Images used courtesy of BookBrush.com
It is only mid-March, and Friday 13th has already come around twice, with another one to come in November this year. So, today, I’ve taken it as my cue to share an eery piece of fiction with you, which I very much enjoyed writing. This piece of flash fiction was first published in the Bolts of Fiction anthology in 2024 (Devils Rock Publishing), edited by the wonderful Daniel Willcocks and Sam Frost.
I hope you’re not ready for sleep right now…
A flaw in the hourglass
Tired, are you? Restless? Wish you could sleep? Let me help you. Let me tell you a bedtime story.
***
You’ve heard of the Dream Catcher, haven’t you? I watch her, every night. She doesn’t know I’m there. I’ve become adept at hiding from her, and darkness holds no fear for me.
The moonlight betrays her prey. With snake-like ease, she empties the dream catcher that hangs outside, swaying in the gentle breeze. The silvery sack slips up and over it, catches it unawares as it tinkles and twinkles, glinting beautiful and benign. The dreams make no sound as they slide into the silken sack. Neither do the nightmares. Not yet. Not even when they’re separated into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It’s an uncomfortable process. Don’t try it.
Now the once shiny dream catcher is left lifeless, like a dead thing; colourless, soulless, desperate for revival, hoping that people are asleep and that they can hear the wails of pain in the wind, seeping through their walls of safety as they dream. Make me live again, I beg you. But the pleas are worthless because its time is up. It will soon be dawn.
I follow the Dream Catcher to her lair. Here they all are, lined up, row after row after row: hourglasses full of nightmares. You’d think this room would be full by now, wouldn’t you? But it seems to have an everlasting floor, walls that span the centuries, the ether, space and time. Endless. This prison is endless.
I watch as the Dream Catcher pours her night’s takings into the newest hourglass. It takes a whole hour to empty them in. They fight, struggle, claw onto the silky, silvery sack. It happens every time. Would you want to fall into the top of this hourglass if you knew what your fate would be?
The nightmares scream as they slide through the hole, powerless to stop it. Monsters, stalkers, unseen and lurking fears
– each one knows its fate. The screams and the scratching on the glass have already started, the frantic scramble to the top by those who are trying to rebel against the certainty that, when it becomes their turn to fall forever into the glass pit, they will become nothing but tiny grains of sand.
And that’s what this room is full of – rows and rows of nullified nightmares as far as the eye can see, and where it can’t. Of dead, giant timers. Their time is running out. The pain of that knowledge screams through the hole in the top of each hourglass where, once the nightmare is inside, it cannot shrink its own terror to fit back through.
How long does it take for nightmares to turn to dream dust? Who knows? The weight of the unanswered question crushes the nightmares. And it bears down on me, too.
The Dream Catcher nods at her good night’s work and locks the room. I hear the deadbolts thud into place – one; two; three; four; five.
I stand there alone, my only company the screaming and the terror, the scratching of glass which makes my ears bleed. I look down the room at the rows of destroyed imagination. It’s one eternal nightmare.
But what if the sands of time can be reversed? Have you ever thought about that? Has my old adversary, the Dream Catcher? I know how to do it, you see, because I’ve been watching, learning, biding my time.
And so I tap on the glass of this newest timer which is already set in motion. I must give the nightmares hope. They stop screaming for a moment, and I tell them, ‘Watch.’ And I wink.
They become transfixed as I head to a soulless, still hourglass, full at the bottom with nothing but grains of the night’s evil. All I have to do is this. ‘Watch,’ I tell them. ‘Watch,’ I tell you. Are you keeping your eyes open? Is your imagination paying attention? Keep your eyes closely on the hourglass: the sands of time shift as I turn it upside down.
It’s so simple. All it needed was time. Someone would catch her out, eventually. Who’d have thought my old adversary would fail to catch the flaw in the design?
These newest nightmares pour out of their own private hell and onto the floor. The next bit is easy. They only need one of their own kind to give them life. So I blow. The sand swirls across the stone. I blow harder. It gathers momentum, feels the freedom, and fills the air. One more life-giving breath is all it needs. Can you see it? Picture it, circling, seeking its way out. One; two; three; four; five. Out the keyholes and into the night. And you thought keyholes were just for peeking through, didn’t you? Naughty.
Dream dust is precious, especially the darkest dream dust of all. Who deserves a sprinkling of nightmares? Who’s to judge? My learned friend – or fiend – the Sandman, of course. Have you been good recently? Any bad dreams lately? Did you never wonder how the Sandman has so much dream dust to sprinkle on his dreamers? Neither did I, once upon a time. Recycling is good for the environment, they tell us. The world of imagination is no exception. The Sandman recycles the nightmares. Who knows what they might become. That depends – depends on dreamers like you.
***
How do I know all this, you ask. Haven’t you guessed? I’m the nightmare that got away. One moment of carelessness in the pouring was all it took. So now I can tell bedtime stories to those who deserve them.
I’ll be in your dreams later tonight, when the darkness falls over your eyelids and your deepest imagination awakens. Won’t I? You know I will.
What’s that? What do you mean, you’re not ready for bedtime now? We’ll see. Everyone seeks the comfort of sleep – eventually.
Bolts of Fiction promotional image courtesy of Daniel Willcocks.
Have you read any of my other short fiction? I write emotion-driven psychological literary fiction, exploring the most secret, often painful and self-sacrificing moments of my characters’ existence. Sometimes they make an unnerving peace with their turmoil, and sometimes they find other ways to deal with their relentless agony – which just may lead to desperate measures…
If you enjoy novels which are dark, as unpredictable as the nightmare in the hourglass here, or tinged with something other-worldly, then you may especially enjoy two of my Darker Minds books. Click the images to learn more:
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