Your Worst Nightmare  

I was standing in the middle of the forest, holding an old axe. The blood from the woodsman lying next to me was dripping off the axe and forming a nasty puddle on the forest-bed. I looked madly around me. Nobody was in sight. They couldn’t have heard the scream. I couldn’t remember how I had gotten the axe, or how I had killed the woodsman, or why I had done it and whom I was running from. In fact I didn’t know I was running from anyone until I had thought about not knowing why I was running from them. I noticed that the handle of the axe was broken. I threw it away and ran. As I looked back, I realised a pack of wolves was chasing me.

I kept running between the trees. How had I even come to be here? Then I heard a nasty growling sound behind me. I turned my head and realised the wolves had changed. They were werewolves. I quickened the pace. I was losing my breath and it was as if I was running through water. I stopped dead. Before me stood a pack of goblins. Not cute little elves with long white beards: little green pointy-eared goblins with evil grins consisting of rows of razor-sharp teeth. I turned around. The werewolves were gone. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to running back that way. I turned left and ran away from the goblins. I could hear the sound of lots of small feet running to catch up with me. As the sound of my pursuers stopped, I turned around to look. There they were: standing there, looking at me like they had me cornered. I looked around just to make sure they hadn’t. Thank god they hadn’t.  

As I looked at the goblins again, they melted together. “Oh no…” was all that escaped my trembling lips. Before my eyes, the goblins turned into one huge green goblin, teeth the size of me. It must’ve been 30 feet tall! It “smiled” at me, and growled so the earth shook. Then it began running towards me. I slowly realised that I was sleeping, and that I would wake up if I just stood still and let it hit me. As it came nearer and nearer, I considered the fact that dreams aren’t in color, and I could see that the skin of the monster was green. It came nearer. I remembered that you don’t make your own choices in dreams. It was very close to me now. Then I remembered that you never know you are actually sleeping, and that I hadn’t gone to bed… I managed to throw myself to the side just before the beast hit me with a clean sweep of one of it’s extraordinarily clawed fists.  

I quickly got up and stood still, swaying for a moment. It wasn’t there. It was gone. Instead, there was a wirlwind. I realised what it was and ran again. Before I’d gotten more than 100 feet, I collapsed and lay breathing heavily in the dead brown leafs. I managed to lift my head. The wirlwind was closing in on me. As it approached, I saw that it consisted only of sharp objects. Especially the broken pickaxe I had used before caught my attention. Before I reached me, it stopped and changed into the dead woodsman. Except, he wasn’t dead anymore. And then I recognized him.  

It was you. I was in your dream. And then you lifted the pickaxe, which was now miraculously repaired and somehow quite a bit bigger than earlier, and your empty, sleeping eyes was the last thing I ever saw.

I hate being in your mind…