Chapter 61: Terror Returns
For the longest ti, Emily had been a stranger to the land of sweet dreams. But after years of being locked outside, she was finally allowed in. She had no idea how she had managed it, but sohow the trip out of the city had seed to have given her the gift of being able to sleep, terror free.
That was the final thought that she’d had before falling asleep, and her subconscious mind had carried it over to the land of dreams.
Emily was not afraid, not looking over her shoulder for a monster. There was absolutely no need for her to be wary, this was a good dream.
She walked through a field full of sunflowers. The giant flower heads turning with her, following her wherever she moved. It should have been spooky, but Emily only smiled, waving at them, she was their sun afterall, it was only right that they follow her.
She moved along the flowers running her hands over the green stems. Off in the distance, she saw sothing that did not belong in the fields of yellow and green, a flash of red.
No! Her mind scread. Look away! Look away! But Emily could not look away, a single glimpse was all that it took to get her hooked. She had to see it again, she had to find out why there was red in a place filled with so much yellow, she had to find out how it had co to be.
"Bad! Bad! Bad! It is all bad there, all the bad," The wind sang, trying to pull her away. But Emily no longer had control of her own body, it pushed against the force of the wind, cutting through it and moving her closer to the red thing that she was supposed to stay away from. The closer that she got, the more sunflowers around her died. So on them becoming petrified where they stood, the stems crumbling and mixing with the dirt. Others turned to ash without a single fla touching them. Others just to lose the will to live, shrivelling up and dying on the spot. And with each death, the red thing got brighter and brighter. It was so pretty, and just seeing its beauty made Emily get closer and closer.
When she finally reached it, she realized that it was a ribbon. It was not even tied to anything, it was just simply floating in place, coiling and uncoiling like a living serpent instead of a piece of cloth.
Her brain shrieked that she should get away, and her heart thundered in her ears, trying to beat its way out of her chest.
Run!
Run!
Run!
Run! Get away! Run away, now! They both scread, but instead of running away, Emily ignored both her heart, and her mind. Afterall, the mind could be wrong, and the heart rarely made rational decisions...she reached for the cloth.
It instantly stopped floating, falling gracefully over her hand. Oh, how soft she thought, running it over her cheek. The wind picked up then, kicking dead sunflowers her way. It seed to be saying sothing, but Emily could no longer hear it. That was bad, she knew it was bad, but now that she had her soft, red, ribbon, it seed an acceptable level of bad, sothing that she could ignore, and so she did.
When the wind picked up again, wilder than before, so debris hurt her neck. And just as she thought of complaining, Emily looked down, and her wonderful ribbon had changed into a wonderful scarf. It glead invitingly, promising comfort, safety and warmth, but only if she put it on.
Put
on, it seed to say each ti it fluttered. And Emily saw no danger in that. Putting it on would protect her from the wind afterall.
With that thought, she put it on "Thank you," She told the newly made scarf, and ignoring they way that the wind was now howling in agony, Emily wrapped the scarf more securely around her neck.
"There, see, nothing bad happened," She told the wind, but all it did was howl one more ti and then it went quiet. It left Emily alone, the wind was gone, and all of the pretty sunflowers were long dead, the earth barren.
But at least she still had her red scarf. Except now it was no longer just red, it was blood red, and dripping.
And when Emily tried to take it off to see it, it clung tighter around her neck. The fabric no longer felt soft and warm, instead it felt cold and scaly, like the coils of a snake. And just like a snake, it latched on and did not let go.
"Stop, I cannot breathe," She rasped, but the blood red scarf would not listen, it squeezed tighter and tighter, and tighter...
...She woke up gasping for breath, her heart rate out of control.
She looked over at her alarm clock.
It read twelve midnight. She had only gotten two hours of sleep, and she knew from experience that, that would be all that she would be getting.
How? Why was this happening again? What had she done wrong? Was she missing sothing? Had her body just been playing a cruel trick on her. Allowing her one night of blissful sleep. Letting her think that the cycle of night terrors had finally been broken, only for them to co at her when she was not expecting?
It was not logical, and it made no sense for her body to sche against her, since it was hers. But in the darkness of night, it made all the sense in the world, and it made Emily unbearably sad that her body had refused to grant her a nightmare free sleep.
Wiping a single tear, Emily got up. She unlocked her crafts drawer and took out her work. Grabbing her glasses absent mindedly.
It seed there was no sleep in the cards for her that night, only more embroidering.
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