I ran through air thicker than soup. My muscles pressed against the invisible pressure, forcing me to grip the curved blade in my hands even tighter. Yet, despite all the force I found myself exerting, I was not out of breath. How could I be?

A howl drew my attention behind myself, far down the deck of the pirate ship. A werewolf captain stood, one foot raised on the rail of the wooden vessel. Its massive jaw clamped down on the neck of a skeleton. With a great pull and a smug look, the giant beastly pirate tore the poor skeleton apart. With its free hand, it pointed its sword directly at me.

“Kill him.”

Howls and clatters responded. Bursting out from behind barrels, stairwells, and the main mast of the ship emerged dozens of shadowy werewolves. They bound around with unerring accuracy, avoiding the walking skeletons that slaved away on the ship, despite the apparent commotion.

The sudden movement released me from the invisible pressure. With quick, calculated darting motions, I wove between the skeleton crew and rammed into the wooden door at the aft of the ship. The door crumpled inwards as if it were made of rotten wood. If the looks about the rest of this blasted ship were anything to go by, it probably was. At the other side of the door was a spiral staircase.

The stairs were steep, enough so that I practically fell down them as I fled. My sword dragged a mark along the spiral staircase, mostly out of spite, partially out of boredom. Snarling wolves scratched at the wood above before bodies messily slammed into each other, each scrambling to chase after me. 

I froze at the bottom of the staircase, coming eye to eye with easily a hundred more skeletons. Although, unlike the ones above deck, these ones wielded weapons. I grinned with glee and raised my sword, ready to fight my way through.

Before I could even take a single step, the jaws of a werewolf flashed with spittle and fury, nearly ready to clamp around my neck.

Nah, hold on. I thought. This is too interesting. I can’t lose this one. I should have closed the door behind me.

With a concentrated thought, I returned to the top deck, seamlessly returning to the moment where I ran, weaving my way through skeleton work hands. Snarling wolves chased me, though they seemed more ethereal than before. More shadow than werewolf. It didn’t matter. Not this time

I reached the door, this time being made of solid iron. I slammed into the frame, my left hand awkwardly wrapping around the handle. With an unnatural twist, the handle opened up the door, and I ran through. This time, the other side had a hallway instead of the nearly vertical stairs. 

Regardless, I slammed the door shut behind myself, pulling it tight. Bodies slammed against the iron door, scratching, scratching, scratching. They could not get through, and I knew it.

Just to be safe, I found a piece of wood nearby that sat neatly in the door handle, effectively locking it from the inside. I looked down the empty hallway before myself, stolen pirate sword at the ready. Sounds of the rain outside caught my attention. I realized I needed to pee.

And with a mental sigh of regret, I ended the dream.

My eyes remained shut, even after waking. My bed was just so comfy! Especially at- I checked the time on my phone- 2 am. Still, nature called, and I knew better than to ignore it.

I heavily heaved myself out of bed, blaming my sluggish nature entirely on the early hours. Still, I wanted to hurry and get back to sleep.

Fucking werewolf pirates! How cool was that? I thought. Sucks about the shadow wolves though. I nearly shuddered at the memory. Flashed images of black, smoky figures flitted across my mind. A reminder of one of the worst nightmares before I’d discovered the trick with the iron.

I finished in the bathroom quickly, not even bothering to close the door or turn on the light. Even this late at night, the moon shone bright enough through the various windows that vision wasn’t really needed. Besides, I’d been living alone for a few years now, it would put me to shame to not be able to navigate in the dark of my own house.

My bed beckoned to me, and the passing breeze of my fan didn’t hurt. Cool bedroom, warm blankets. Just the way I liked it.

Wonder what I’ll dream of next?

----------------------------------------

I found myself in an indoor pool, sitting in the bleachers over watching some sort of competition. Almost on instinct, I found myself looking for any sort of writing on the walls. A banner, across the other end of the pool, read ‘Race’. Not entirely inventive, but it got the idea across. Still, not entertaining. 

I looked away, scanning the crowd seating around myself lazily. Behind and to the side of me sat a beautiful girl, dressed in a red lifeguard one piece suit. An absolute cutie! I liked the pool dreams, they always meant I could find pretty girls. I stood and walked across the empty seats to sit behind her, enough so that I was able to hug her from behind. Her skin felt so soft…

The banner across the pool now read ‘Water Polo Tournament’. Better. Far more interesting.

I rested my chin on the pretty girl, snuggling against her. She reciprocated, briefly kissing my cheek before returning her attention to the game. I watched with vague interest, distantly thinking about what could make this story a little more interesting.

You couldn’t call it a dream. That cost too much.

However, changing the blue team into mermaids? That hardly cost more than a thought.

A competition to strengthen the relationships between the kingdoms. I mused, watching the competition with more interest now. Or so the mermaids think! They suspect they are fighting the best of the best, and certainly the score reflects that sentiment. The mermaids are being beaten, badly. Yet, they’re only playing against high school kids. Sure, they’re some pretty high level high schoolers, but not even close to the best of the best.

“What are you doing! Pass, pass!” Shouted a humanoid dragon at the bottom of the bleachers. He’s the coach of the mermaids, and he sat with the rest of the team. How the mermaids got to the bench, and how they got to the pool was a mystery, but I didn’t care.

I idly gave the girl in my arms a squeeze, though she gave no reaction.

Damn, that’s what I get for ignoring her.

At least I was still allowed to hold the soulless doll. Hopefully if I gave her enough attention, she’d become animate once again.

I summoned some popcorn for us to share.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

----------------------------------------

I fell truly asleep later, once I’d paid too much attention for the dream to continue. There was a limit to how much I was allowed to affect my dreams, and some things affected it more than others. Time travel, such as the instance in the werewolf pirate dream, degraded it a lot. Instabilities formed in the shape of nightmares. It was true that I was learning tricks to fighting those nightmares, but tricks were not solutions. Destabilize the dream too much, and you skip past the nightmare and just wake up. Though the ability to just wake up whenever I felt like it was a blessing as well.

I woke up as normal in the morning, slightly saddened by the fact that I couldn’t see the pretty girl any longer. The knowledge that I could try again the next night mitigated that disappointment however, and so I went about my day.

----------------------------------------

I leaned out over a child sized playground. I recognized this location actually, as my elementary school’s playground. Besides the bridge I stood on and the equipment filling the small sand pit directly around me, I was surrounded by grass. Trees and a chain link fence surrounded the perimeter of the area I had been allowed in as a child, but nowadays I had no such restrictions. I teleported to one edge of the bridge with a thought. Relocation was easy. Flight was not. Flight required a run-up.

I took off at a sprint, taking my first leap. I obeyed the laws of gravity, as expected. My landing set me nearly at the end of the bridge. A second leap from there took me directly to the top of the slide’s structure, and one more sent me soaring.

Not flying, not yet. Though I defied gravity, floating as if I were on the moon, I could not change my direction. I floated through the air, slowly accelerating towards the ground far below. One final leap shot me through the uprights at the far end of the playground.

Goal! I thought in a monotone voice. 

I never knew why, but speaking just wasn’t allowed in dreams. Not that it mattered, the characters that populated my dreams knew what I was saying anyways. Flying technically wasn’t allowed either, but when I willed it, I could reduce gravity to the point where I may as well be flying. That was the easiest way to escape the nightmares.

Flight, actual flight, required peace. No nightmares, other characters, or outside influences. With one final, fifth leap, I achieved it. The gravity returned, but control came with it. I steered around my old neighborhood, seeing it from an entirely different perspective. Though it was entertaining, especially at the beginning, it never remained that way. Nowadays, I welcomed nightmares, just so I could be entertained while I waited for night to pass. It was just too lonely otherwise.

I felt myself slowly returning to earth.

Woops, too many idle thoughts.

At least now that meant this dream would have a storyline.

So what is it? I practically challenged. Witches? Some comic book villain I hadn’t thought about in a while? There was that one dream about demon airplanes, that was cool. Wouldn’t mind that again.

I heard a scream from down below. One that just begged you to look up at the sky. And so I did, interested in what my brain would throw at me this time. 

Aliens, apparently. Space eels with tentacles instead of fins.

Fantastic! I thought, my flight powers fading. Let’s see you fight THIS!

An effort of will summoned a flurry of heroes, none of which I knew from any comic book. These were all my personal creations, alternate versions of myself. Magic users, super heroes, genius engineers, and gods. All created to take inspiration from me while stripping away all the parts that would make a character of their designs uninteresting. 

I laughed maniacally as the city I grew up in was destroyed. A snap of my fingers summoned meteors above the space creatures. It detonated in the sky, each fragment hurtling towards the earth. Thousands more space eels birthed themselves from the fragmented core of the meteor, joining the battle.

I crashed into a backyard tree, startling a cat.

Kitty! I thought, all concerns about the invasion vanishing in an instant. With floaty gravity, I chased after the cat, redirecting dangerous debris as I went. Redirection destabilized the dream far less than straight time travel after all, and I didn’t want to watch the poor kitty get hurt.

And wouldn’t you know it, I overspent. The dream tore itself apart, slowly fading into countless threads. Though the dream was over, and I could distinctly hear the sounds of the fan in my bedroom, I decided to continue the train of thought my dream was heading in, filling in the story as best I could. When I decided I had enough of chasing the cat, I opened my eyes and checked the time. 2 am, same as usual. With a sigh, I rolled over and thought about what I wanted to dream about. Something mildly poetic maybe.

----------------------------------------

A drop in the dark. An amber liquid, pooling at the bottom of a stalactite. Power coiled around the rock, gathering in the amber liquid like veins. A dull, orange gold glow followed the power. Color drained from the veins, leaving mere water behind. They coalesced in the drop hanging precariously at the tip, forming a brilliant sphere.

Me.

Ooh, fascinating! I couldn’t help myself. A dungeon core! This is new!

I knew this was a dungeon core through the same dream logic that I knew this was me. I just knew. I also knew that I wanted to grow more powerful, and who was I to argue?

Aw, this is going to be fun! I practically rubbed my hands in glee.

The core completed with a little swirl. The sphere turned from liquid to solid, distinguishing itself from the liquid surrounding it. Gravity took a hold of it, and I watched from a sort of third person perspective as it fell. Though I could practically feel the air rushing around the sphere, I couldn’t see anything besides it. It was just black. Pure darkness.

Then I saw the stalagmite, a split second before I impacted with it.

TING.

I shuddered, holding my hands to my head. Or whatever equivalent it was for an orb. The impact hurt, just not physically. It was almost like a headache. I didn’t like it.

And so, with but a thought, I made myself better. Still, it was odd. Dreams hurt sometimes, but the pain was always physical. And at that, they rarely actually hurt. It was more of a mention of ‘you should be in pain’, and then the dream avatar reacted appropriately. In all my life, I could count on my hands the number of times a dream actually hurt. And those dreams were usually the most vivid.

This certainly feels vivid. I thought, watching my orb bounce. The stalagmite disappeared from view below me for a few seconds. When it returned, I was no longer falling directly onto the tip, instead headed towards one edge. I bounced off it with another distinct sound, rocketing towards the side. The stone left my view almost immediately.

Well that’s boring. I want to see more!

My vision expanded. Just as it brushed up against the stalagmite, it also caught a brown, furry creature flying my way on leathery wings. A bat.

A giant bat. The thing could probably swallow my entire being with one bite! I decided it was but a matter of perspective. I shifted my third person view outwards, shrinking the world around me so that the core was the size of a marble. My perspective gained an avatar like a genie, with just a bare torso, arms, and a head to observe things. I didn’t need it, but it made me feel more comfortable.

I watched the bat fly towards the stalagmites peak. It must have heard my initial impact and found itself interested. A fact confirmed once my core bounced off the edge of the stalagmite one last time, making that distinct sound once again. The headache returned, though lesser now that I had anticipated it, and the bat changed course to intercept. 

How’s the bat supposed to find me? If it’s using echolocation, shouldn’t I be able to hear something?

Almost as if I had summoned it, sound emerged from all directions. Dripping water, chittering animals, the shuffle of bodies against stone. The cavern I was in sounded full of life, and yet, I still could only see so far in any direction. As if I could only see within my own domain.

I had almost forgotten the bat when it suddenly snatched me up in its mouth.

Electrifying pain arched through me, as if my flesh had detached from my bones without tearing themselves apart. My core cracked, coming close to shattering in the bats tiny mouth.

Unforgivable.

Drop it. I commanded, focusing all my anger against the villain.

The bat’s brain promptly detonated.

… huh.