Somnium

Hot steam from the shower clung to the bathroom tiles in thick, clear beads. Vivianna pulled her nightgown over her head. The cotton dragged against her damp skin causing the fine hairs on her neck to prickle. She picked up her brush and pulled it through her dark, wet, tangled hair, the scraping of the bristles against her scalp was the only sound in the small space.

She picked up her toothbrush and squirted some tooth paste on it. She stood over the sink, brushing in small circles and counting to 120 slowly in her head. The peppermint paste foamed in her mouth, but as she moved the brush to the back molars, a sharp, sickening crack echoed inside her skull. Her mouth suddenly filled with a warm, metallic flood.

She spat into the basin, expecting white foam, but instead, a heavy glob of ruby and black gore hit the drain. In the center of the mess sat a molar, its root jagged and dripping with bloody filaments of nerve ending. Vivianna gasped, her fingers shaking as she reached into her mouth. She could feel her front incisors were also loose to the touch. With a soft, wet squelch, three more teeth slid from her gums, clattering into the sink like heavy dice in a game of Yahtzee. She watched in horror as her entire smile began to break, the enamel turning to crumbling gravel and falling away in puzzle pieces until her mouth was nothing but a raw, pulsing cavity of exposed bone and shredded meat.

Vivianna shrieked, the sound bubbling through the blood. She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed her head, her fingers digging into her temples as the entire bathroom began to vibrate. The floor bucked beneath her bare feet and the walls groaned with the sound of rusted metal grinding together.

"NOOOO!" she screamed through her ruined mouth.

An enormous slam shook the mirror. Vivianna sprang upright, her eyes popping wide open. Everything around her was still. She looked at her reflection, carefully sliding a finger over her teeth. They were whole. She stared into the mirror, convinced she had completely lost her mind... until the reflection began to move without her.

Behind the glass, the bathroom she knew began to liquefy. The shiny white tiles turned the color of raw meat, weeping a thick, oily bile that ran down the walls in slow ribbons. The Vivianna in the mirror didn't scream with the real Vivianna. She stood there, staring as her skin began to peel away in long, bloody strips, revealing the wet, red muscles beneath.

From the center of the mirror’s darkened hallway, a shape manifested. It was a spindly creature with impossibly long limbs that could never be mistaken for a human. Its arms and legs were like scorched tree roots, and looked incapable of supporting the torso they were attached to.

The creature’s head was a featureless pale oval until the bottom half split wide open, revealing a cavernous jaw that was cracking and unhinging to showcase rows of thick, blood stained teeth that were dripping with pus like drool. It reached a hand through the glass, which rippled like an old puddle of stagnant water.

Vivianna ran for the bathroom door, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. She grabbed the handle, but it was fused shut. In her desperation, she shoved her fingertips into the narrow crack between the door and the frame, pulling with every ounce of her strength. There was a horrific pop followed by a searing white hot flash of agony. As she strained, the wood acted like a grater. Her fingernails caught on the frame and peeled upward, the beds of her nails ripping away from the quick in slow, agonizing curls of keratin and blood.

She screamed in agony and glanced at her ruined hand before she continued clawing at the door. She was trying hard to ignore the raw, exposed nerves of her fingertips as she finally wrenched the door open and tumbled into the hallway.

The house was no longer her home. What used to be a narrow hallway with family photos hanging on the walls now stretched into an infinite, pulsing throat of nothing. Behind her, the creature dragged itself out of the bathroom, its elongated joints clicking and snapping like breaking ice. It moved and twitched with an insect like grace, its wide mouth lolling open as it tasted the air.

Vivianna ran, her bare feet slapping against a floor that felt like warm, wet tongue. She could hear the thing behind her catching up. Her heart was racing as she listened to the frantic, skittering beat of its many limbs. She was nearly to the end of the hall when her foot caught on what looked like a twisted root growing from underneath the floorboard. She went down hard and the air puffed from her lungs in a pathetic wheeze.

Before she could pick herself up, a cold, moist hand clamped around her ankle. She pulled and tugged as hard as she could but still couldn't free herself away from its strong grip.

"Please!" she begged, tears pouring from her eyes as she turned to look into the abyss of the creature’s throat. "Please, let me go!"

The monster began to pull her closer. Its jaw opened wider, the skin of its face stretching until it tore at the corners, revealing black muscle.

Vivianna covered her eyes as the creature closed in. Her body felt weak, she didn't even have the energy left in her to scream. She let the tears slip slowly down her cheeks as she lost the will to fight for her own life.

A sound began to bleed through the walls. It sounded like low and muffled. She turned to look over her shoulder and strained to hear the distorted chanting as if she were listening from the bottom of a deep well. A whole group of voices were overlapping in a language that felt like water in her ears.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...”

The creature hissed with a sound of escaping steam and boiling oil. Vivianna screamed as a sudden, invisible blade sliced across her forearm. A matching wound opened on the creature’s chest, spraying a foul, black bile. Another gash opened on her thigh, and the creature shrieked as its own leg began to smoke and dissolve, as if hit by a concentrated caustic spray.

The voices grew louder and more aggressive, stripping away the static of the nightmare Vivianna couldn't escape on her own. The world around her began to burn. Every word spoken from the outside manifested as a direct injury to the monster.

"Help!" Vivianna gasped, her voice finally finding her own strength. "I'm right here!"

The creature lunged one last time, its face inches from hers. Its hot breath smelled of sulfur. As the chanting reached a deafening crescendo, the monster’s skin began to bubble and flake away into white light. The hallway dissolved around them. The bathroom, the blood, and the long limbed shadow shattered like a fever dream.

Vivianna gasped and eyes flew open. The ceiling above her was cracked. She was no longer trapped in her bathroom or her hallway. She was flat on her back with her wrists and ankles bound to the posts of a heavy wooden bed with thick, leather straps. Her wrists and ankles were raw and had stained the straps with blood and sweat. The air in the room was cold and thick with the scent of frankincense and vomit.

A man with a gaunt face shadowed by candlelight stood over her clutching a silver crucifix that shook in his hand. His robes were splattered with the same dark, bile-colored fluid she had seen in her dream. To her left, her mother was collapsed in a chair with her face buried in her hands, sobbing prayers into her palms.

Vivianna tried to speak, but barely a squeak escaped. Her throat was raw and scraped bloody from hours of unnatural screaming she couldn't remember. She looked down at her bloody coated hands. Her fingernails were gone. They had been torn away not by a door, but by her own frantic clawing at the headboard of the bed.

The priest leaned in closer, his eyes searching hers for a flicker of the girl he once knew.

"Vivianna?" he whispered, his voice cracking. The scent of stale coffee and sweat was radiating from his skin and his eyes looked tired, like he hadn't slept in days. "Is that you?" He searched her eyes, his hand hovering over her forehead as if afraid she might bite.

Vivianna looked at him, her body aching with the weight of a thousand cuts and bruises. She felt an oily, cold presence receding into the back of her mind, curling up like a salted slug in the dark. She was awake, but as she looked past him at the heavy chains on the door and the salt lines on the floor, she realized the nightmare hadn't truly ended. The thing hadn't left her, she could still feel it licking at the back of her mind, waiting for the right time to dig its claws in.