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The Lucid Dream- a flash fiction horror

Typed it yesterday 12:47 to 1:20 AM. Ending was originally different, but I opted for the open ending.





The Lucid Dream
Anh Tuan Van/Daxisheart



The child, Alan, awoke to the sound of his baby sister crying. Alan got out of bed, and walked to his sister's crib. Leaning over the baby's crib, he wondered how he seemed to the child, and then suddenly, he knew how horrible and scary he looked.

To the little baby, Danna, in the crib, there Alan was, a being that had awoken in the night. This evil being loomed over the crib, Danna's only source of comfort. There was no love in Alan's eyes, unlike those of Danna's mother or father, there was only an unfeeling indifference. The single streetlamp outside flickered, and the silhouette of Alan appeared and disappeared. It was a monster, Alan was a monster. It was because of that right there that Danna cried and screamed even more, hoping for her parents to come and take Alan away.

Alan blinked. Strange. He'd felt it, he'd really felt it. He'd understood how the little baby felt, how Danna seemed to fear him. Not that he could blame the little thing. Dan seemed to sense how Alan didn't care or love her, and in this case Danna was particularly right. Alan didn't like her. Not even a little bit. The moment that his parents found out that they were pregnant, they were ecstatic, and completely ignored Alan. When he got straight A's on his report card, they signed it and just asked what he'd wanted. They didn't even praise him. When he got into a fight and beat out the other kid's teeth, his parents just sighed and asked how much it'd cost. They didn't even ask why he did it. All his parents were focused on was the little monstrosity that was growing in his mother's stomach or whatever. To Alan, he'd already hated the little thing, before it was even born.

Then, it happened, the thing that his parents were hoping for: a little girl. The baby was a little girl, and that was absolutely amazing, wasn't it? Alan... he didn't even need to exist anymore. When the girl, Danna, was delivered, the nurse let Alan hold her. With the baby in his arms, Alan hoped to feel love, to feel something, even maybe hate. But that had worn away a long time ago. He didn't care, he didn't want to care. Holding the baby in his arms, he was sick of how weak it was, to think that if he dropped it for a moment, its head would shatter and die. So he didn't. He just gave her back and stalked away.

And now, the baby was in his room. Alone and unprotected. The girl cried too much, his parents had said. They couldn't sleep, they couldn't rest, they couldn't eat. They'd then set up the crib in Alan's room, without even his permission. One day, back home from school, it was just there. Even when the baby tortured them so much, they still didn't care about Alan.

So now here the baby was. Alone, in his room. With the annoying crying baby.

A knife suddenly appeared in his hands. Alan frowned, looking down at it. What was a knife doing there, a knife shouldn't be there. Suddenly, as quick as it had appeared, the knife disappeared.

Alan scratched his head. This was strange. Very strange. Alan looked around the room, and then he noticed why this was so strange.

It was a dream.

Alan laughed. So, his sister's cries were so loud that they penetrated even his dreams. How very eerie it was, for him to notice that it was a dream. Alan started walking, and then noticed how everything was. The entire room looked exactly as he imagined it, how he believed his room to be. What a strange dream.

He looked outside the window, and then he saw the single flickering streetlamp. He nodded. Of course it would be there. How often had he awoken in the dead of the night because of the thing's noise? He;d stared out often enough, so that it was now here.

The house across the street was poorly sketched in this dream. He'd barely visited the people there, and it was so boring every single time. Of course he would dream it badly. It was as sketchy as the background.

Alan paused. He wondered how large this dream was. Walking to the doorway, he opened it, to find nothing. There was absolutely nothing at all past the doorway. There was neither light or darkness, an absence of both. The frame of the doorway was the only thing here. Alan attempted to find out if it had a floor, and it didn't. He quickly withdrew his foot, just a little bit scared. He closed the door.

That was scary.

Huh, so that was the parameters of his dreams. Just his own little room, and honestly, since he never used his room a lot besides for sleeping(he was always off with his friends), the room was quite small. That was sad.

Alan pinched himself, hoping to wake up. Wincing at the pain, he noticed that he was still in the dream. He frowned. That was what they always said on TV: if you pinch yourself in a dream, you'll wake up.

Alan sighed, sitting on his bed. He was so bored here.

A knife appeared in his hands.

He groaned. "You're not supposed to be here."

It disappeared.

That was annoying. He didn't have a knife in his room, except for the one he used to open letters.

A knife appeared in his hands.

"Hey!" Alan threw it across the room, and it slammed into the wall with a solid thunk. "I said I only had a letter opener!"

A letter opener appeared in his hands.

He gave another frustrated groan.

Then he paused. This was a dream, if a weird and boring one. He looked to his sister, his very annoying sister. He gave another glance at his knife. After some deliberation, he shrugged.

Might as well.

Walking up to Danna's crib again, his said aloud, "I wanna see how Danna feels about me again."

Immediately, he felt it: the fear, the primal fear that just could not be expressed in words yet. Danna couldn't say anything, she didn't know how to say anything, so her immature mind could only summon up primal, animalistic fear at the monster that slowly approached her crib. His one claw gleamed by the single light of the flickering streetlamp. His figure was of the night, and he was coming... to... hurt... HER!

Alan jerked back, shaking his head. Scary. Luckily, this was dream. Danna was right about that last bit, though, he was coming to hurt her, although this really was only a dream. He was just doing something to pass the time.

Plunging the letter opener into his sister's body, it suddenly turned into a knife. "No, you're a letter opener!" It turned right back, causing Alan to roll his eyes, completely indifferent to the dying screams of his sister. He stabbed her weak body again, piercing her lungs. This time, it didn't turn into a knife, which was so much easier. He wasn't comfortable around knives- he'd seen lots of horror shows with insane freaks using knives.

His sister gave one last gurgling breath, and then stopped moving. Alan took the letter opener out, and it turned back into a knife.

"Didn't I throw you into the wall?"

Alan turned, and the mark was there, but the blood-stained knife was in his hand. He shrugged, and then went over and jammed it back into the wall.

"Stay."

Alan looked down at his hands. He groaned, and thought to go to the bathroom to clean himself, when he remembered that his dream didn't have a bathroom.

He sat down on his bed, and sighed. This was boring.

"I want to sleep."

Immediately, a light-headed feeling came over him, and he felt happy. This was one boring night, so the coming sleep was quite nice. At least he didn't have to contend with his sister's cries anymore. Who knows, she might be sleeping for real, since Alan couldn't hear her crying anymore.

He slept.
 
First of all, this caught my eye.
The child, Alan, awoke to the sound of his baby sister crying. Alan got out of bed, and walked to his sister's crib. Leaning over the baby's crib, he wondered how he seemed to the child, and then suddenly, he knew how horrible and scary he looked.

To the little baby, Danna, in the crib, there Alan was, a being that had awoken in the night.

You have a lot of repetition going on in those first few lines. You need to find some variance in there. It's alright to have maybe one word repeat for emphasis, but having multiple words repeat that much in only four sentences is too much, in my opinion.

As for the rest of it...I love it! It was interesting, it kept my attention throughout the whole thing, it was detailed but not too wordy, and it flowed really well. Except for that first section I pointed out, everything else was really good. You did a great job with this! :thumb:
 

candle

Sponsor

It was very interesting, and I liked how Alan knew he was in a dream, but he did seem just a bit too awake and alert.
 
Haunting... It goes to show how casually some people can take killing... Makes you wonder if we don't kill because we have humanity... Or because we know we'd spiral into trouble and sadness...

Humanity is a lie. Fear is what keeps us sane.
 

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