The Bleeding Dream
705 Words
The note lay on the floor where she had dropped it. Its words throbbed in her memory with every blink and every breath.
"He’s watching you".
Lena hadn’t picked it up. She couldn’t. It sat like a venomous insect in the corner of the room, harmless in appearance but lethal to touch.
She'd shoved the diary itself onto her nightstand, its weight pressing on her even from across the room. She couldn’t look at it, couldn’t bear the thought of opening it again.
Every shadow seemed sharper tonight. Every hum of the radiator or slam of a door down the hall made her flinch. On campus earlier, she’d scanned every face in the crowd, searching for the boy with the scar, certain he would appear again. Certain he was near.
By midnight, her body gave in to exhaustion. She slipped under the covers fully clothed, phone clutched in one hand, staring at the faint outline of the diary in the dark.
She told herself, "Just sleep. Just for a little while".
The dark folded around her.
************
It wasn’t a dream.
Not like the vague, blurry mess of images and fragments she usually drifted into. This was too sharp and too physical.
The first thing she noticed was the smell.
Wood smoke, acrid and clinging. Damp earth, thick as rot. It filled her lungs and stung her throat.
The second thing was the cold.
A dawn chill that bit through her hoodie and jeans, burrowing into her bones. Her breath came in white puffs, curling in the early light.
Then the sights sharpened.
She stood in the center of a muddy village square. The ground squelched beneath her sneakers, wet and uneven. All around her was a crowd—faces pinched, gaunt, and twisted with something between fear and rage. Their clothes were strange: ragged wool and rough linen, cloaks pulled tight against the morning frost.
And every single one of them was staring forward.
Lena followed their gaze to the square’s center.
A wooden stake rose from the muck, piled with straw and dry hay. A woman was bound to it, her wrists tied tight behind the post, her hair filled with sweat. Her body trembled, but her eyes—her eyes were burning and alive with defiance.
And those eyes turned, found Lena’s in the crowd.
The world tilted. For a split second, Lena swore the woman wasn’t looking through the mob. She was looking through time. Directly at her.
The connection hit like a blow. Lena staggered back, breath ripped from her chest.
A man’s voice roared behind her. It was Harsh and commanding.
“Light it!”
The torch touched the straw.
The flames caught instantly, racing upward with a roar that swallowed the morning air. Heat slammed into Lena’s face, so intense it ripped a scream from her throat. The woman at the stake flinched but did not look away from her. Not once.
The smell of burning hair, burning flesh—Lena gagged, choking, clawing at her throat as the smoke thickened.
The woman’s lips moved through the fire. Lena couldn’t hear the words, but she felt them, each one seared into her bones.
Then the flames swallowed everything.
Lena jolted upright in bed, gasping like she’d been underwater.
Her room was dark and cold, her sheets twisted around her legs. She clawed at the air, coughing hard enough to make her eyes water.
There was no smoke. No fire. No crowd.
But her nostrils still burned with the stench of charred wood and flesh. The phantom heat still seared her skin.
She doubled over, dragging in clean, cold air, tears streaking her face. Her heart pounded so violently it hurt.
It wasn’t just a dream.
She was there.
She rocked forward, clutching her knees, trembling so hard her teeth chattered. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe past the lingering taste of ash.
Her gaze landed on the nightstand.
The diary sat there. Silent and Closed.
Her shaking hand reached for it before she could stop herself. She didn’t even open it. She didn’t need to.
Because across the cover, scrawled in rust-red ink that looked too much like dried blood, were the words:
"Do you feel her pain now?"
- Writer
