A Nightmare

Introduction

A short tale inspired by an image from 'Flitting Ghosts Leading Time and Death', illustrated by John Leech, that I found on The Enchanted Booklet here:

The music is "Nightmare" by Brainbug

A Nightmare

This is her nightmare.

Every night, she is afraid to go to sleep, but sleep comes, and she is being pursued by demons with teeth and skeletal forms. She runs, she flies, he nightgown trailing, but the horrors are getting closer.

She grabs the smokestack of a steam train, and it pulls her away from her tormentors. She should be getting burned by the heat of the smokestack, but she doesn't. That's how she knows this is a dream, but she is still frightened.

They are always close but never seem to catch her. Her heart is in her mouth, wondering why they are chasing her.

"What do you want?" she screams.

"You" is the only word the answer with.

Each night she woke in a sweat, scared to go back to sleep, but her arms were hot and red like she had had her arms around that smokestack. She didn't feel it in her nightmare, but she felt it now.

She felt like the devil wanted her, or at least some minor devil, but as long as she could catch that smokestack, she would be safe.

Each time she asked what they wanted, and that spurred them on, and they caught her nightgown, and came closer and closer to her, and then they told her.

"You have said that God does not exist, and we have been sent to show you the error of your ways, and we will take you and present you to God and he will expect you to pay him tribute"

She knew that she had to let them take her, even though it was a dream, and this would give her the answer to whether God exists or not.