Rosalyn ran as hard as she could, pumping her legs against the uneven terrain. Her ridiculous fuzzy slippers caught on the ground, doing her no favours, and one slipped off, leaving one bare foot to smack against the rough forest floor.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d physically ran, and she found herself quickly out of breath despite the adrenaline pushing her muscles. Fear, pure, unadulterated fear, brought on by some kind of hell-beast with tentacles—TENTACLES?—trying to get her.

She tripped over a tree root and staggered forward, attempting to use the momentum to push back up straight, but failing spectacularly and landing hard on her arms. As the delicate skin of her forearms scraped against the rough forest floor, she was thankful that at least it wasn’t her face. As she scrambled to her feet, losing her remaining slipper, she chanced a look over her shoulder and didn’t see anything...but that didn’t mean much considering the darkness of the canopy.

She realized then, in her deep huffs of breath, that she couldn’t smell that rotten goopy scent that had been so prevalent when she was right close to the thing. Maybe it was too big to weave between the trees? Her heart leapt with hope, but she still didn’t want to be out in the open air, prime pickings for whatever else was lurking around.

Rosalyn took off in the direction she’d originally been running, unsure of whether it was a smart move or not, but happy with the fact that it was at least in the opposite direction of that...thing. Her lungs burned with the strain of running so hard for so long, and she skidded to a stop next to the fattest tree trunk she’d ever seen in her life, the balls of her feet crying with the motion.

As she bent over to catch her breath, her calf muscles screaming at her, she slowly shuffled along, limping and huffing as she moved around the tree, guiding herself with her hands around the thick trunk. Her fingers closed around a dip in the bark, and she felt around frantically, realizing that there was an opening.

“The tree is hollow,” she whispered, the reflex to monologue too strong and her panic so all-consuming that she didn’t even stop to realize she was monologuing to nobody.

She wriggled her way through the opening, sliding into the large tree trunk and hoping beyond hope that there wasn’t anything gross and sinister and hungry waiting inside. It had to be better than the thing chasing her, right?

As Rosalyn slumped against the inner wall of the tree, the ludicrous nature of what was happening in that moment hit her like a battering ram and she couldn’t help the laugh bubbling up in her throat. She clamped a hand down over her mouth as she shook with hysterical laughter, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the uneven floor of the little cavern.

She curled her legs up against her body, buying her face in her knees to catch her breath and stifle the madness threatening to explode from her, but her lungs constricted as soon as she closed her eyes and saw the chat.

The fucking chat. “What is happening?” she wheezed, text flying by her eyes.

She sat up in shock and looked around the inside of the tree, but the messages were gone. She whipped her head back and forth, as if she could catch it in her periphery somehow. She tentatively closed her eyes again, and there it was, behind her closed lids. The chat window from her streaming software.

“I’m dreaming,” she said out loud, her voice quivering. “I fell asleep at my desk or something, and I’m dreaming, right?”

The messages flew by too quickly for her to read them, but she picked out words here and there.

A donation message popped up over the rest, and it was KC, clearly irritated.

KCxbone: How the hell did you set all this up without me knowing! When did you film this?

Rosalyn shook her head. “You know what, you would say that if this were real,” she scoffed. “I wish I’d thought up a prank like this for my viewers. And you bet your ass you would have been in on it.”

Another donation flashed. Primz85: The graphics are amazing! Kudos on pulling all of this off, it looks so real! You put your heart and soul into entertaining us and your fans appreciate it so much!

“My subconscious is apparently a narcissist.” Rosalyn shook her head. “Or desperate for attention somehow. I need to unplug. I’ve figured out I’m dreaming so I should wake up any second. Then I’m going to do my damn stream and take a week off. I’m going to go outside, and take a walk. Maybe join a gym, fuck I am out of shape.”

KCxbone: Bitch you’re gonna be running when I kick your ass for not letting me in on this. Who the hell did you get to do the animation on those tentacles??? They look so real!

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Ask the Guul Company and my own overactive imagination,” Rosalyn quipped, finally finding a bit of her breath. “The real question is, why aren’t I waking up yet? I’ve never lucid dreamed before. People that do it have like a special trigger right, to wake them up? Dream KC, go to my apartment and wake me up. Or like, just tell me that you’re going to my apartment to wake me up. Maybe that’ll make my subconscious like subconsciously think you’re doing it and it’ll wake me up.” She rubbed her calves, hissing at the tightness there. “This is the most vivid stupid dream ever, though. Like I’m legit sore from running so hard.”

Another donation from KC splashed across her eyelids. KCxbone: You know what I am going to your place, so I can simultaneously smack you and also high five you for pulling something like this ffs

“I can’t wait to tell the real you what a cunt dream you is,” Rosalyn sang, and the chat filled with laughing emojis and lololololol. “Also what kind of stupid logic is it that I what, got sucked into a video game but can see the chat when I close my eyes? And you can still hear me on the stream somehow? How would that even work?”

A fifty dollar donation flashed. BriGuyMonster: Don’t question the magic. We’re loving it. What’s the lore here? That you’re stuck in the game? Can we help you figure out how to get out?

“Thanks for the five-oh, Bri,” Rosalyn said before she could stop herself, and then rolled her eyes. The chat disappeared as she did so, and she stared at the opening in the tree, a bit of moonlight illuminating the edges of her door in an ethereal glow. “Dreaming, dummy, don’t have to thank your dream donations,” she muttered under her breath.

She sat there for a few beats, waiting to wake up. The stillness in the forest tightened her guts, and she willed herself to calm down. If this was a dream, she was in no danger. She would wake up eventually and she and KC would have a great laugh about her crazy imagination.

But despite that logic in her brain, she still couldn’t chase away the dread. Knowing something wasn’t real was very separate from seeing it, being immersed in it. Was this really what lucid dreaming felt like? Or was it a night terror? She’d heard of those but never experienced one, being trapped by your own body and mind.

She closed her eyes. Monologuing to her own brain might be lame, but it was comforting somehow, gave her a confidence that she needed to get through this nightmare.

Just as she did so, BriGuyMonster donated another fifteen dollars, asking, What if you fight the monster thing?

She opened her mouth to quip back, but paused. “That’s actually a good idea,” she replied slowly. “If it kills me, I bet I’d wake up. Like dreams where you fall, you always wake up before you hit the ground, right?” She’d hoped saying the words out loud would bolster her energy and confidence, but it was still a rough battle.

She swallowed hard, and opened her eyes, tucking her legs beneath her to get to her knees. “I can’t see the chat when my eyes are open, so hold off on the donations ‘cause I can’t read them anyway,” she said.

That deep feeling of lameness for saying the words out loud to her nightmare audience didn’t go away, but she tried to shake it off. Nobody could see this, she wasn’t on display for anyone. She could do stupid shit in the privacy of her own brain to keep herself sane.

“Okay, let’s see if we can find something to fight with,” she said, and moved towards a more moonlit area of trees. “I’ll probably find nothing but sticks, but this is a video game, maybe there’s like some dude over here selling weapons and armour or something.” She laughed at herself, but it came out strained, that edge of hysteria still prevalent in the air.

She also was starting to feel like she hadn’t outrun anything at all. The forest was so quiet—she hadn’t heard a single animal or insect or anything since she’d been in it, which usually in storytelling was a sign of something evil lurking about.

“Maybe it’s toying with me,” she whispered as she inched towards the moonbeams up ahead. “Maybe it’s been watching me this whole time, listening to me go more and more insane talking to myself, and it’s waiting for me to just go full fucking hysteria before it leaps out to rip my head off.”

Monologuing didn’t seem to be helping anymore, and Rosalyn clamped her mouth shut. She took a deep breath and darted into the little clearing, looking around frantically on the ground for something, anything to use to defend herself. It was dumb, she knew it was dumb. Her plan was for the thing to kill her so she could wake up, so why even grab a stick? Was it some kind of sick need for showmanship, that even though these viewers weren’t real viewers she still needed to give them something cool, a big battle, look like a badass? She loved it when her viewers called her a badass.

She found a gnarled chunk of wood on the ground and picked it up, testing the heft. It wouldn’t be much—it wasn’t pointy or particularly heavy, but if she swung it like a baseball bat maybe it could do...something.

“Okay, okay okay.” She widened her stance a little, raising her new club over one shoulder and giving it a little wiggle like she’d seen baseball players do. “Okay. I know I’m just small and I’m not like athletic or strong but adrenaline is a thing right? I ran pretty damn fast for a chick who’s made a job out of sitting in a chair.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, the chat whirling with laughing emojis bolstering her confidence a bit. If she was going to go down, she was going to go down entertaining. Maybe dream KC would even ‘show up’ at her apartment just in time to see the big battle and comment something funny that she could take back into the waking world to tell him. He was going to make fun of her so bad for this stupid dream.

The smell hit her before anything else, and she gagged at the rotten stench. It was so much stronger than before, encompassing her as if she were drowning in the viscous goop that slicked from the monster. Her arms slackened a little, her baseball stance not as strong, as she buried her mouth and nose in her arm to try to save herself from the putrid scent.

And then she saw them.

Not it. Them.

Because it couldn’t just be one. She stood in the middle of a moonlit clearing in a dark, terrifying forest, and the glop and thud and slithering sounds of slick flesh against the ground rasped all around her. They came from every single direction, circling the entire clearing, those long tendril limbs gyrating towards her.

Rosalyn’s breath caught in her throat. “Fuck.”