STORY STARTER

Submitted by Jessie Novak

Write a story about a character who is tormented by their hyper-realistic nightmares each night.

Try to think of how these nightmares cause the character to respond to everyday tasks, and what these nightmares depict.

Gallows Of The Mind

Every day felt like a countdown, each tick of the clock was a reminder that sanity was slipping through his fingers. The wooden floor was cool against the bottom of his feet, trying to pull him back to reality. He paced back and forth in the dimly lit room, unable to sleep due to the terrors that plague his never resting mind. 

His head snaps from left to right, scanning his surroundings. He continued to pace and murmur incoherent thoughts to himself, making an attempt to decipher what tricks his mind was playing. 

He reaches forward towards the air, grasping at the nothingness in front of him. His feelings overtake him and he falls to his knees, body wracked with desperate sobs. He cries out, trying to drown out the voices that have taken over his thoughts. His fists beat down on the floor. His body followed suit, collapsing from exhaustion, yet his mind was still running full speed. He couldn’t claw his way back to reality, the disorientation taking over him. 

He laid on the floor, the only noise was his sniffling and heavy breath, the only movement was him shivering against the cold wood. He hears the door creak open, he pushes himself up off the floor, terrified. The man that fuels his nightmares appears to him in the doorway. A tall and dark creature, hardly a man. It had no face, just long limbs and a slim figure. It crept around the frame of the door, slowly morphing into the ceiling, crawling around. 

He stood and watched as the creature roamed around the ceiling, trying to determine whether it was actually happening. He was too scared to try and reach for it, with the underlying fear that it was real. He inevitably decided to walk out the door of the bedroom, trying to escape from what felt like death. 

He wandered aimlessly through the house seeking any form of distraction to avoid the inevitable doom. Why did it feel like he was nearing the gallows?** **He gasped for air, picking up speed. He began to shout in fear, knocking into things around the house. He felt disoriented, but why? What was happening? How did it come to this?

His panic continued to rise, causing him to cry once again. He sobbed and screamed running around the house, the creature seeming as though it was chasing him around. He needed to get out. He needed to escape this. 

He ran out the front door of his house, blinded by the sunlight he rarely sees. He didn’t know where he was going, he just started to run. The voices in his mind started to scream, they were restless. He couldn’t remember what was real and what wasn’t, he just needed to run. He couldn't comprehend what was in front of him anymore. He screamed at the top of his lungs. He had wound up at the top of a nearby hill, overlooking the city he had grown up in. He didn’t recognize anything anymore. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was a pause, and then he just kept running forward, screaming and shouting to drown out the noise in his head, to escape what he thought was coming for him. He hit the ground hard, and suddenly there was silence. His mind was finally at peace.

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