In the middle of a gorgeous town was a large and beautiful manor. It was tall, wide, and white. The entrance had smooth marble pillars and a stairway that led to a wide marble gray porch. The doors were tall and wooden. The sunlight was just beginning to pour through behind the clouds, so in all three bedrooms were sound asleep family members with no idea what was ahead of them.

In the smallest bedroom was a boy — tall, lean, and pale. He had dark and curly hair. He was scrawled quite messily around in his black, gray, and white blankets and maroon red pillows; one arm hugged his pillow and the other touched the opposite end of the bed (his head resting against this one), while one of his legs was perfectly straight and still, and the other leg falling off the mattress itself. On his bed was also a black laptop open to a blank screen. Next to his bed were two bedside drawers on each side. One of them had an empty retainer case on it, and the other had a black cell phone with white earbuds connected to them. The boy was still in his clothes — a black T-shirt and light gray sweatpants. He looked around thirteen to fourteen years old.

To an outsider, it would seem that the boy were sleeping soundly, but he knew that he had never had more restless sleep than this.

Nightmares.

That one word summed up everything he'd experienced during the nighttime ever since the Incident when he was six years old. He didn't like to speak of it. No one did. Anyone who knew the slightest dash of information knew that it brought him uneasiness quicker than one could say "nausea."

His nightmares, however different they might be, always ended with the same thing: he was trapped in a swirl of red, orange, and yellow, and then felt this eerie sense of his entire soul breaking and tearing into thousands of pieces that could never be put back to gether, so that he was alive, but in an awful state — a state like torture. A half-consciousness, so that he knew he was alive but could never get to the living. An eternal life where he was exiled into his own mind forever, left to ponder on the past, never allowed to go out and make his own future.

And after what seemed like hours but was most likely mere minutes in the cell of his own soul, he would wake up.

This was why the boy tried his very hardest to stand straight and stay awake. Other children feared heights and spiders. This boy feared sleep.

But no one could know why.

No one.

Never.

The boy suddenly jolted awake. He still lied in his position in bed. Tonight, his nightmare had been slightly different. He hadn't broken his own mind. His mind had been broken by an outsider... The same swirling, fierce colors had spun him around until he felt like he could regurgitate his insides... Then the colors had been ripped away by some powerful outside being, forcing him to fall through the tears and eventually into his soul cell.

He often wondered what exactly the nightmares were trying to communicate to him — and why the ending was so similar. And what connection did it have to the Incident that had happened eight years ago?

The boy rubbed his eyes, which were a dark blue color that made his skin seen ever so pale. Why did he have to be the one with the nightmares? His sister was the much more secure one in the house — could it not have been her?

The boy finally stood up. It was best to leave his bed before its midnight soul-prison's aura began acting up again and pulled him back in with a magnetic force.

No.

I am not broken.

I am not imprisoned.

I am Aiden Donovan Andrews. And I am free.

But as Aiden told this to himself, another voice that wasn't his own crept into his mind, soft and gravelly, like an almost silent snake slithering across a crudely paved street. You are free now, it said. You are free as long as I allow you to be. But that will not be forever.

In fact, your time is coming quite soon.

It's time for your nightmares to become reality.