"Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams."
~Bram Stoker, Dracula

–•–•–•–

She walks into the extremely dark woods without thinking. The only thing glowing in the darkness is the gem on her forehead.

"Hello?" Her voice gets stopped by the thick wall of trees and foliage A strong gust of wind blows the leaves on the trees. They whisper to Raven.

"This way...garden..." the wind blows east and she follows it mindlessly.

She goes in a straight line until she gets to withered garden, decrepit and abandoned, the small dead flowers rustle in the strong winds.

Raven gets an overwhelming feeling of dread all of a sudden.
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As soon as she takes a step into the garden of death and destruction, the trees whisper again.

"Don't go through...go around..." The voices were all in sync and soft to the ears. She felt anxious there. Like she wasn't supposed to be there.

"Why?" The voices don't answer and the wind stops. She steps back to go around, but instead makes the choice to walk straight through.

"Shouldn't have...going to die now..." The branches reach down to her and grab at her.

"Hey! Let me go!"

"Warned you...now have to pay...our children..."

"What? Ouch! Stop that!"

"Don't deserve mercy..." They grabbed her by every limb and tried to literally rip her apart.

"Azerath Metrion Zinthos!" With a small shockwave she pushes the woody arms off of her and B-lines to the mountain range. She goes as fast as she can, her heart pounding out of her chest. Her hands ball up  and she stops right at the foot of the mountain.

"Return..."

"Agh!" She unballs her fist and heads up the mountain. It gets colder and colder as she heads towards the summit. When she gets to the top there are no hands. She breathes out heavily. "Phew."

"DIE....!" The hands come out of literally nowhere and push her off the mountain. When she falls if doesn't feel like she's falling. It feels like she's floating. But when she hits the ground she hits it with a loud thud! as she landed on a thick patch of snow.

She sank into it and it acted as a pillow. It saved her life. The snow was fresh and soft but just like everything else would grow to be icy and cold.

"Ugh..." When she opened her eyes she wasn't at the foot of a mountain. She was in the bedroom she woke up in before. "What?" She turned around and saw herself in the bed. "Wait, is this a dream?" She reaches out to the bed to touch herself and her hand togoes straight through. "It is a dream. And now I'm lucid dreaming." She leaves the room and looks down the hall. There is space on either end. Literal space. Stars and nebulae and galaxies. She closes her eyes and instead of space is Garfield's bedroom door. "I'm going to find out his deal."

She opened the door and Gar was sprawled out over the top bunk bed. Not seeming to care where his limbs landed. Haphazardly or not.

Either that or he was extremely tired.

She reached out to make sure she was still in a dream. She readied herself, but then stopped. She froze. She couldn't move at all.

She could no longer control what happened in the dream.

Garfield's eyes snapped open. He had a bright red cat's-eye.

Weren't his eyes blue?

Then he shoots up from the bed and grabs hold of her arms and squeezes them into her body.

His razor sharp nails dig into her skin and with the blink of an eye her becomes a warped, demon-like figure, his sclera were pitch black and he had fangs.

This isn't Garfield.

She knew who it was though.

"Leave me alone."

"Fat chance dear. I'm back on the clock." Raven tried to push the familiar man off of her. She did it successfully. At least partially. When she pushed him off, his claws ripped out of her skin, leaving the feeling of very diluted honey running down the backs of her arms. It was cold and her heart started pounding again. She didn't flinch however, as that was a sign of weakness.

And in front of a man like him, showing weakness could be your downfall.

"This is just a dream. This is my mind. You can't hurt me."

"All true dear. But I am real. And I've found you. Now I'm going to get you. You just don't know when." She takes a deep breath and glares at him and holds her ground. "I see you've become stronger. Hmph. It won't matter. That just means there's more of a prize." He smirks and easily fades away.

"Phew." She relaxes her body. "I need to find a way to wake up and get out of this Hell I've made for myself."

She looks around.

"Get scared. Get scared out of my witts." She leaves the room and the ends of the hallway are space again. She goes and leaps through the door and she lands on something. When she looks down she's standing on nothing. "Uhh...ok... This is slightly disconcerning. I didn't want that to happen. Just wanted to be able to stand here." She takes another step and it sounds like she's walking on tile in a really echo-ey hall.

She keeps walking. It's extremely dark now. She can hardly see a thing in front of her.

"How do I scare myself?...Thats a dumb question." You can't scare yourself. You'd always know it was coming. She needed her brain to do it for her. "Guess I have to stop–" The room flashes like strobe lights. "–lucid dreaming. Mission accomplished I guess. Ok brain. Scare me."

On each wall figures piped up every time it flashes white. And the figures weren't stills either. They moved. It was like an old-timey movie with the projector. Only much more terrific.

The figure behind her looked like the classic devil. Fire red skin, beastly horns, noisy chains, large hooves, razor claws, and sharpened fangs.

The figure to her right looked like a cross between a vampire and a centaur. Black horse legs with a buff, vampire-looking male. She wasn't sure if he was supposed to be a vampire or not.

To her left was a manticore. But it had the wide wings of a black bird. She wasn't sure what to make of it.

In front of her was a simple man. Caucasian. About 5 foot 9. Clad in just a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Brown hair, round face. Nothing scary about him.

But he was the one she was scared of the most. It's always the innocent looking ones. Especially in a situation like this. She didn't trust him as far as she could throw him. But she didn't know what her smart, cunning, and craft mind has come up with.

The manticore was a close second in that it's name, more or less, meant "man-eater".

She readied herself mentally and physically for whatever was to happen next.

She stood in a stable stance. Ready to move anywhere, at any time, any how. She was ready to do anything.

It wasn't going to be much of any help.

She stared all of them in the eye. That was a bad idea. They could see the fear in her eyes. They knew who she was most afraid of.

The vamp-taur attacked first surprisingly enough. Showing her his great fangs. He tried to bite her multiple times before she kicked him off. He disappeared into nothing afterwards.

Then the demon came and tried to stab her with his horns and slash her with his claws. She got scratched a few times and stabbed in the left shoulder. It hurt it a lot to move it. Once she got him off her he disappeared into nothing too.

Then the manticore went and tried to rip her head off. She skillfully dodged every thing. Well almost everything. It bit her foot. She screamed in pain as it disappeared into nothing too. She basically fell on the floor because she literally could not stand.

This isn't what I meant...

And there was the human. He just stared at her blankly waiting for her to do something.

She blinked, and he was gone. She looked around for him bit got zip. She blinked again and the man from before was in her face. The one with the red cat-eyes and the claws.

"Hello again dear. Nice to see you again." This scared her. She jumped back and hit the back of her head on the wall that was slowly closing in on her and the man. She pressed her body up against the wall to keep her furiously beating heart from exploding with fear. But it didn't help. The room stopped flashing and turned red. Constantly. Then his finger grew to the size of a sword and he looked at it. "Doesn't this look fun?" He went and stabbed her straight through the abdomen. A tear streamed down her cheek as she closed her eyes.

–•–•–•–

"Raven wake up!" Garfield vigorously shook her. The other three were standing at the foot of the bed in their pajamas.

Raven popped open her eyes and shot up from the bed. Tears falling to the blanket.

"Friend Raven are you ok? You were speaking and loving around quite a bit." Raven was out of breath from something. It didn't matter what though. She had gotten out of that Lucid Nightmare.

"Yeah...I'm...ok..."

"Why don't we get you some water?" Gar asked.

"Yeah... That would be great...I guess..." she was still out of breath.

–•–•–•–

Oh my god I am so sorry that this took so long to publish! Doing break finds give me enough time and I have a 300 point research paper due next Tuesday the 25th. Our softball games have started up too. I have one today actually. We won our first game on Tuesday and I hope we win again. Once again really sorry and I will try my damnedest to get the next chapter out soon!

XOXO

~Rae