The Living Nightmare

The young man is running. It is so dark, he can barely see in front of his face. He hasn't any clue as to where he is. He hears the running footsteps behind him still. He has been trying unsuccessfully to outrun whatever has been after him. He can't escape it, but he keeps running out of fear for his life.1

He needs to find somewhere to hide. As luck would have it, he sees the shadows of what appears to be large trees. At this point, he doesn't care what it is as long as he can escape this thing behind him. He takes off in a dead sprint towards the shadows. To his dismay, his follower did the same. He tried to lose the man and ran around all of the trees. He succeeded in getting some distance between the shadowy figure and himself. He took a chance and hid behind a tree. He prayed to the heavens that the other man hadn't seen where he had hidden.2

He felt a terrible sinking feeling as he heard approaching footsteps. With each step the man heard, the more hope he lost. To his relief, however, the footsteps began sounding further away. After the sounds of the figures footsteps were gone, the man began to scan the area. He didn't want to be seen after making a break for it and have that whole chase start again. He decided it was now or never and began running.3

Out of no where he felt a large arm grab him by his shoulder and slam him against the tree that acted as his cover a few moments before. He looked up into the man's face for the first time and regretted the action immediately.4

The shadow from before was now revealed to him as the hideous beast the young man feared it would be. The man's skin was wrinkled and cracked with blood oozing out of the cracks. Most of his nose was gone and the rest was decaying on his face. There was a large cut from the top left part of his head to the bottom right part. The cut went through his left eye and the blood had hardened and dried in his eye. The other eye was bloodshot and the pupil was so black it was like staring into an endless abyss. The man had no hair, just more bleeding cracks on his head. The man's mouth was gaping open and inside his teeth were jagged and yellow with crusted blood on them.5

The young man stared at the creature in terror. His eyes widened as the thing in front of him opened its mouth wide. Without warning, the beast sunk its teeth into his shoulder. The young man was in so much pain, he couldn't even scream. He felt the creature eating him and he felt his life slowly fading away.....................6

He woke up with his face in his pillow. He was sweating uncontrollably. He could still fill the pain from the beast's teeth in his shoulder. He put his hand up to his shoulder, but luckily it was still there. He sighed with relief and rolled over, but his eyes gave him a sight he would have rather not seen. He blinked over and over again, hoping that what he was seeing would disappear as the illusion he hoped it was. But this was no illusion.7

Standing by his bed was the beast from his nightmare. Its mouth grinning maniacally as it knew that there would be no chase before its meal this time. The young man knew his time was up and tried to scream. The beast had already leaped though and had cut him off mid-yelp. The man's life faded away as he fell victim to this living nightmare.