Nightmare Utopia: In Your Dreams - Prologue 1/1

Introducing CERINA VENIMOORE, 15, and her satirical point-of-view of her life at a psychiatric program for teenagers...a situation that is soon to take a darker, supernatural turn.

Any dream can become a nightmare. It takes one, wicked dream - such as mine - to become reality.

 

As I told the doctors, this dream was a creepy walk through some creepy forest that had this creepy manner about it. That usually had them conclude I’ve been reading too much Stephen King, again, and back to my room it was. Of course, by room, I meant excess fluorescents; flowery wallpaper; barred windows; and on Fridays, irritating Muzak.

 

According to the brochure for Vanadaine Institute of Psychology and Semi-Permanent Healing, these details were designed for "encouragement and positive atmosphere to aid mentally ill patients between the ages of thirteen and seventeen".

 

According to me, these details were designed to observe how effortlessly doctors could damage the minds of mentally ill patients between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

However unwillingly, it was what I labeled home.

 

I suppose if I had been honest with my therapists about what sort of evilness haunted me at night, my life would’ve been different. I would not receive those quarterly photos from my family, smiling at whatever school event was happening. I would be in them, though probably with a frown as I tried to hide behind my parents.

 

But I could never be honest with them. Sure, psycho imaginations weren’t unheard of in teenagers. Take my friend’s one of being eaten alive by llamas; he was still considered sane.

 

Still, I was not. Mainly because for the past five years, I’d lived my own llama-horror story every night, and refused to "move on", as most post-traumatic stress disorder patients are told from the start. And every fifteen weeks, my transcript would read no progress, no change, no chance of being someone purely average.

 

What if I had just…let it go? What if I had talked and listened to the "trained and well-educated" staff at my home?

 

Would I have just been moved upstairs to the permanent ward?

 

Would I’ve healed, and found myself in the normal world once again?

 

Would I have never listened to Bree Baxter’s ridiculous stories, and not resulted in some not-so-normal solutions?

　

Author's Note

This is the newest version; before it always started out with the dream in question, but it's usually considered cliche to start a story with a dream. Please just tell me what you think of this intro, if I should change it, and of course, any grammar errors you can find. Thanks!

Reviews

[ChloeKirk]

Nice imagery!

[r]

I want to know the dream!! Lol. But i understand the cliche, even though I ignore it. xD But I like it so far, and I'll keep reading it!