Not Again

4-1-2020 101 Paranormal Writing Prompts Volume 1 written by J. Dodson

Prompt #36- Reoccurring Dreams

Mae sits on the edge of her bed, staring at her clock as the big red numbers read 9:30 pm. She yawns again before she slips under the warm sheets that she just took out of the dryer, placing her cell phone down on the nightstand. She sighs heavily as she turns the light off, wondering if she will get some sleep or if she will wake up screaming around 1:30 am like she has been doing for the past week and a half. Mae closes her eyes and forces herself to fall asleep, willing herself to have good dreams.

The night moves slowly, Mae tossing and turning in bed as her mind swirls from dream to dream but nothing bad yet. And then 1:30 am rolls around and the reoccurring dream begins.

Mae finds herself standing in front of an old rundown Victorian house that has been abandoned for several years and actually sits at the end of her street. She has always been afraid of the house especially as a little girl but now it is haunting her dreams. Mae sees the door looming in front of her, contemplating if she should go inside or not. She tells herself to just go home but her body doesn’t move back away from the house, her body instead moves to the house until she is standing on the rickety porch. She shoves open the door that has fallen half of the hinges, the loud wooden creak echoing throughout the quiet house and dream. She slowly walks inside, her boots crunching on fallen debris that litters the ground. Her soft chartreuse gaze scans over the damaged house, seeing the beauty that it had once shown off years ago before the murders took place.

Mae walks from room to room, jumping whenever her shadow appears on the wall beside her, scaring her as she thinks it is someone else in the house besides her. After looking through each of the rooms downstairs, she finds herself standing at the foot of the broken stairs. She lifts her flashlight that she doesn’t remember bringing it with her from home but she has it in her hands and she shines it upwards. She lays her hand on the fragile banister and she starts to walk up the stairs.

She screams when her foot breaks through one of the stairs causing her to fall and lose her flashlight back down the stairs. Above her, the sounds of running feet can be heard racing towards the stairs and she can hear voices above her but he can’t make out what they are saying. Mae struggles to free herself, her eyes on the top of the dark stairs as the running person stops at the top, the voice growing quiet. She strains to see the dark figure but she just can’t see since the blackness hiding it from her.

Mae lifts her hand, suddenly having the flashlight back in her hand, and shines it up the stairs. Her handshakes as she gasps at the figure. She screams and in a blink of an eye, she is sitting up in her bed, drenched in sweat, and looking around her room for the figure in fear. Just like the other nights, as soon as she is about to see who the ghost is, she wakes up screaming. She pushes back her shoulder-length purple hair off of her face. Already knowing the time, Mae looks at the clock to confirm that it is indeed once again 1:30 am.

Mae crawls out of bed and heads into the bathroom where she uses the toilet then fills the tub to take a bubble bath in order to try to calm her nerves. After she has peeled off her drenched clothes, she grabs her dream journal and pen yet again writes down her dream with as many details as she can remember. She turns off the water, climbs into her spacious bathtub, and lays down under the bubbly water. She cracks open the journal to a new page, writes down the time and date then scribbles down the dream.

She finishes and puts the journal and pen on the toilet seat the sinks down under the water. She keeps her eyes close as she lets the air out of her lungs, listening to the loud sounds of the air making bubbles that race up to the surface. She resurfaces and just sits there, letting her mind grow blank as she pushes the dream out of her mind.

She has looked online and in books about what her reoccurring dream could mean but has come up empty-handed. She has even asked a few of her friends what they think the dream could mean since she is having it every night for the past week and a half but no one could help her or even cared to help her. She has yet to talk to those so-called friends who only made fun of her about the dreams. But still, Mae is in the dark about the dreams and what they could be telling her.

She finishes her bath, climbs out while wrapping a towel around herself, and stands in front of the sink, staring at herself in the mirror. Making up her mind, she dries off and gets dressed in an old pair of dark blue jeans and a shirt that she paints in when she has the time. She has decided to take matters in her own hands and go to the abandoned house to see what she can find out inside the place. She is fed up with the dreams and obviously, something is trying to tell her to go there so instead of waiting any longer, she will go.

Mae exists her small home and stops right outside on the sidewalk, the street quiet as her neighbors continue to sleep. She stares up at the dark sky; the stars blinking in the very early morning. She shivers as the damp air gets to her and brings her back to reality, the silent houses judging her for being outside so early. She quietly yells at herself for not having grabbed a sweatshirt as she walks towards the end of the street to where the old crumbling house stands. Mae hurries to the house as the cold gets to her until she is standing in front of the dilapidated front porch. She carefully steps onto the porch and slowly makes her way inside, having the strange feelings of deja vu.

Mae walks gingerly over the threshold and begins to make her way through the rooms, being careful as to not disturb anything for fear that the house will come tumbling down around her. The sun begins to peek up over the horizon, splashing the sky with brilliant pinks, blues, and yellows. The sun tries to break through the darkness but fails. Mae stops at the foot of the stairs, taking in a deep breath as she steps on the bottom step. It creaks loudly under her weight as she puts all of her weight on it before moving up to the next step.

She counts the steps and once she gets to the sixth stair; she steps over it so as to not have her foot go through it like in her dream. Mae glances down at the step with a triumphant grin and continues to go up. She gets to the tenth step and her foot breaks through the rotted wood. It disintegrates around her foot but doesn’t drop her to the floor beneath.

Mae screams and she catches herself on the stair above the tenth one to make sure that she doesn’t spill through and falls to her death. She hears the sounds of feet rushing for the top of the stairs and she looks up to see who the ghost is, her heart pounding in her chest as she silently rejoices that she will get to see the ghost’s face.

The ghost appears at the top of the stairs, peering down at her as Mae squints up finally seeing the face. She lets out a bloodcurdling scream sitting up on her bed, dripping wet from sweat, and it feels like her heart will break free from her chest. She looks around shocked that she is back at home in her bed. It was another dream? How could that be? She was just in the house and now she is back in her bed, waking up from another dream. She covers her face with her hands and begins to sob. Will she ever find out who the ghost is and what it wants? Or is she trapped in a never-ending loop of reoccurring dreams?