Short story: A Resolution

She woke sweating heavily, staring at the doorway of her bedroom. It was the same nightmare that always woke her up—the one she had had since her childhood. There was always that thing at the door, staring at her. The creature she had searched for in all books seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere. There it was. Always there. Waiting to take her away.

It never left her. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and opened them again. There was only darkness and the light from her alarm clock. She turned around so she didn’t have to see the empty doorway. It made her heart race, but she was still here and alive after all these years. It was only a bad dream.

A dream that felt too real and raw in her memory every night. She clutched her hands and waited for the sensation to go away. It always did. She just needed time. The feeling stayed there, that she wasn’t alone, that it was still there, and she just could see. That this time, she was meant to go with it. Some thought it was a god, others baptized it as a demon, and some wrote it as a lost soul hungered by greed. It was none of those things. It was darkness, it was chaos, and it was hers. She was never meant to be here.

She turned around to face the door and watch the emptiness in the hallway. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her duvet as hard as she could, making her joints ache. There was only her breathing, then there wasn’t. There was an absence of voice in the silence—the voice of someone watching.

She opened her eyes. The doorway wasn’t empty. It had come like she was sure it had. It would leave if she moved. So it had all those times before. But not this time. She slipped her feet on the floor, and it stayed there, waiting for her: the horned beast with no face and an elongated body. Its talons moved as it breathed in and out. As she breathed in and out.

It was still there when she got up and took her first steps. She had been scared of it all her life, that it was there to take hers. But she didn’t have a life. Nothing felt real outside this hour—this moment.

She stretched her hand to it. It seemed to observe it. There were no eyes. Just a feeling. It seized her arm. And there was a resolution. She had always meant to go with it.

Thank you for reading! Have a lovely day ❤