She is Julie, my best friend, but she is not real.She is someone else .
Nothing here is real.
Not the house.
Not the walls pressing in.
Not the doors that trap me.
Not the table, not the flickering lights that hum like something alive.
Everything feels wrong, hollow, like a memory that has started to rot.
Why does this always happen to me?
Why can I never wake up?
The nightmares do not just come anymore. They stay. They breathe with me. They wrap around my thoughts and whisper things I do not understand, things I do not want to understand. They do not want to scare me away. They want me to stay.
They want me.
Where am I now.?
No. I cannot think. Thinking makes it worse. I need to get out. I need to leave before it notices that I know.
The walls begin to move. Slowly at first, like a trick of the eye. Then closer. Closer. Breathing in.
The ceiling darkens, sinking lower, pressing down like the sky itself is collapsing. The air turns heavy, thick, impossible to swallow.
Julie is there.
Standing at a distance. Watching me with the deadly eyes.
She does not move. She does not blink. Her smile is stretched too wide, too still, like it has been carved into her face. There is something behind her eyes. Something that is not her. Something that is waiting.
I run.
My hands slam against the door. Locked. Of course it is locked. My fingers tremble as I twist the handle again and again, harder, faster, my breath breaking apart into desperate gasps. It will not open. It will not let me out.
I scream. I pull. I slam my body against it.
And then
it opens.
Silence.
For one impossible second, everything stops.
I fall through the doorway.
I bring all the courage which I can collect now and stand up again to face this world.
The ground hits me hard, knocking the breath from my lungs. Pain shoots through my body, sharp and real, too real. I try to push myself up but I freeze.
This is not my home.
This is not anywhere I have ever been.
The land stretches out around me, unfamiliar and endless. The sky above is a deep, suffocating purple, swirling slowly like something alive, like it is watching me back. There is no sun. There is no light that makes sense.
I am in a forest.
The trees stand tall and silent, but they are wrong. Every branch is bare, twisted, reaching out like broken fingers. No leaves. No life. Just empty shapes clawing at the sky.
And then I see it.
Something is dripping.
At first I think it is rain.
But it is not falling from the sky.
It is coming from the trees.
Dark, thick liquid seeps from the branches, sliding down the bark in slow, heavy streams. It drips onto the ground with soft, sickening sounds. The earth beneath me is soaked in it.
Blood.
The smell hits me all at once, metallic, choking, filling my lungs until I cannot breathe. My hands are in it. My clothes are soaked in it.
The forest is bleeding
.
I cannot bear it anymore.
The world spins, twisting, folding in on itself as the sky seems to sink lower and the trees close in like they are watching me suffer. My chest tightens, my vision blurs, and everything begins to fade.
Rachel collapses to the ground, her body going limp as the darkness finally takes her.