dreamless, chapters 1&2

first draft sneak peak!

DREAMLESS

A dark monster romance

The monsters are rarely the monsters. The monsters are always the men.

CW: Domestic Violence

Chapter 1

It’s three am and the door slams in a way that I’ve heard before, in a way that makes my whole body tighten.

There are certain things the body reacts to out of reflex. A learned but automatic response.

The whirring of a garage door. The smell of burnt toast. The metallic grind of a car that won’t start.

I know this slam all too well. I squeeze my eyes shut because I want to return to my dreamless slumber. If I sleep, maybe he won’t come to the bedroom. If I sleep, maybe he won’t shake me in a rage. If I sleep, maybe he won’t dump freezing water onto my head.

My mind races in a never ending checklist: what have I forgotten? The dishes? The floor? The trash? What could he blame me for? The list is endless.

And I can never get ahead of it anyway. Not when he’s like this.

But my heart beats at the nearing stomp of his feet. I wish I could quiet it. I wish I was so quiet that I would disappear.

Maybe this time he won’t scream and yell and threaten me with the streets. He pays for this apartment, you know.

Maybe.

The keys hit the counter. They jingle like a high hat as they slide across the marble and hit the floor with a crash.

“Kate! Whheeeree are you?” He calls out, his tone is like a song. “Are you sleeping? Lazy bitch. Are you fucking cheating on me again? You fucking slut.” He’s slurring. It’s the language he speaks in the small hours of the morning.

Cold adrenaline pushes into my system. Soon the door will open. Soon I’ll exist in my body again. And I pray to god that it’ll be different this time.

I pray to god that my bones are steel.

I pray to god that this nightmare will end.

But then I remember that I don’t believe in god. 

And that I don’t pray.

 And that bones were made for breaking.

***

Darkness.

My body is stiff, unmoving. Am I dead? No. Worse.

I’m tied to a chair. My arms are sore. Broken though? It doesn’t seem so. And yet, my legs are heavy like concrete, my eyes ablur. The battle scars of the night. All the wounds I’ve endured over these years. I feel them.

My head is drooping, I can barely keep it up. Has my boyfriend done this? Has my life devolved so deeply? 

With weak effort, I kick at the wooden legs below but I’m so lackluster and exhausted I can barely muster it. I feel like I’m in a dream, the kind where you can’t scream or yell or punch or run. But I don’t have dreams anymore. So, this can’t be a dream. I haven’t had a dream since I met him.

Well, that’s not entirely true. They faded. At first slowly, and then all at once. 

In the beginning, my dreams were bright, bursting with color. Awe-inspiring scenic romps of dark starry skies or the snowy high caps of mountains. Vivid. I’d wake up and weep that they were over. The kind of dreams that make you want to live in the liminal state between consciousness and death.

“You’re so dramatic. They’re just dreams,” he’d say to me.

And he was right.

But they continued, on and on and on.

Until one day he dropped a casual comment, “Normal people dream in black and white.”

And from that day on, the colorful landscapes of my dreams faded to dreary grey, or a dim sepia tone, like from an old movie or the Twilight Zone. I’d wake up with heart palpitations, unsure what was up or down, sweating through the sheets. Unnerved.

“It’s not real,” he’d say to me. “You’re scared over nothing. And change these sheets.”

And then, day by day, even those fuzzy black and white movies stopped playing too. Until I was left with nothing. Darkness. The small death at night. The shocking, painful rebirth of the morning.

Every single sleep.

“You need to take better care of yourself. This behavior is fucking unattractive,” he’d say.

I roll my head again. There’s an itch on my thigh but I can’t scratch it. But at least that’s a sign that I’m alive. That my spinal cord isn’t severed. My hands are tied behind me with what feels like rope. I open my mouth to speak but it’s nothing more than a whimper.

But what is that sound?

“Kate…Kate…”

A voice whispers to me through the darkness. It’s a voice I know, but not one I want to remember. It’s not my boyfriend. Who is it? 

I know who it is.

I struggle to keep my head upright but the voice continues. “Wake up, Kate, and I’ll let you out. But you have to wake up.”

I don’t want to see the form attached to the sound. And I don’t want to die but I don’t want to live. A hand, or something like it, touches my shoulder and the feeling is indescribable.

It’s not hot or cold or painful or comforting. It’s nothing. A nothingness that I can’t comprehend. Almost ecstatic.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up little sunflower…”

Sunflower. That’s me. Or at least, it was.

The voice dances around, bounces off the walls of the room. Echoes in the hollow center. Except the room isn’t hollow at the center. 

I'm the center.

But the darkness is too much. I’m swallowed up again. Like a yawn. Or a punch to the face. 

Or an orgasm.

Once again, my head drops.

***

The smell of smoke arouses my senses first. Then, the blast of light from in front of my eyelids. I stir in my chair until consciousness finds me again.

Fire. 

I’m awake. Eyes wide open. Alert.

At first I’m panicked about the fire, but it’s localized. It blazes, but in a small way.

There’s a stone fireplace directly across from me. The rest of the room is dark, except for the dim light provided by the flames.

I can’t feel the heat. I can’t feel the cold either. Nothingness.

My hands are still tied. So are my feet. But now I can see, and I’m not swaying in between conscious states. 

My posture bolts although I struggle against my restraints. 

“Hello?” I’ve regained my voice. “Let me out.” At first my voice is quiet, I haven’t used it in who knows how long. How long have I been here? But I’m growing in strength and also in anger.

“Get out here you motherfucker and show your fucking face, you fuck!”

Maybe not one of my more eloquent speeches but I think it’ll get the job done. And it does.

A puff of smoke.

He’s here. He’s coming.

Just like I knew he would. His form swirls into existence right in front of me.

Not all at once, though. He’s an evil tease. He’s like the Cheshire cat, fangs first, then eyes, more specifically the sockets, they don’t fill in, not right away, if they fill in at all, then the outline of his face. Which face will I see? The real one or one of his masks?

A jaw forms of bone, a jaw like a man, and then fills upwards in a wave, all the way to his hairline. 

The mask, then.

His hair is black and the sockets of his eyes fill with white and then the palest of blues. He never masks his eyes. Goosebumps ripple up my arms at the reminder.

And now, he’s standing before me, if you could even call it standing. It’s more like he’s whirling, bits and pieces of him circling and then coming back together to create his form. The whirling continues until I feel dizzy, but then finally settles like dust. 

His pieces have formed a man.

But he’s not a man.

And I’ve seen him before.

“Ere,” I say. Because I know his name although few do. My voice sounds disappointed. I thought we were past this. I thought this was over. I thought I’d never see him again. “Fuck you.”

A smile appears on his face like a ghost and then disappears just as quickly. He’s not happy. Or is he? I could never tell. “My secretive little sunflower.” The nickname scrapes at my insides. “Why have you been hiding from me?”

Because he’s the monster under my bed.

Chapter 2

Ere approaches me, hands on either side of the armrests, close enough so that if he had a scent, I could smell it. Close enough so that if he perspired I could lick it. Close enough so that if he had a heart, I could stab it.

“Untie me.” I jolt in my chair again. “You said you’d let me out if I woke up. Well, I’m awake, so let me go.”

A puff of smoke and he’s further away, standing straight, unmoving in front of me, his head tilted in examination. His pants are leather, his shirt is black, his clothes look worn and simple but also timeless and otherworldly. I’ve seen this mask before, and it’s a unique one, built with only one specific purpose. It spurs a part of me that I rarely connect with anymore. 

Lust. 

But he makes no attempt to untie me, instead he smiles again, this time it’s sensual. And out of thin air he conjures a small table, on top of it, a glass and a pitcher. 

“I said I’d untie you when you woke up, yes. But while your eyes are open you’re still very much asleep, aren’t you?”

“Don’t start with the fucking riddles. What is it you want?”

Poof. He holds the glass to my lips and the touch of wet cold is a welcome and luxurious shock to my system. He notices my response and he smirks, tipping the cup so that the water flows into my mouth and I swallow greedily, letting it dribble down my chin, slipping over the slope of my neck. It’s now that I realize I’m in a tank top and shorts, no bra. The very clothes I was wearing when my boyfriend returned home…  

Ere notices too. He lifts the glass, sets it back down on the table. Then it vanishes. “I want you to enjoy your time in the Void. It’s been so long since you’ve visited. I’ve missed you Little Sunflower. I’ve missed you greatly.”

His hand comes to my forehead to brush the hair out of my eyes, and even though the strands irritate my skin, I crane away from his touch. “This doesn’t make sense. I don’t dream anymore.” 

“Oh, I’m well aware.”

“And I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“You did.” He gestures around the room, arms open. There is nothing though, only darkness and the red flickering light that illuminates him. “And I respected that.”

“Clearly you haven’t or I wouldn’t be tied to a fucking chair now. How’d you find me if not through my dreams?”

“I could always find you. I just couldn’t get you. The dream door is one sided. Traditionally, you come to me. Never vice versa. Until recently, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Poof. He taps his chin with his index finger. “In the past…when we…liaised, your dreams brought you here. And I waited for you every night. Don’t make that face. I loved the waiting. Waiting is so…”

“Pathetic?” I supply.

He winks. “Intense.”

Lust surges inside of me again. He knows what he’s doing. He can be this way. Anything you want. Terrifying. Strong. Murderous…Sexy. It irritates me deeply. “I ask again. How did you get me here?”

His eerie blue eyes travel upwards and to the right and then the left, as if he’s deciding on where to eat for dinner. “You see, Sunflower, the void travels through nothingness. It is neither good nor bad. It is neither here nor there. When you were rendered dreamless, you also became nothingness. A portal. When you sleep, that is. Your nothingness becomes my nothingness. And as such, I can visit any time you close your eyes. Right from under your bed. But I’ve been choosing restraint.” He drops into a squat in front of me so that we’re face to face. “Until now.”

I kick my feet and scoot the chair a stubborn inch. “I didn’t ask for this.”

Ere threw up his hands. “Well, we all have limits, don’t we? I could only watch for so long. At first, he was merely fucking you, and while I was muderously jealous, I endured. For your sake. What choice did I have? You wouldn’t come to me. I couldn’t go to you. You enjoyed it. Or at least, pretended to. I can always tell when you’re faking it, darling. But then things changed, didn’t they? And so did your dreams.”

My eyes shutter. “Stop, I don’t want to hear about this.”

“It started with criticisms here and there. He didn’t like your hair. Or the way you cooked dinner.” Poof. Ere paces back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. “He didn’t like when you went out with friends. Or worked late at night.”

“Shut up, Ere.”

“And then his temper. The yelling. At first he only punched the wall…It always starts with the wall.”

“You were watching the whole time?”

“Oh yes. I could do nothing. You were so far out of reach. You didn’t come to me at night nor could I go to you. I watched in bright vivid color. I watched in black and white. I watched with the want of blood on my fangs.” 

Shame rushes over me, but also anger. I’m not sure which to feel. Am I angry because he watched? Or am I angry because he knows? Either way. “It was none of your business. What I do is my choice.”

“Maybe you had a choice. But I had none. Oddly enough, the day you stopped dreaming was the day you offered the door. Creaky at first. I could only reach you but for a brief moment. But with time, the nothingness inside of you grew. And I was able to reach you for longer periods. I began lying in wait. Beneath your bed. Every night. And last night, well, he did as he always does, didn’t he? And this time...”

I glare at him, aware that my bruises and scrapes no longer hurt. And yet, I’m furious. “You save me from one trap just to trap me again. How does that make you any better than him?”

 “It doesn’t.” Poof. He’s in my periphery. A hand on my shoulder, fingers digging into my muscles. “But he’s the man. And I’m the monster. Isn’t that right?”

My voice is thick from his touch. “Why am I being punished for his crimes?”

“I’m sorry that you think this is punishment, Sunflower. I think you’ll soon understand that it’s not.”

“Are you serious? I’m tied to a chair. My whole body is throbbing. And you have all the control.”

The hand on my shoulder glides to the back of my neck, then grabs tight. “I’m not sure I see the problem.”