Page 13 of The Nightmare King

“Stop saying I’m not real,” he growled roughly in my ear. “Fucking stop it. That’s your problem. You’re too in your head about this.” He fucked me harder then, so hard my head hit against my headboard. I could feel him with each slam against my cervix, so deep, so real.

“Okay,” I agreed, feeling tears of sorrow and ecstasy creeping from the corner of my eyes. And then the knife. The dull corner of the blade rubbed against my clit, and with each slam inside me wetness pooled over my lower stomach. I looked down in horror to see him thrusting, each movement of his hips driving his pelvis into the sharp side of the blade. “You’re hurting yourself,” I cried, feeling my release build and build.

“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re hurting me. You’re hurting me, you’re fucking killing me, Lilac. Lucy. Why are you acting this way? Don’t you see how worried we all are about you?”

I wanted to respond, to ask more questions, but all I could focus on was the feel of his movements, the blood that poured over me with each of his gashes, the feel of the solid metal against my clit. Holding tight to the back of his mask.

He groaned through his release, and I came undone. My orgasm vibrating through my core as I tugged at the mask. Surprisingly, he let me pull it off, and look into the violet eyes I so desperately craved.

“Mare,” I whispered. But I could feel it then. The realization worse than the nightmare, worse than the terror or the bite of a knife. I was waking up.

I grabbed his wrist and pulled the bloody knife to my neck. “Do it,” I begged through sobs. “Keep me here with you.”

Blue and red flashed through my windows and sirens blared before someone in the house shouted. “This is the police! Everyone come out with your hands up!”

“No,” I sobbed. “Why does this always happen? Make it stop,” I begged like a pathetic child, feeling Mare slip out of me. He stood, straightening his robe and reapplying his mask.

“Fall asleep and wait for me,” he said in the tender voice I’d come to love. “You have a choice, Lilac. You always have the choice; you just have to choose between life and death.” And then the door to my bedroom was kicked open, ghost face lunged with his knife, and a gunshot rang out?—

I fell belly-first onto a wobbly bed.

JASON

Not just any bed, a bunk bed. The air was thick with humidity, crickets chirped outside the window screens. Twilight filtered across the splintered wood floors as I took in a room with four other unoccupied bunkbeds. Sitting up, I noticed a white shirt with the words Sapphire Lake Camp printed in blue on the front, I was wearing blue striped shorts, and no shoes, of course, always barefoot.

Nothing else was consistent aside from my bare feet.

And him.

Always him.

A buzzy intercom dinged before a low voice sounded. “Good evening, Camp Sapphire Lake campers. Due to recent events, a sundown curfew will be taking effect immediately. Please calmly return to your cabins and lock your windows and doors. Do not, we repeat, do not open your door for anyone once you and your fellow campers are inside. Good night, campers. Us camp counselors truly hope each of you make it until the morning.”

Oh, hell. That was enough to make fear spread through my body like a forest fire. My arms prickled with goosebumps as a chilly breeze wafted into the muggy room. No campers came, though I heard a few running outside. I should have gotten up to close the windows like the camp counselors advised, but I knew it wouldn’t matter, I was stuck in another one of his scenes. Another nightmare.

It was going to be a multi showing horror kind of night, wasn’t it?

I kind of wanted to wake up.

I kind of wanted to never wake up.

What would happen if he killed me in my dream? Would I stay with him, or would I truly die? Did it matter, even?

Darkness settled from violet to blues, the shades of nightmare and fear that reminded me of him. Why did he always want to scare me? It worked because I grew more frightened by the moment as I considered my options. I could venture outside and explore the camp, or I could wait for him to find me in whatever horrific way he deemed fit. Rocking back and forth, rattling the top bunk, I was afraid, but I was also thankful to not be awake. My slumberous slayings were far more interesting than my mundane awake nothingness.

Radio interference screeched across the camp and made me jump out of my skin as a deep, familiar voice crooned through the summer air. “Campers, oh, campers of Sapphire Lake.”

My mouth dried, and my inner thighs warmed. It was him. My nightmare man.

“All I sense here is sex, and fornication, and disgusting desires. Especially from one of you…”

My knees pressed together involuntarily.

“Don’t fret, I will rid the world of you and your disease.”

The intercom screeched, and various campers screamed in the distance. They didn’t need to worry though— I did. But I made no move to escape. He would find me, and he would?—

There was a heavy pounding on my door, making the whole cabin shake. The knob rattled— locked. That would make him mad. My breath froze in my throat. He wouldn’t truly harm me… would he? Honestly, I didn’t know the answer to that.

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