Hesitation on the ramp of the sleep clinic of Doctor Guelder was natural. I understood that going into this quiet and dark building was a choice, and not one I cared to choose. It was a large flat sarcophagus of a structure, carved from a blue kind of nether stone and fitted together so that no two slabs were the same, yet they all fit together perfectly.

I sighed and looked over at the witten that grew all around. They were plants like water elder, high cranberry, snowball, and redberry hedges. I loved the plants, and I could stare at them for hours. In my strangeness, I knew their thoughts, and in a way, I was more like them than like other people.

"Wonderful to see you, Clair." Doctor Guelder found me there.

"These witten are all roses from your name." I smiled. I realized I had not smiled in a very long time. My dreadful thoughts kept me in a darkness that I knew little outside of.

"Do you dream of roses, Clair?" Doctor Guelder asked me. "You seem to know them all by name, their old names."

"I do." I was still smiling, distracted by my friends. "That is the High Rose, that one is the White Queen and those are all Crampling. This one, this is my favorite, it is the Rose of Thorn Crown. Those are their true names."

"And they know your name too, that is my understanding." Doctor Guelder gestured to the door. "Won't you come in? You have come here seeking healing."

"In your sleep clinic? I am here for sanctuary. I have nowhere else to hide, anymore. You know what it is, what has happened to me." I shuddered and my smile faded. I could feel it watching me, standing always behind me, like a shadow, except it was not my shadow.

"You will be safe here. Come inside." Doctor Guelder told me.

I reluctantly went in. I do not like being indoors, I much prefer to stand on the soil barefoot, under the sunlight and with the dew and the rain. Indoors I begin to wilt, but I was worse off where it could get to me. If I fell asleep, my time on this world would be at an end.

"There are others here?" I asked.

"Yes. Some are somnambulists, others are narcoleptics and many are insomniacs. Which are you?"

"I daydream. Except it is no longer possible to distinguish from dreams and the rest of the world. I am haunted by a shadow. Something has come for me, and it wants to hurt me." I trembled. My fears also made me walk while I slept, made me sleep while I sat and kept me awake in the dark.

"I thought you suffered from all of the above." Doctor Guelder reminded me of our meeting.

I thought back to those days, what seemed like a long time ago. When it had all started, I would daydream about becoming a rosebush. My flowers were white and my thorns were green. I grew for eight hundred years and I adorned both kings and maidens, heroes and fathers, messiahs and wizards. I was the Pagan Flower, in my daydreams.

Then one day I was walking, as though I were asleep. I looked down where I was planted, for so many thousands of full moons. There was nothing there by the moonlight. I stared in horror at the hole in the ground, torn up by the roots. I looked to where it was, holding the plant that was also me, and it had built a withering fire.

It looked straight into my eyes, a towering darkness, a shade in the night, blotting out the light and the stars. It smiled with teeth of obsidian, and then it tossed the Pagan Flower upon the blaze.

Instantly I felt the heat where I stood barefoot in my pajamas. I crumbled, blistered and searing. I screamed, both in agony and terror. I began to crawl from it, willing myself to reach the edge of my nightmare. The creature from the place between did not want me to go, it clawed at my ankles and tried to drag me to the hole in the ground that it had uprooted me from.

Doctor Guelder had asked me when we met: "You feel you are becoming like a plant? Turning into one?"

"Is that even something that happens to people?" I asked.

"There are myths of people being turned into plants. A kind of botanical metamorphosis."

I felt a cold splash of dread as I realized I was going to say out loud what I had long believed. "I think maybe I'd like that to happen because I used to be a plant. I am not supposed to be this." I gestured to my body.

"You described an incident in which you were sleepwalking. You woke up and you found a hole where your rose bush used to be, and a monster was burning it."

"Perhaps that was just a dream." I admitted. "But the monster is real. It keeps me awake at night, for if I sleep it will come for me. And when I am sitting in class or on the bus I fall asleep, I cannot stay awake for long."

"These are all mild symptoms of conditions known as narcolepsy, insomnia and somnambulism." Doctor Guelder had told me. "I want you to come to my sleep clinic. Your stay will be voluntary, but you must come and live there so that you can receive the proper care. Your education can continue while you are there, we have a classroom."

"How would that be paid for? I am a ward of the state, there's no money."

"I own the sleep clinic. You will be my guest and I will cover all the expenses for your treatment. For me, this is a rare chance to study a unique condition."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"I don't want to be your experiment." I told Doctor Guelder. I had refused. It was not long though, that the days and nights became one kind of time, always in my nightmare.

I daydreamed of the monster when it was not there, and when it was I could not see it. Yet those two things became the same. I knew it was hunting me, stalking me, always behind me, like a shadow. I couldn't sleep or stay awake. My feet carried me wherever the monster chased me. Sometimes I awoke in strange places and other times I was in a dream, but I was wide awake, looking down at my body, and watching the monster pull me up by my roots, as the plant, and toss me onto the flames.

"You are here now. It is safe for you to face your troubles." Doctor Guelder had told me.

"Is it real? Am I mad?" I was sitting and shaking. It had felt like it had gone on and on endlessly. Finally, within the walls of the sleep clinic, I felt safe.

"Whatever was following you cannot get to you here. You can sleep soundly." Doctor Guelder told me.

I began to cry with relief. I cried myself to sleep, the terror leaving my body like a fever breaking. I had lived in fear so long, so tired, that I had forgotten what sleep even felt like.

It was dreamless and restful. When my eyes opened I was in an enormous bed of light blue sheets under a heavy blanket. The air was cool and there was a stillness, a quietness to the sleep clinic. It was as though it were a place where I was truly safe.

That is when I rolled over to face the window of morning. I saw it out there, looming behind my friends, the other roses of the hedge. The darkness touched one of them and wilted the plant as its claws gripped it, heedless of its thorns. I trembled, feeling trapped suddenly. I had not realized I had gone into the sleep clinic and it would become my prison.

"How did you sleep?" Doctor Guelder asked me.

"It was very restful. I feel more intact, more rooted. This place feels real. The pervasive disorientation of being terrorized and sleepless is gone." I reported.

"And the monster?" Doctor Guelder asked me.

My eyes watered and I covered my mouth. I wanted to tell the truth, but somehow, to say I had seen it, would spoil things. Finally, I confessed: "It is outside, waiting for me to leave this place. It grasped a bush and while it did, the plant wilted and died in its clutch."

"I will go and see this." Doctor Guelder told me. I watched from the window, apprehensive that Doctor Guelder was in some kind of danger. The creature had hidden though, leaving only the evidence of the dead plant and its footprints on the lawn.

Then my terror grew, as I saw Doctor Guelder was following the blighted trail. I couldn't see where the trail led, so I went to another window. I was just in time to see Doctor Guelder fall down, touched by the deathly thing from where it had hidden.

Doctor Guelder had personally financed the stay of the remaining patients at the sleep clinic. There was a trust set up, but some technicality allowed the bank to seize the property, and all of the patients were required to leave. The death of Doctor Guelder weighed heavily on me, for I blamed myself and also, I knew the creature was real, not just a daydream.

I felt great apprehension of leaving. The last night in the clinic was my last chance for sleep. In the morning they would evict everyone. The remaining patients all needed their stay, they needed Doctor Guelder. It was my fault the good doctor was dead, for I had brought the creature.

Back outside I looked around, seeing the roses had all died. The creature had systematically killed every flower. With all of my friends gone, I felt truly alone. I scurried down the street, knowing I was to go back to being the prey of the shadowy thing. Its touch drained life and took it quickly. I had felt myself aging when it touched me, it is how so much of my hair turned white.

I could still feel its burning grip on my ankle where it had grabbed me and tried to drag me. Back at the orphanage I sat and waited to see it. I was asked about my stay at the sleep clinic, but I was too afraid of returning to the world of nightmares to speak.

I just sat in a corner, huddled and shaking with fear. I knew it would come and find me. It would not leave me in peace.

"Don't be afraid." Doctor Guelder's voice spoke to me. "I have not abandoned you. It was only able to kill my body, but my will - my spirit - it could not harm. Here, between dreams and sleeplessness, I linger. You can hear me."

"I can hear you." I whispered.

"When it comes for you, you must overcome your fear. You must fall asleep in its presence. It is in this world, trapped like me. When you sleep, it will follow you into your dreams. There it could remain trapped. All you have to do is fall asleep in its presence. When the moment comes, I believe you will end this thing."

"I can't." I started crying. I was too afraid. I knew it had killed Doctor Guelder and it had killed the Pagan Flower and all the rest. It was a terrifying monster, and there was no way I could fall asleep in front of it.

"You have to trust me. I am certain it wants to continue to feed on you until there is nothing left of you. It won't kill you, not all at once. You are its host, the one who daydreamed it into existence. It started by killing your most precious dream, and it won't stop until there is nothing left for you to dream about. I know all about it now. I can see the disease of this nightmare thing."

"Doctor Guelder, you have to stay and help me." I said quietly. I was terrified.

"I will stay until I have healed you. I promised you I would help you, and that is my unfinished task. I will be here watching over you. When it is time to close your eyes and go to sleep, you must be brave."

"I will try." I swore, even though the thought of doing so horrified me. I trusted Doctor Guelder, and I knew I must take the chance to be free of the nightmare thing.

Then it was bedtime. The lights were all turned off and I lay in bed, shaking in dread. I knew it was coming for me. That is when I saw it there, looming in the darkness. It was watching me, staring into my eyes, keeping me awake. I was paralyzed with fear, feeling the burn it had left on me and recalling the death of Doctor Guelder.

"Go to sleep. It is okay, I am watching over you." Doctor Guelder told me.

I tried and tried again but I couldn't sleep. My feeling of horror that I was trapped awake and in the presence of the nightmare thing grew and grew. Finally, I felt like I had to scream.

I stood alone by the hole where the Pagan Flower had stood for eight centuries. My memory of all the joy and beauty that I had given the world flooded back to me. I saw that the shadow I had cast had sat in bitter resentment, jealous of me.

When I had become a human, born into the world, my shadow had long held a vow of vengeance upon me. It was determined to keep me from resting, and to devour me, every last bite of my life, sipping upon my years, stealing my childhood and killing whatever I cared about and any who cared about me. The nightmare creature was there, in my memories, in my dream.

That is when I began to scream at it. My voice, a wail of terror, became as a cry of defiance and anger. The creature shrank and fell, splintering and melting. As a liquid it lay bubbling, like the dying shadow of the burning bush. I turned and looked to where my roses had once stood.

"You will plant them again. This you will know. And the nightmare is over." Doctor Guelder told me. Then I was alone.

When I opened my eyes, the creature was gone, but upon my chest, with fresh dew, lay a rose of white.