• Have you ever had a dream that starts out wonderful and it seems perfect, but then turns into something morbid and unaccountably horrifying? And you want to wake up, you feel yourself tossing and turning, but your brain works against you. Your soul undergoes a series of divulsion, the discarded fragments torn and frayed, left behind at the end of your vicious nightmare.
    I had never had the feeling before. But this time, I knew what it was like. I experienced the horror that was this unspeakable nightmare.
    My body had drifted slowly into slumber that night, feeling cold with the lingering December frost. I had fallen asleep, twidling my thumbs with anxiety of the day to follow, how I'd show Andrea how I felt. Christmas was coming, and I had wanted to show her.
    My dreamland seemed too vivid that night. Like this was another painting, other than the one that was Andrea. I couldn't place who the artist was this time.
    I rested upon a park bench. I was in my town, I knew that for sure. This was a very familiar place. I knew the sights, the smells and the sounds. But yet, there was an essence that I was not alone. And yet I was.
    I turned my gaze toward the morning sun. Though there were no clouds, the sun seemed so dim. The sky was not blue, but more of tinted grey. The trees that seemed plastered against the sky were now less vibrant. Every tree now seemed like a weeping willow.
    My eyes returned to the world around me. I looked at the people. They had no faces. They were puppets, I realized. I could see the strings that held them up. Their movements seemed so limited in this world. As if they were being controlled by something. They could not move freely.
    I gaped in horror at the faceless people, just going about as though nothing were odd at all. My eyes quickly darted around me. The sweet sounds I had originally heard suddenly became mournful and sad. The birds seemed to hang their heads in despair. Something I had never seen done. Nothing had seemed so sullen in all of my teen years.
    The chatter around me faded from my ears and then all I heard was silence. Nothing moved. The world was frozen. The colorful world I had entered had now become black and white. I stood up and started walking down the path.
    "How peculiar," I muttered. But my voice seemed so loud. It echoed across the park. It vibrated off of every single lifeless object.
    I began to wonder if I was really dreaming. This seemed all too real. You only come across one of those dreams once in a lifetime. And here it was. Portrayed right in front of me. I still had yet to discover the artist painting this picture.
    Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw red. Vibrant red. And a dancing silhouette in the distance. Stunned, I sprinted out to the majestic figure, as curiosity overwhelmed me. What could be so illustrious in this dead world?
    As I got closer, I realized that this was a very familiar figure. A young girl with pale white skin and raven black hair, which was curled loosely and partially pulled back into a loose half ponytail. She wore a strapless black dress, caressed by lace at the bottom hem of the skirt. At the top of her dress, a red rose was clipped near her breast, lighting up her entire person. While she danced, her ocean eyes flashed with every step.
    Andrea.
    I stood there, puzzled. Why was she in my dream? And why was she the only one in color? I understood that something was wrong. But I didn't know what. Not yet.
    I saw her smile. She giggled and took a spin. She gently grabbed my hand and pulled me into her dance, which she didn't even seemed fatigued from. I was in awe. I was dancing with the girl of my dreams I had met not more than a month ago. It seems silly for me to have fallen head over heels for her in that time, even in a dream, but I knew she was my destiny.
    I danced with her. I cradled her in my arms as we began to slow. Our steps were in sync, which was incredible, since I was never a good dancer. I rested my head on hers. This was heaven. Forget the frozen world around us. It could stay that way forever. This was euphoria. A utopia. It was complete bliss.
    And, in that moment of pure happiness, she looked up at me. She moved closer to me. But her face stopped, just millimeters from mine. So badly did I want it to touch. But she stopped. Then she seemed to edge away from my body altogether. But she held onto my hands. Then, she seemed to gasp. Her eyes dilated. They rolled back into her head.
    She then collapsed into my outstretched arms. I shrieked. What had happened? This is what I sensed would happen. But before I could have another second to think, she vanished into ashes. She seemed to burst into flame in my arms, but she did not burn me. The ashes slipped through my fingers and hit the ground.
    My mouth trembled. It couldn't be...this wasn't the paradise I had originally entered. No, it definitely wasn't. The faceless puppets remained motionless around me. Suddenly, everything began to melt. The trees dripped their lifeless color onto the ground. The people soon become puddles of grey.
    I was horrified. It was inexplicably the worst nightmare I had ever had. Dali. He was the ingenius artist behind my dream today. And he decided to torture me with it. I screamed.
    I woke up, beads of sweat coming down every acre of my person. At the horror I had just seen, I pulled my knees to my body, buried my head in them and cried.