I don’t much like this piece. It was rushed, and seems derivative to me, and the fact that it borrows so much from other works I’ve seen out there means I don’t really feel much like working to shape it because no matter how much I work on it I still will think it’s stealing an idea. I didn’t come up with this. The concept originates from an anonymous piece, a reposting of which I found through Google here.

It’s not much, but… this is the page for posting pretty much everything I’ve worked on. So I might as well.

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Bad Dreams

I can’t sleep. It’s not that I’m unable – by the third night through, even the most hardened of insomniacs will at least be able to slip into some dreamless daze approximating slumber. Nor is it that I’m unwilling. Truth is, I would do almost anything for the sweet release of simple unconsciousness. You’ll understand what I mean soon enough, I suppose, and I hope you’ll understand. I hope you’ll forgive me… in time… but right now I’m at the point of absolute desperation – it’s between this and a bottle of sleeping pills – and so I have to tell you why this is happening to me.

Her name is Maria. Was Maria, I suppose. I don’t know her last name – they don’t say it. They never say it. Yet every time I’m about to drift off again, I see her. Perhaps its her piercing black eyes peering through a window, or a glimpse of the torn and tattered hem of her red dress flicking back around the far corner of a long hallway, but she’s always there. Lurking. Waiting on the edge of my subconscious for me to pass over… impatiently expecting my arrival. And I just can’t do it again. Not anymore.

I thought it was just a bad dream at first… just a self-fulfilling prophecy conjured up by the tales that ragged old man muttered to himself on the bus. But then it wouldn’t – won’t – go away. Every night I see her walk those same rough cobblestones, feeling the wind whip against her skin and the concern building in the back of her mind as she sees the men cross the streets to follow behind her. I hear their voices, and though I don’t know Italian she does – and so I feel the revulsion and fear in her mind as she quickens her pace to avoid them. Every time I will her to run a little sooner, or turn a different way, or pick up some piece of trash and cave their skulls in on them. But no matter how much I beg or plead or scream or pray for something, anything to change so that she may escape – just this once! – it always happens the same. I feel her panic, the breath catching in her throat as she flees in absolute terror. I watch her run to the sounds of the music, hearing it in my own ears as I feel her desperation – and her relief upon finally catching sight of the party, the revelers on the balcony.

And then, no matter how much I try, I always have to watch as they do nothing. They just watch, their voices indistinct amongst the sounds of the band, as she – as I – pound on the doors and cry. As I have to watch, and feel, what comes next… when the men lose their fear of being seen, and come from the shadows to claim their victim. I will never forget the feel of those knives, the warm wet scent of my own blood as it pours from her. I hear her last words, and while I don’t understand them the man who told the story to himself said he knew. It was a curse – a curse upon all who knew of her plight and did nothing. A curse that they might know how cruel and meaningless a death hers was. And then nothing. Silence. Darkness. The knowledge that this was eternity, endless and void. That this was death.

Then I wake up, only to know that sleep will bring it all again, because I know what happened to her. I know and have done nothing, because there is nothing I can do. She is dead. I cannot prevent it. I can only suffer under her ill-spoken curse… or so I thought. Only now, today, did I come to realize what that man on the bus was doing when he allowed me to listen in on his half-crazed rantings. And tonight I will sleep, for the first time in days. Because I have done something. I have told you. And now you know. Forgive me….