What Waits for Me…

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I should have fought harder to stay awake that night.

Every night I am constantly plagued by the same reoccurring dreams.

They started when I first started getting clean. In the middle of the tossing an turning, I kept running through the woods feeling hundreds of eyes on me until I got to the cabin.

I always woke up by the time I got to the door.

I didn’t take to shoving powder up my nose and drowning myself in mini-bottles of cheaper booze until I had gotten attacked. Some crazy woman came at me in the alley back home, shouting about a mirror and the hollow eyes. It had scarred me so badly and the one long scar on my leg from when she dug the piece of broken glass into my thigh always ached the worst when it rained.

I couldn’t take the pain. I couldn’t take her words so I found that keeping my mind busy with things that would slowly numb it and kill it kept it at bay. Then I could function. I could keep working, I could keep smiling and keep working all hours of the day until I collapsed.

Yet at night when it wore off, the dream came back to be.

It always started like a normal dream. I dreamt of more peaceful things like walking through a surreal city street where it was autumn all the time. I always liked the fall.

Then that’s when it would get funny…Instead of crunching leaves it sounded like crunching glass. I would look down only to see broken mirrors all around me. I’m not a superstitious woman but the sight of thousands of my own eyes scared the hell out of me and I would run until the city melted away and I was out of the city.

Into the woods.

Sometimes it looked familiar like the back country woods from home, other times it looked like the foggy city park I used to sit with bottles of the cheapest whiskey my retail salary could afford after all the bills were paid.

Still, I found myself running.

Even when I woke up, it felt like I had been running for miles and I could feel that burning in my chest and the tightness in my throat. Then the cycle of self abuse began again and so did the work week.

It finally got so bad after four years that management had gave me the ultimatum: clean up or clean out. I choose the former.

Oh boy was that a friggin’ mistake!

I went to rehab only for the nightmares to get worse and more vivid. The run from the city to the woods got shorter but the glass…God I can’t look at mirrors anymore. I can’t even stand the sound of ice under my feet. The crunching just made my legs grow weaker to the point that I would crawl in the snow rather than walk on the icy and salty sidewalks.

All my nerves were on fire and my leg wanted to do everything but feel better. On the fifth anniversary of the attack, I wanted nothing more than to not remember it but even as I daydreamed, it came back.

Suddenly I wasn’t sitting at the diner waiting for food and coffee. I was sitting in the park surrounded by broken glass and leaves. It was enough that the waitress thought I was going to be sick all over the table with out pale and cold I appeared.

Any moment I let my guard down and let my mind wander, it came back leaving me cold and scared in place.

My anxieties were becoming walking nightmares.

The night of the anniversary though was the worst. I got the next few days off from work, sitting in my room with all the lights on waiting for midnight to strike. I rocked back and forth trying to get my body to match the pace my heart was trying to pound to death.

As it grew later, my eyes grew heavier. I wanted nothing more to sleep but as I let them sink down to my cheeks, the vision of the cabin shot me awake again. I battled it until I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I surrendered to sleep.

This time, the dream seemed more realistic. I wasn’t walking through the surreal cityscapes. I got up, I did my morning routine and went to work like nothing was going to happen. I made it all the way to night like nothing was unusual. I couldn’t recognize this as me.

“Don’t look in the mirrors! They have no eyes!” The disembodied voice of the crazy woman suddenly cried out around me in this dream and when this unrecognizable me looked up, my bedroom was not my bedroom but the woods.

I wanted to cry. I felt my eyes burn. I wanted to wail and scream and throw myself around to wake myself up but I couldn’t. Instead, this other me started walking in this dark world between the trees.

The cabin in the woods appeared again this time. Of all the times I had seen it, for all four years since the first, it has always been dark and hollow.

Not this time.

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

As I got closer to it, I could feel my anxiety build. It crept closer and closer to me, almost as if the cabin itself was moving but not my own feet. This thing, this monster in my dreams, had more life than just the hollow dark window.

I gripped the handle of the door, pushing through until the door swung open with an ancient creeeeeek until I could see inside. The only thing I saw was myself staring at an antique mirror that didn’t bear just my reflection. I saw myself lying in bed as if I was watching from the ceiling.

This half-dying, exhausted creature tangled in blankets made me indescribably hungry. I was watching myself like I was in the eyes of a predator. Slowly the haggard form rolled onto her back and woke up, staring up at me from below while I stared down from above.

My expression turned from exhaustion to fear. I could see myself in both places and my brain could no longer comprehend the vertigo. Up above me, I saw the same mirror in my dream while the vision of myself in the mirror stared at me with hollow voids.

We both opened our mouths to scream and suddenly the mirror dropped from the ceiling, shattering down around me and bearing into my skin like teeth.

It’s been three days since then. I’m much happier now. I got up, doing my morning routine and went to work. My manager noticed just how much better I was doing and instead of concern, I got a compliment. At night though, my dreams are different.

I am in the cabin. The candle is still lit in the window…but I am not alive.