While She Sleeps

One-eyed monsters. Snakes scattered on the floor. Water around me, above my head. It has been a month since I started dreaming of these things. At first, I thought it was a mere effect of the spooky movies I had chosen to watch at 2 AM instead of sleeping. But, ironically, they're occurring more often lately when I stopped watching movies. I had to admit that what I hear, see, and feel in my dreams are even more realistic than my own reality. Spooked, I decided it's better to stick with my reality than what my dreams are offering me. I shunned my fascination for movie-watching before dawn. Surprisingly, I even managed to sleep earlier than I usually do just to keep myself from the urge to see blood-squirts and utterly strange creatures slashing bodies in haunted woods. But the dreams did not vanish. Instead, they're coming more often and more intensely. At 4 in the morning, I woke up from the same dream. I was panting, cold sweats formed on the sides of my face and on my forehead. I looked around, at the ceiling, and at the window jalousies, dimly lit by the moonlight. No snakes glaring at me viciously, no one-eyed monsters running after me, shouting 'Hamavuzzi!' and laughing evilly. I am not under a 20-feet-deep black water at all, clearly safe from drowning. I'm on my bed, now totally awake. Yet I can still feel my skin cold after the ground, where I was standing, bizarrely turned into a deep, wide lake inside of my dreams. The lake was too familiar only that I don't remember anything, a memory or some kind, other than the feeling of familiarity itself. In an instant, I was under the water. There were slimy rocks below, and my feet were touching them, while I was wagging my arms and pushing my feet, trying to get to the surface. Nothing was holding me from below but I was struggling to get myself up. Everything felt heavy and dark. I couldn't do anything else than stare at the faint light coming from the surface, probably the moonlight, as I felt amounts of water entering my mouth, going down my throat. My eyelids became heavy and before I could slip into an enticing darkness, a voice, sobbing, suddenly echoed out of nowhere. Penny. Please, wake up. Wake up. Wake up... Penny... And so I woke up. Now sitting on the bed, panting a little less now, I instantly lifted my hand to touch my neck. The drowning feeling was finally subsiding. But strangely, there is a small lump in my throat, slippery and soft. Suddenly feeling a bit nauseated, I opened my mouth and, as if I was a magic instrument being used by a professional magician for his jaw-dropping tricks, the lump bubbles out of my lips, then popped in the air right in front of my eyes.