t. A whimper escapes from your paralyzed lips. The loud creaking echoes around the room. You almost pray for the door to open faster. But it doesn’t. It seems like hours pass before the door is fully open. You try to scream. You can’t. The shadow behind your door starts shifting towards you. You feel cold. As it creeps closer, you pray that this is just another nightmare. You pray that you’ll wake up soon. The shadow is at your bedside now. It's arm extends to your still body, and you see what little light there is glimmer on a blade. It approaches your neck. You stare at the shadow's head, pleading with your eyes. You can't see it's face, but you know, somehow, that it's grinning. The cold blade touches your neck. You try to scream once more. The shadow noiselessly pulls the blade upwards.
You wake up. A single tear falls from your left eye, as you stare at the clock on your nightstand. 3:36 AM

Reviews

[Darkimmortal]

Alright as always I am going to start off with the grammar. Okay, the first paragraph if I can call it that is very very choppy, because you are using far too many teeny tiny sentences. I would suggest that you increase the flow of the story by combining some of them. Also, starting sentences with “and” or “but” is not recommended, because it sounds like the story is being written by a five year old, which I know you are not. Also, I know that you are writing the story in a specific way, but starting almost every sentence with the word “you” is not an effective way to write. I would suggest that you invert some of the sentence structures to move the position of the word or omit it completely. Also the sentence “It’s closed shut.”…. closed and shut mean the same thing, this is an oxymoron. Okay, that is all the grammar I care to comment on, because I am not going to point out every sentence that did not start with a capital.
So the first thing I am going to say is that THIS IS NOT A BAD STORY. Actually, I really like the way that it is written. Starting and ending each of the nightmares with “you wake up” is a really good writing strategy because it separates each of them, but really makes it clear that this is a repetition of something over and over again. However, there are some suggestions that I would like to make if you want them. So if you will bear with me I am going to go through each of the nightmares at a time because that seems to be the best way for me to tackle this.
Okay, so I understand why you used a series of small sentences to tell this story, but really it throws people off because it disrupts the flow of the story. Yes, it makes it seem like you are trying to tell me that I am panicking, but it is only effective if you use that for certain parts, not the entire story.
Also, this should be divided into more paragraphs. You don’t need to confine each dream to a single paragraph because you have divided each of them with the repeating sentence that you were so clever to use. So you do not have to feel that you are limited to one paragraph.
For the second dream, it took me a moment to realize that you had directed me to the kitchen, because as far as I knew I had never left my room. You need to say that I walked to the door, down the hall, down the stairs, into the kitchen and to the fridge. I know you gave me enough to make the connection but that is not nearly enough. Also, when did I decide to go down there in the first place, and why? Make sure that if you are going to make decisions for me, that you spell out everything that I am doing.
For the third dream, everything happens really suddenly. I never actually walked back up the stairs to check on my parents, and then never walked back to my room. You have to direct me to the letter so I know what in the world is going on. The same goes for the fourth dream.
Okay, now overall here are some things that you need to do.
Describe things a lot more than you are. Slow down and take the time to tell me every intricate detail, because everything is happening way too fast and all at once.
As I walk to the kitchen explain every noise that makes me jump. Explain every shiver that crawls down my spine, and my heart rattling in my chest. Make me walk tentatively, testing the ground before I step on it. Tell me that I am scared, and that I listen intently searching for some sound that will warn me something is out to get me. Make me scour the shadows for a threat, and chide myself when I find nothing wrong.
Make the hand under my bed wrench me off my feet, make me feel my balance shift before I fall and hit the floor. Make me turn slowly and look, before I feel the horror building in my chest as I see what has grabbed a hold of me. Let me know that I can feel the nails digging into my skin, sending flares of pain up my leg as it slowly starts to drag me under the bed. Have me claw at the carpet, screaming and trying to wriggle free as it pulls me into the darkness under my bed. Have it make a noise, bite me, break my ankle, rip me to pieces.
Just because it is based on a dream that you had, does not mean that you don’t get to elaborate on it to make it a little more interesting. However, I also caution you, because there is such thing as too much description. I also suggest that you use the word “you” a lot less often because it gets monotonous when a word is repeated far too many times.
All in all this is a really good story, and you have a really solid idea going here. All you need to do is go over the grammar and make a few tweaks to your writing style so people can see the true macabre beauty of your writing.