The Death Behind Dreams
by Esther Elizabeth Racah
The death behind dreams was a consequence of illusion and betrayal. The world of dreams had always been the only refuge for her—a realm where the rules of reality no longer applied, where the impossible became tangible, and where the weight of life could be forgotten. But now, even her dreams had turned against her, becoming a prison of their own making. She no longer awoke with a sense of wonder but with a deep, gnawing dread. The dreams were darker now, twisted into nightmares that she could not escape. Each time she closed her eyes, she knew what awaited her on the other side—a place where every hope went to die.
She found herself standing in a vast, empty field, the sky above her a sickly shade of gloominess. The air was filled with misery and decay, and the ground beneath her feet was soft and yielding, as though it might be ready to swallow her whole at any moment. In the distance, she could see shadowy shapes moving, but no matter how far she walked, they remained just out of reach. They whispered to her words she could not understand, their utterances carrying a sense of foreboding that chilled her to the bone.
She tried to wake herself up, to break free from the grip of dreams, but her body would not respond. It was as though she had been trapped in that surreal realm, forced to endure the nightmare with no expectancy of escape. The death behind dreams was behind the line between reality and the dream world, which had blurred, and she no longer knew which was which. The days had become a blur of fear and distress, and the nights were worse. Sleep had once been a solace, but now it was an exhausting curse.
With each passing night, her dreams became more flamboyant, and her sense of dread became more assertive. She wandered through frightening labyrinths that twisted and turned in unimaginable ways, leading her deeper into the darkness. The walls seemed to close in around her, and the meadow seemed to alter into suffocating thorns. She could hear her own heartbeat, a steady thrum of panic that echoed in her ears. She was suffocating, drowning in an ocean of shadows with no way out.
And always, there was a presence lurking behind the dreams, watching her, waiting. It was the death behind dreams, a force that stripped away all joy and hope and left nothing but despair in its eternal slumber.
