i crawl in the moss. it is easy to find god.
she is a cluster of eels beneath my palms.
I ask of her, am i doing any of this life thing right?
and she, with her many mouths,
says nothing.

━━ Outbreaks, Kitchen Mckeown.

Some day, not so far from now, you will be dead.

Your skull will be as empty as a robin's nest during the autumnal equinox, full of the whistling wind and the hollow space left behind by a missing consciousness. Your eyes will have been eaten by the crows and the cavities that linger will become home to a colony of maggots that make a feast out of the decaying brain tissue abandoned by your soul. Death is inevitable; you are not yet dead, but still you are rotting.

Colette Donahue is one of the strange few who find comfort in the inescapable nature of death, fascinated really, by the idea of her empty corpse sitting in a grave six feet under becoming irreversibly entangled with the Earth. The giver of life back again to embrace her when breath no longer fills her lungs and blood no longer pumps through her heart.

All these notions of what awaits her after her clock stops ticking has gotten Colette to consider her death in great detail; what will be her demise? A heart attack? Cancer? Murder? In the past, the idea of slipping into blank nothingness, of falling into oblivion, sent a thrilling chill down Colette's spine and caused her to ache with a yearning to know just what will be her end. Never did she think her death would be caused by Colette's favorite of Earth's elements. Water, the drink to quench all thirsts, the relief on a hot summer day spent playing in the sun with nothing but a hose and a sprinkler to keep two friends entertained. In her final moments, it prunes her fingertips and filters into her airways, robbing her of the oxygen she used to take for granted. She sinks further into the depths, growing cold as the sun forsakes her too...

      But before death, there is life.

The extremely small and insignificant town of Mystic Falls knows that when you're in need of a musical act to spice up a party or bring the house down at a school event, there's only one band to call: The Cherry Knots! With their eccentric sound and well-rounded skill, the all-girls trio quickly became a favorite for any and all venues to host, rising to the highest level of stardom one could in a tiny backwater town in Virginia. But who are the girls with the borderline magical talent behind the instruments?

On the drums, there's the wildly outgoing and extrovert-to-the-extreme Sidney Fell. With her dirty-blonde locks and smile brighter than the sun, she's got the world eating out of the palm of her hand. Her otherworldly ability of persuasion is what started the band in the first place, her wicked skills with a pair of wooden sticks and endless optimism enough to convince her two closest friends to sign up for a Battle of the Bands competition in freshman year. Her other half, and a genius with a synthesizer, is the hard-headed and fashionable Morgan Kobayashi. Ever since her twelfth birthday, when she received her first piano and her cat Gumball, Morgan wanted nothing more than to make music that rocks. It was truly a no-brainer that she would become a permanent member of the band her girlfriend put together.

Last but certainly not least, taking lead vocals and strumming the electric guitar, is the decidedly strange and paradoxical Colette Donahue. With the voice of an angel, any audience to one of The Cherry Knots' gigs are immediately ensnared into the music. But when she's not scribbling lyrics down on the corner of a napkin from the Mystic Grill, the Donahue girl is combing through every biological science book she can get her hands on, all in the name of escaping the small-town life as soon as humanly possible.

Yet, in the back of her mind, there is the tantalizing shadow of the ending that looms in all of us. There's no way to escape the abyss of darkness when someone's time has truly come, a fact that Colette knows all too well with the hazy memory of her parents' untimely demise hanging over her head, but to play with death and toe the line between this realm and the next is a temptation that many people fall victim to, including the Donahue girl herself. She fears the void has taken her foster mother when the woman mysteriously disappears, leaving behind a newborn little girl and a family that adored her.

Over the following months, Colette's obsession with the macabre and her insatiable curiosity reaches all new extremes as she ponders what could cause a healthy thirty-seven-year-old woman to just skip town one day. She digs and digs, using her cumulative knowledge of the justice system to breathe down the necks of the Mystic Falls Police Department to solve her foster mother's missing persons case before her foster father is run into the ground trying to juggle raising four kids and his job at the nearby Whitmore College.

Little did Colette know that her investigation would lead to her uncovering the petrifying secrets her microscopic new living place has spent centuries trying to cover up, and all because she nearly ran over the broody new kid before her summer vacation even started. Colette decided that it's true what they say about Junior Year:

      IT'S A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!

LAURA HARRIER  ۩ COLETTE DONAHUE

THE LAKE MONSTER / SEVENTEEN

"Will I ever gain control of this hungry thing inside me?"

PAUL WESLEY  ۩ STEFAN SALVATORE

THE MARTYR / ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-ONE

"Hungry things like you and I are never satisfied, Colette."

FEATURING THE APPEARANCES OF. . . 

Morgan Kobayashi ✦ Hayley Kiyoko
Sidney Fell ✦ Zoey Deutch
Corey Stanford ✦ Jordan Calloway
Simon Fittz ✦ young!Thomas Brodie-Sangster

Dominic Herrera ✦ Oscar Issac
Iphigenia Herrera ✦ Catherine O'Hara
Jenna Sommers ✦ Sara Canning
Billie Yang ✦ Sandra Oh
Damon Salvatore ✦ Ian Somerhalder
Alaric Saltzman ✦ Jeffery Dean Morgan

Petrova Doppelgängers ✦ Troian Bellisario 
Caroline Forbes ✦ Sydney Sweeney
Bonnie Bennett ✦ Kat Graham
Jeremy Gilbert ✦ Charlie Gillespie
Tyler Lockwood ✦ Colton Haynes
Matt Donovan ✦ Lucas Till

GREETINGS . . . is it time for the annual republication of Nightmare already?? All jokes aside I am completely serious this will be the iteration that gets written and completed, I am manifesting this now! I wanted to get this started earlier this summer but I had my archaeology field school (!!!) in the spring keeping me exhausted and busy and then I had summer classes (I can't believe I'm a rising college senior oof), but I have a couple weeks before fall semester begins so I am crossing my fingers my motivation holds out 🤞so I can get lots written. Thanks y'all for sticking out on this story's wild ride <3 

CONTENT WARNINGS . . . This story will contain mature themes and some topics discussed in this book may not be for everyone; your mental health takes priority so if any of the following subjects are triggering to you, perhaps reconsider reading this book. Nightmare will contain descriptions of gruesome murder, sexual scenes, drug and alcohol abuse, mentions and descriptions of past sexual assault, blood and gore, cannibalism, vampirism and the werewolf curse, character death, mentions of physical and emotional child abuse, and slight romanticization of death.

DISCLAIMER . . . This is a fanfiction for The Vampire Diaries, sometimes taking place during the events of canon. Not all events or lore in this story is true to the canon of the show/books. 1) I do not own any of the original Vampire Diaries characters or plotlines that are mentioned in this story, those belong to L.J. Smith and (unfortunately) Julie Plec. 2) I only own my original characters and any plot points that deviate from canon, including the alternate lore of sirens that will replace the ones from canon. The layout for this story was inspired by katsukist. The coloring for the moodboards is by fadedresources on deviantart. Everyone oogle the amazing character/story gif at the beginning of this chapter made by the amazing eternityei (formerly guccistarks)! A giant thank you to the wonderful evangingtherealm for making the closing gif for this fic!

SPECIAL THANKS . . . to vintagegrace and angeIeyes for loving this story & Colette as much as I do!

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