“Don’t! Please!” her screams could be heard coming from above the room. Dampness made its way into my nostrils as I struggled to open my eyes to see clearly; I had only just awoken. The place was dank, dark, and cold. While my eyes readjusted, the feeling of mosquitoes taking rest in my face or arms was the only thing discernible from absolute numbness. Once adjusted, I saw the place for what it was: a simple basement. There was a laundry machine in one corner, a boiler on the other. In the middle, a cluster of magazines, old newspapers, and book clippings: an indistinguishable mess. I sat in the middle of if all with both my hands cuffed to a pipe that was dripping boiling water on my wrists. “Stop!” God could be cruel sometimes. I had been in this situation before. Many times, in fact. Every night, I slipped into bed, preparing for a curse most wretched: I would seemingly awaken in that same basement, to those same screams, and I’d be just as powerless as when it first happened. Lucid dreaming? I think that’s what an old friend of mine, Monica, used to call it. Can’t remember. “Please, no!” her sobbing had just begun. It wouldn’t cease until the very end, sadly. I could feel the heartbeat in my chest swell as if it were following an orchestra. Despite my best efforts, my body continued giving me the same emotions and sensations as when I had lived through this moment in real life. I didn’t understand the point of these nightmares anymore, nor did I understand how they could repeat so often. It wasn’t like the point wasn’t clear; I failed her. I couldn’t protect her, and she died because of that. The guilt had long hollowed me out. The incessant repetition was nothing more than unnecessary bantering from a God I assume I infuriated with my actions.

“No” I said to myself, “maybe this time…” I deluded myself. It was my fault that she was there in the first place. Such a thought was also a constant exercise. I’d understand my situation, flirt with the bottom of my emotions, then I’d put up a barren, flawed and senseless semblance of hope to stop me from crossing the point of no return. As long as I had something to fight for, I could tell myself I didn’t have to die yet. Such was the nature of my flirtation; I was sure that someday, maybe soon or maybe far, I’d run out of things to fight for, excuses, and my death would be proclaimed. Perhaps by my hand, perhaps upsetting someone enough for them to do it for me, but it’d present itself eventually. The realization of that had also made me think that maybe God wasn’t as cruel as he was fair. Perhaps I deserved reliving that moment in dreams over and over again until I crossed that line.

“Shut the fuck up!” the sound of his voice made me tighten my jaw in anger. Not even in dreams could I forget him. The rasp in his voice (a clear symptom of a life of drinking and smoking) made it the most recognizable thing about him. A puddle began forming itself under my bottom, courtesy of the dripping pipe that made its way atop of me. In the darkness, I managed to identify a hammer. If I was able to free myself, I could probably take it and kill him. No real problem, right? In life he was a rapist and a murderer; in this dream world he was no different. I couldn’t do it back in the real world, but nothing was stopping me here. I pulled the chain in the handcuffs away from the pipe, making a noticeable clinking sound against the metal.

“I will pull the chain until it tears apart,” I thought to myself, “I will save her this time.” Yet the chain would not break, and neither would the pipe. All I managed to do was bring attention to my escape attempts. In hindsight, it is likely the reason for my failure was that the attempt was never genuine; I always fought knowing I would lose in these dreams, so success was never truly attainable in my head.

“Aduna!” she yelled between tears and stutters. She was calling my name, she needed me. I gathered all of my strength together to pull as hard as I could one last time. The warmth of my blood pouring out of my wrists as I pressed them against the cuffs made me realize my hands would break off before I could even dent the chain, but that did not stop me. I pulled as hard as I could, closing my eyes due to the pain. I don’t know why I even bothered. I felt the chain snap, my hands flinging themselves forward due to the excess power I put into it. I opened my eyes and looked at my hands, a deep purple in their coloring being the result of my efforts. I suddenly stopped. I knew what was next. I had allowed myself, again, to dream of saving her, but no light can ever shine on the darkness created by one’s soul. I closed my eyes and let tears of frustration run down my cheek. I bit my lip until I felt it bleed and took a deep breath. I opened my now swollen eyes and raised my head. He was there. He stood in front of me with the same hammer I had thought about killing him with. He was smiling. The grin with a missing tooth accentuated his shaved head, his scruff left from not shaving in days. His eyes were green, maybe the only aspect of him that was not horrendous. He raised his dense eyebrow from one end with excitement over seeing me awake. He made a gesture with his left hand that urged me to check him out: his red button shirt was partially undone, and his pants were missing. His underwear was smeared in blood, but the grin on his face made me understand that it was not his.

“You told her you loved her so many times…” I said as I gasped for air, my lungs beginning to give in to the asthma I had had since childbirth. He laughed out loud, chastising my choice of words and my thoughts in general. Even in my dreams, I was unable to understand. Why did he have to do it? She was 14, he was above 21. Couldn’t he find someone his age that was willing? Did it really have to be my love? “Why are you raping her!?” I shouted at the peak of my frustration as if he would answer. I stood up to fight him, enraged at his incessant laughing and maniacal enjoyment of the situation.

“You’re useless” he uttered in a small moment of calm before slamming the hammer against my knee. I fell down in the puddle of warm water on which I had been sitting for what felt like hours. His laughing and her sobbing as she yelled my name again and again were the perfect background noise for the darkness in my heart to seep through into my brain, a depression unlike any other filling up every nook and cranny of my soul. I lifted myself from the ground, placing my hands against the floor to regain my composure. I arched my back and closed my eyes, as I was aware of the next step in this tired out play. “Stop interrupting us, Aduna! You’re killing the mood!” his laughter became a drilling noise in my head as he struck my jaw with the hard end of the hammer, bringing to an end the wretched curse for one more night.

Cold sweat filled my forehead. I awoke in my room, frightened as always by the events that occurred in my dream. My eyes adjusted again, allowing me to see the fine lining of the table that held my old TV while I sat on the bed. The green sheets that once covered me were on the ground beside my pillows, a sign that I had clearly struggled my way out of them during my sleep. I couldn’t save her again. Every night for the past 7 years I had had the very same dream, and every night I would fail. I kept asking myself what I would do differently if I had the knowledge I had obtained in the time of her absence. Nothing came to mind, however. I was never someone to have many friends, but she was the first and only one I had before I met the people I would come to consider brothers. She didn’t deserve such an end.

I was well used to the idea that sleeping was a privilege more or less scarce for me, especially with so many things ripping it away from me. If it wasn’t dreams, then it was thoughts, fears and insecurities. That would never stop me from trying, though; my life depended on it, as I was my own judge, jury and (if it got to that) executioner.

“Sleep is for the weak!” I said to myself in an attempt to make myself laugh. I quickly let myself fall into bed again, the ceiling being my faithful companion for chats at that hour (it must’ve probably been past 3:00AM). I heard a small grunt coming from somewhere near the outside of my room, but I attributed it to a mirage created from the lack of sleep. “Stupid ghosts, lemme’ sleep” I said, again trying to make myself laugh to no avail. Seeing as how even I couldn’t get myself to react relaxed, I gave the battle for lost, and fetched the pillows from the ground along with the covers.

Moonlight was the only thing that allowed me to distinguish the objects in my room, but oh how did I hate it that night. I was ready to close my eyes again in hopes of catching some sleep before I had to wake up for school, when a beam of light denoted the presence of something (or someone) else in my room. My eyes widened in both fear and surprise, while my legs cramped up as if sensing Death incarnate nearby. What I saw was a man. He was standing in the corner between my TV and the door, idly staring at me without moving a single muscle. At first I thought I was hallucinating, lied to myself believing that I was probably still dreaming, but no. The mas was completely black, like a shadow; no defining traits, nothing to perceive; I couldn’t see his face due to the darkness of the room, but I did manage to see his eyes; impossible not to, considering that each iris was glowing a bright yellow. A chill ran down my spine and I froze in place. He, however, stood motionless.

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t (it wasn’t like it would’ve helped much; I was home alone). Nothing in my body was reacting properly, it was like his mere presence was enough to make my body shut down. I could hear an intense beeping sound in my ears, product of my elevated pressure. My heart felt like it was going to pop out of my chest, and my breathing was clenched by an invisible hand suppressing my throat. I couldn’t get my stare off of him; our eyes met and he twisted his neck in an abnormal way, tilting his head in a 90 degree angle to his shoulder. This small gesture was enough to creep me out. I quickly got out of bed and clumsily decided to run to the door which was to his (its) right: a sour mistake. He let me get near him without moving, but once I was in range, he stretched his hand out, then grabbed me by the neck. His boney, long fingers tightened against my throat as he pulled me closer to his face covered by a veil of darkness. His hands were humid and smelled like decomposing roadkill. He looked at me with contempt, he then threw me violently into the ground, my ass softening a crude landing. I closed my eyes due to the force by which I was hurled. I swear I closed them for just one second, but by the time I opened them, he was gone. I sat there, alone, surrounded by the cold void of darkness.

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I was shaken by what I had just seen. It wasn’t like I could fully grasp it, however. It was easier for me to think of it as a very, very lucid dream. Ultimately, my head was faced with the decision of thinking that I had just met the Grim Reaper, or that I had just had a weird fever dream. Faced with such options, my survival instincts chose to believe it an illusion conjured by being only half awake. That being said, my psyche refused to lay down again. I grabbed my cellphone from the nightstand and opened the door. Yawning, I walked towards the bathroom, dragging my feet across the ceramic tiles that decorated my house’s floor. I entered the bathroom and turned the light on, glancing at my half-naked self in the mirror.

My black hair was long enough from the top to reach my chin, but it was currently pointing in all sorts of directions. I looked at my brown eyes and saw small specks of green discharge around them. I yawned again and tapped on my buck teeth while scratching some leftover food from my large canine teeth. Since I had always hated dentists, I had never gotten braces, so my teeth were all over the place. The good news was that I had long-ish fangs. The bad news was that I had abnormally large front teeth.

I put my phone on the sink and glanced at the screen. I had a large amount of messages from a group. Really, it only had three people counting myself in it. Bruno and Gabriel, the other two people in it, had been endlessly discussing our plans for that day. They wanted to use my grandfather’s old metal detector to scavenge for valuables in a run down hospital near where I lived. As my grandfather had passed away recently, I didn’t really feel the urgency to pillage through his stuff to get the damn thing out, but they had been adamant that they wanted to go. 
“Why did I even agree to this…?” I asked myself while looking at the mirror. Of course I knew why. It was likely one of the reasons the nightmare kept repeating itself constantly, too: I was scared of losing them. Ever since we had entered university, we had surrounded ourselves with a lot of people. Bruno would disappear for weeks at a time with his smoking buddies, and Gabriel had so many different project going on, people floated around him in spades. I just didn’t want to lose them. I already felt like I was displaced from the circle, so them wanting to do something with me, regardless of how much I disliked it, had to get done.

Still standing idle with my mind submerged in thoughts, I stuck out my index finger and lifted my cheek with it. I tried to keep the cheek lifted enough for it to make a smile. The sadder I looked, the less people wanted to be around me; that was the thought I had mustered a long time ago. Big smiles and big jokes, nobody wants a sad loser around them. Finally, after removing my finger, the smile stayed there as I looked on, nodding. I had finished swallowing the bad thoughts and the hubris. I exited the bathroom and went back to my bed, looking at the nightstand again to find the necklace left to me by my grandfather.
“Tomorrow is gonna’ be a good day, for sure” I whimpered out loud. And with that, I fell on my bed and glanced at the ceiling until my alarm sounded.

My name is Leon Aduna. This is the diary of my travels across different worlds, and the experiences I had in them. I hope they provide an answer to you, the reader, once you find out what you’re looking for.