The Nightmare (Home Pt1)

    Abby Green woke in a cold sweat. Her face and chest soaked in the horror of the nightmare still clinging to her. The images etched into her mind, so vivid and dark they shook her down to the core.

    She hadn’t been able to sleep for well over a month without reliving the horror that filled her aching mind. Dream after dream, each one more horrific then the previous, every lurid image cast on the preceding, each haunting her the same.

     A crow, with its black coat and piercing eyes, watching her, calling to her. Each cawing screech nagging as she focused more intently on the bird's flight. Each nodding moment always the same, the bird feasting on the bones of the bloated dead. Picking the decaying flesh from the soft underside of a rotten corpse, a babe, whose body lies floating just below the south side of the old dock. Hung suspended in place by a shoelace twisted around a reaching root that sipped from the lake. The root belonging to a grand old oak from which the crow roosts.

     "A child, but who's child?" She thought to herself, trying hard to recall whether or not her dream had ever revealed the identity of this poor baby. It didn't seem to matter to her either way, as the horror that she has been living, has caused her to wither inside. She struggled to regain the composure that was being sucked from her body. Each day she left a little more of herself inside the horror of her dream. She felt hopeless, powerless to stop her downward spiral.

    “Even the lake seemed dead these days”, she thought to herself. Snugged in the comfort of a blanket, Abby sat perched in an old rocking chair watching the fog roll in from the far end of the inlet. It hung laden in the morning air. Heavy. Dense. Wrapping itself around the dock, the boat house, and shallow end of the lake, where the marsh filtered the cool water of deep into the warm watershed. It settled among the reeds and the cat tails, and marched steadily out morass.

    “Spanish moss” Abby muttered to herself, thinking of how much it reminder her of Spanish moss. The way it hung on every limb, every eve of the boat house, down to the tiniest blade of grass. Across the open knoll above the sandy beach, it hung haunting, ominous and pressing. Early autumn days at the lake were never supposed to be this cool, damp and heavy with fog. The house and it’s surrounding seemed to be increasingly disturbed, weighted in something chilling, something hiding in the shadows just beyond the fields that encircled the house.

    Over the past month she had noticed the fog grew denser, colder, with each passing day, with each passing dream.

Reviews

[Dean Kuch®]

A forboding tale, dripping with terror and psychological horror thus far. And still... I read on...

[emmajoy]

Heavy with dark, unpleasant atmosphere, but well written phrases that flowed pretty well, I wonder if the two following sentences were meant to be be one, in some form or another? ' Picking the decaying flesh from the soft underside of a rotten corpse, a babe, whose body lies floating just below the south side of the old dock. Hung suspended in place by a shoelace twisted around a reaching root that sipped from the lake.'

I was surprised that you just suddenly stopped; there's no slowing down, just an abrupt few words. (Now I see there are other parts !) You've certainly lured me into this gruesome tale, i'll read on ..

[Neva Flores Smith - Cha..]

A wonderful start... on to the next chapter :)

[Kenneth The Poet]

Powerful and interesting. I can't say anything about the structure or the copy itself, because it is practically perfect from what I see. A suggestion I would make is to make a book with the three parts so other readers can see the "next chapter" button on the bottom of the page and the links to the other chapters on the left side of the page. Otherwise, this is a fantastic, frightful write.

[Teri B]

You have such a gift for description... Brilliant!

[Judy Ponceby]

I found this write very disturbing, due in no small part to your descriptive talent of the nightmare. I particularly liked the eerie feel in the next to last paragraph. Very vivid. Excellently done. I had to look up morass as I had no idea what it was :) I like a write that stretches my mind a bit.

[Demetri J]

Great, but it seems like it just ends. Like, it feels like the start of a novel or something but it sort of stops. If that's what you were going for great, otherwise really good job, keep it up

[KAREN]

Excellent write! I do hope you write a part two to this story. The story is interesting and held with suspense! Has great imagery and flow!

[cartera]

Not much wrong with this piece: it is all a matter of taste. ( I refer to the P.O.V. )

However, as I say, you write very well Inkslinger: plain, uncluttered prose: nice'n' tight.
Well done.
Alex.