Inspiration In Deams

Dream a little dream...

Just when I think: "What on earth can I write for my post today?" I get pelted by a rain of inspiration and then can't choose...

I have been following An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, and one of the posts Dreams and Old Tin Cans by Ann Evans really got me thinking. In her post she graciously shares where her ideas come from for her stories. She describes how on one incident she wins a horror writing competition thanks to some eerie imagery in a dream.

For me personally, dreams and their interpretations are fascinating. I could quite happily discuss this topic with anyone who will listen! There are so many unanswered questions and debates around why we dream, why some people remember their dreams and others don't etc. I am also interested in the idea that dreams can predict the future. I have had a few of these but nothing amazing. Just ordinary, everyday stuff, like who I might bump into or how someone close to me may be feeling.

Many of ideas for my stories come from dreams and so I thought I would bite the bullet and share a dream I had the other night in story form. If you have a moment, please do leave a comment on what you think about the story in general or, how you would interpret the dream...


The Girl in the Corridor

The corridor is endless. Down, down into vanishing point. Dark, cluttered and narrow. Depression and poverty hangs in the air like a thick mist. Little lights stuck into the ceiling are emitting a pathetic, pale yellow light that fails to penetrate the gloom.

Then, a flash of colour. A young girl darts out of one of the many doors aligning the corridor. She turns and smiles at me. Split seconds. Her long, thick chestnut hair reaches almost to her waist. Her dress down to her knee with a lace collar and little white pumps upon her feet.

She skips ahead and I follow as if in slow motion; like trying to move through water. As we pass, most doors are shut; others are splintered and broken. Some doorways are like gaping holes in a mouth where teeth should be. Rubbish is scattered  all over the place. Bodies are slumped against door frames amongst broken bottles. A women with a baby on her hip stares into nothing.
Our feet slap against a dirty, pale green floor. The place is riddled with sickness and desperation.

The girl abruptly stops and turns to her left. She checks I am following and disappears through a doorway. I don't want to follow. I don't want to go in there after her. But I am hypnotised. There is no choice. I go in there with her.

The room is vast. Black and white tiles cover the floor and a grand bath takes up the length of one wall. The room should be clean and gleaming but everything is covered in dust and grime. It makes the room dismal. There is the sense that if I was to turn any of the taps, that nothing would flow from them. The air is musty and thick making it difficult to breath and oddly claustrophobic for such an immense space.

The girl is standing at a wash basin. She is smiling at her reflection in a mirror hanging over it and picks up a brush. Slowly; she pulls the brush through her beautiful, long hair. She gathers all of it to one side and continues to brush.

I can't bear it. I want to call for her to come away. But I have no voice here. I am just a spectator. A movement in the mirror. A stirring of something else. Something that was growing in strength. It was feeding off this nightmarish place and pushing it's way towards us. It was something malevolent and it was coming for her.
I could feel it's evil, spiteful presence and could do nothing. I watch in horror as the thing in the mirror takes it's form. The girl is now aware. In my mind I bid her to run from her fate. But she is frozen in place, her arm still held in position, the brush in hand suspended by her head as if to continue a stroke.

Please, please, please move, I pray silently.

A face materialises in the mirror. Twisted and decaying. It's mouth  pulled back into a snarl. White hair billows around a face like bark. Eyes like obsidian. And still coming. The face pushes it's way out of the mirror that is now more like water. Bony, skeleton fingers claw and reach for the girls face.

As I watch the brush fall from the girl's hand, I take a deep breath to scream...