Eden!

She awoke with a sharp gasp to a warm, wide, chocolate-eyed stare. A little girl looked down at her while clutching her shoulders tightly.

“Eden!” she repeated, jostling her sister to keep her from slipping away. The darkness hadn’t spoken complete obscurities after all, rather it was actually a name - her name. The one bestowed upon her since infancy - a herald of an identity she felt had nearly been stripped away.

Eden slowly sat up, pushing aside a velvety blanket and damp white sheets. Her body was drenched with cold sweat that beaded down her face onto an all-too-familiar silken nightdress. Except this one wasn’t torn and soiled with dust and dirt. It looked as if she had just sprinted passed the finish line of a marathon, which was not far from how she felt at the moment. She ran her fingers shakily through wild waves of raven hair and breathed deeply. Her body trembled as her heart beat furiously against its rigid cage. Plus she had one hell of a headache.

The ghoulish atmosphere had been replaced with the subtle blue walls of a tidy bedroom. A floral shaded lamp on the bedside table cast a dull light that wrapped around a distressed, white wooden vanity. Eden recognized the peerlessly balanced space and facade of timeless perfection. How could she not remember one of the many obnoxiously meticulous quarters staged by her obnoxiously meticulous mother?

Eden finally met the young girl’s eyes and sighed weakly. She was now confident that this was real, and so her tension waned. Eden gently pressed her forehead against her sister’s.

“Jesus, Elly. It’s not even morning yet,” Eden said groggily.

“It’s twelve-thirty, so actually it is morning.” Elly’s lips curled into a wide, cheeky grin.

“Smartass…” Eden thought, far too exhausted to appreciate the wit of an 11-year-old child.

“I heard you on my way back from the bathroom. You sounded like you were about to cry, so I came in to see if you were okay. I kept trying to wake you up. I even turned the light on, but you just kept making noises and looking really sick.” Her words shot forth like a vocal gatling gun. Elly stopped abruptly and her body stiffened with apprehension. “Wait, you’re not going to puke on me, right Edie?”

Eden squinted as if being blinded by the not-so-blinding table lamp.

“No, no splash zone tonight.” Eden grimaced and sat up, massaging her pulsating temples. “It was just a weird dream.”

Elly moved to the end of the bed and sat by Eden’s feet. A river of braided, golden hair bobbed to and fro as she bounced into position. “A bad dream? I have those sometimes, but I never remember them. What were you dreaming about?” Her chipper and squeaky voice made Eden’s lip twitch ever so slightly as the sound drilled through her cranium.

“What was all of that anyways?” she wondered.

Falling through space into a ruined…house? No, only mega-mansions had elevators, and the visuals didn’t quite fit. A hospital? Maybe – it was certainly large enough with enough rooms, but even that didn’t sit right. A hotel? It was impossible to know for sure. Whatever the case, Eden recognized that it was eerie as hell, in more or less eloquent terms, and she didn’t want to go back. Ever.

The Woman crept into her mind. That hellish monster and unwelcome guest provoked fear while occupying the simplest thought. That powerless feeling she experienced - the crushing dominance - was suffocating and sickeningly palpable. When Eden invested even an ounce of honest contemplation into the experience, it felt more akin to a cruel alternate reality. Yet her brain rationalized that it was merely a cruel fantasy concocted from bits of haphazard information energized by an overactive imagination. Nothing but a nightmare.

Eden found herself defeated by not having grown accustomed to such things by now. Similar dreams haunted her since she was child. Doctors christened them everything from sleep paralysis to night terrors - natural phenomena that transformed the sweet release of sleep into a circus of dread.

Those same doctors who tried to put a name to the face of her condition did what they do best: prescribed medicine. Prazosin plus God knows what else should have brought her some modicum of peace. Pills made things worse if they did anything at all. She would sleep deeper and, in turn, fall deeper into suffering. She would struggle to break free, eventually waking herself and everyone else in the house with her screams. Sometimes Eden would even find a few scrapes and bruises the morning after from how viciously she fought the unseen. This wasn’t such a night, but she knew it certainly could have been.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Eden had already been chased by creatures deep and black as the void through a world of silver clouds. She had already wandered through shifting mazes with walls uttering all manners of forsaken and incomprehensible things. There was even a time when she walked the streets of strange towns kissed by frost or flame. Over a decade of bizarre happenings in the her twilight hours produced so many unreconciled stories, all jotted messily in a journal tucked away somewhere. One would imagine that her heart had turned to steel, but some things never change.

“Yeah, I guess you could call them bad dreams,” she finally said. “Not sure I really remember them either, but they definitely weren’t nice.”

Of course, this was a lie. Eden remembered every detail. The Woman, the bleeding black door, the voices. Something about this nightmare was different. For starters, it was the first time Eden encountered the Woman. No matter how dark or deranged her dreams became, nothing could compare to how real the Woman seemed in that protracted moment. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the nightmare was alive, and her purpose was to satisfy its hunger.

Elly twirled her frizzy braid around her fingers absentmindedly before perking up with sudden energy. “Okay, then I’ll stay here!” she decided. “If you’re not alone, the bad dreams won’t come back,” she reasoned rather matter-of-factly.

Eden summoned a meager smile and slid the damp covers down to her ankles.

“You’ll keep the boogiemen and monsters away? I have to admit - that doesn’t sound half bad.” Eden slipped out of bed and cringed at how disgusting she felt. “Let me clean up and change the sheets…this is seriously gross,” she grumbled.

Eden fumbled through her dresser and hastily grabbed a plain black tank top and athletic shorts. She may have been covered in cold sweat, but her insides were on fire. Heat scorched her veins and saturated her lungs – like being smothered in a crowded sauna.

She stepped out into the hallway. The dense darkness was punctuated by the orange twinkle of a bathroom nightlight in the distance. Without a moment’s hesitation, she hustled toward the light, wary not to linger in the shadows. Residual paranoia clung on tightly, and the salvation she felt after flicking on the bathroom light was euphoric.

She peeled off the dress and carefully examined her pearly skin in the mirror. Not a single blemish. Eden hadn’t hurt herself this time after all, which afforded her a sigh of relief. Eden wet a washcloth and wiped her skin gently. The cool water was refreshing and blissfully soothing against her burning flesh.

She closed her eyes.

“Who are you?”

An echo, faint and distorted, reverberated in her ears, one after the other.

Eden gasped and opened her eyes to nothing but her own image. She swallowed hard and looked around.

Nothing was amiss. Absolutely nothing.

And then something warm wriggled inside her ears. Eden leaned forward, staring in the mirror. Black dripped slowly from inside her ear canals, trickling down the sides of her face.

Images of the black door and The Woman flashed through her mind. Eden whimpered, desperately attempting to scrub the substance from her skin. Nothing appeared on the cloth. The trickle of black liquid became a steady stream that oozed down her writhing neck. Eden panicked and shook violently as she compulsively scrubbed her ears blistering raw.

It stopped as quickly as it began. Eden’s image stared back at herself, exhausted. There was no more black liquid. Her flesh was clear but broken, and the washcloth stained with nothing but streaks of her own blood.

Her eyes swelled and she gripped her skull in burning frustration. It must have been all in her head. Her fragile mind finally began to dismantle piece by forsaken piece. Eden figured it was only a matter of time, and she was more than old enough to make the connection by now. Insanity loomed overhead – a grinning viper prepared to strike at the slightest absence of vigilance.

Now if only that little girl in the other room could keep her grounded, even if only for a night.

Eden mustered everything she could to collect herself and get dressed. She returned to the room as briskly as her legs would allow. Lo and behold, Elly had changed the bed while Eden was in the bathroom. Eden loved to see how her sister had grown, and that love was nearly overshadowed by the guilt she felt when Elly became her greatest caretaker in these moments.

Elly had helped herself to the warmth of the blankets and was snuggled up on one side on the bed. Eden lied down next to Elly and wrapped an arm around her, and Elly buried the side of her head into Eden’s shoulder. What a pure blessing and source of comfort.

They were products of different generations and (technically) of different parentage. This was of no consequence to the bond of sisterhood that intertwined them, no matter the circumstances that struggled to tear them apart. Not even the 6 years standing between them.

“Good night, Elly. I love you,” Eden whispered.

“I love you too, Edie,” Elly whispered back.

Eden turned off the bedside lamp. They both drifted away soon thereafter. As Elly had assured her, not a single nightmare violated Eden’s slumber. She just floated through the still, dreamless emptiness for which she begged…

But true peace still felt so very far out of reach.