Park Chung-Ho was falling into the Darkness with the Yellow Eyes staring at him. The garden's light was fading away.
"WAKE UP !" He yelled in his head.
Nothing happened.
Anxiety was growing in his brain. His breath was going quicker and quicker. He wasn't prepared for this. For years, he had been able to wake up when he wanted to, but since this dark voice appeared in his sleep, this wasn't the same. Something was off.
"YOU WANT TO GET OUT, DON'T YOU ?" The dark voice echoed again. "YOU'RE MINE NOW."
This was no ordinary nightmare. This voice was giving shivers down his spine. This truly was frightening. This fear was in HIM. It entered every piece of his body.
Park Chung-Ho was trembling as much as he was falling. He needed to do something, but what? He thought about his room at the dormitory, where he would lie on his bed and where he would wake up. He tried to build this picture in his head.
"Concentrate on it, build it in your mind and go there," he thought.
All of a sudden, the fall stopped as most of the darkness disappeared, but a kind of dark blurring remained everywhere. He was on his bed, the light was on, and a tall man was standing there watching him from the side of his bed.
He had long, greasy and dark hair falling without any order on the side of his head. He had angular features and was smiling with sharp teeth. The menacing and yellow eyes from the darkness were his.
"So this is where you live." his voice was calmer than in the darkness, but it was still menacing.
Park Chung-Ho tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. Could he talk?
"Who are you ?" His lips moved, and he heard the sound of his voice.
The dark silhouette was looking at the wall and turned back to him with an evil grin on his face.
"Who am I? I am your fear, your sorrow, your doom... Whatever suits you best... Or worst! Hahahahaha!"
He drew a knife out of his pocket, and Park Chung-Ho felt the blade cutting his left shoulder, and a scream of pain came out of his mouth.
"I am a Nightmare..." he paused for a bit, maybe for a dramatic effect. "But not a regular one. You see this cut I made to your shoulder? It's very real. You would feel it if you could wake up. You could think this is your brain mixing things and giving you a reminder of THAT night. But this isn't your brain, this is real."
He began to walk back and forth in the small room, playing with his knife.
"You see, that's the fun part. You can suffer in a nightmare. And I think I'll have fun with this."
It seemed like a game for him. A torturing and twisted game.
Park Chung-Ho was in pain, but he had to win some time. He had to think, to find a way out of this nightmare. It didn't feel like he could move, but his brain was working hard to find a solution. Maybe this incapacity to move was due to the anaesthesia. Maybe the cut on his shoulder matched the surgery. This may have been due to the extraction of the shards. Maybe all this was a construction of his brain regarding his situation.
"Move your leg. Move your arm. Move a finger. MOVE !" But nothing happened. "Wake up! Wake up, Wake up WAKE UP !"
But nothing happened.
"It seems that you're trying to do something. I see your eyes moving as you concentrate. I see them filling up with despair as you can't do a single thing." The tall and dark figure was still smiling as he was pursuing his monologue. It seemed he had waited for this moment for quite some time. "You want to get out of this nightmare, but you can't move, right? You wanna wake up, but you're still here. HA HA HA HA HA HA! I told you. You're MINE now."
Park Chung-Ho felt like a bug on a Dark spider web. Powerless, unable to move. He was the prey, and the hunter was there, playing with him. His body refused to obey his orders, but his orders were coming from his mind. He could still think, and that seemed to be the way he ended up in his dormitory. He pictured it clearly. Maybe there was something he could do. It was dangerous, but it was still possible.
The Cradle.
The Wallpaper.
The Heat.
The Flames.
This was all drawing clearly in his mind. He had to go there again. He didn't have many places he could think of. Especially not while he was sleeping. There it came, the walls changed and began to burn. The flames were slowly taking control of the room. The corridor started to appear. The dark figure looked around and seemed impressed.
"Oh... you've got imagination and resources, I see! So you don't like your dormitory? You prefer this place?"
This wasn't enough to scare this menacing man. Park Chung-Ho needed MORE flames. He pictured more and more flames in his mind. This was HIS nightmare, and it was high time that he took control of it.
The fire grew bigger, and the sound was deafening. The heat became unbearable, but this was certainly the only way to get rid of this nightmare. But all of a sudden, the dark man pointed his hand at the wall, and closed it on the flames, and the fire vanished as if this small move had captured all the oxygen instantly.
"Is this your best? Is this all you're capable of? HA HA HA! Nice try, boy, but useless. I told you I wasn't any ordinary Nightmare. You think you can hurt me? You think that this is you controlling things here? You think that this is YOUR dream? You're totally helpless here, boy."
Park Chung-Ho pictured the top of a mountain, where only he could stand; everything else would be void. Everything went cold, the wind was blowing heavily, and his breath was really hard. There was too little oxygen here. The Dark Nightmare was floating in the air. His yellow eyes were like flames. Instead of falling, like he was supposed to, he tilted his head to the side with a smile and pointed a finger at the young man on the mountain top.
"I give you this, you try!"
Park Chung-Ho pictured himself as a cosmonaut, lost in space with his astronaut suit.
"Is this thing unkillable?" He asked himself.
He was fighting with his mind. The only thing that was still functioning. But he was exhausted, and even the void didn't seem to affect the Dark Man. Was his brain that powerless? He was trying to concentrate harder and harder, to materialise things better.
"Interesting," the nightmare said. "You think that this is how this works, right? That picturing places in your mind will change your dream... How funny. Those are mere projections from your mind; it's not going to affect me much. It can affect your brain, though. You are persuaded that this is real, and your body suffers from what you should suffer if it were real. But you didn't really move, you know. You're still in the same place."
The nightmare snapped his fingers, and everything changed again, and Park Chung-Ho was back in his baby room, without the flames. The black mist was still there, and the "Nightmare Man", this is what he was calling him in his head, was still there, his knife in hand. Park Chung-Ho let out 2 screams of pain when he felt the blade cutting him on the arm and shoulder. He was losing. The battle of mind, the battle of wit. It seemed like everything was lost.
"You see? This," the nightmare showed his blade, "you felt it, right? You're in pain. Your heartbeat is getting faster. Your brain is telling your body to feel the pain it sees in this dream. You see? And your body would show the marks of this pain if you were to wake up. This is how things work here."
Was there really no way out of this dream? Maybe when the anaesthesia wore off, he would see the light of the hospital and wake up. Was it coming soon, though? Or was all this just his mind trying to ease the fact that the operation didn't go the right way? Was he dying?
Out of the dark mist that was surrounding the room, he saw a glimmer. Something was changing. What would this mean? Was it the tunnel of light some people described in a near-death experience, or was it him waking up?
The door was opening. That was the origin of this glimmer. There she came, Aislinn Nòttdottir, it seemed that the light was coming from her.
"Let him go." She talked calmly, but this wasn't a request; it sounded like an order.
"Ooooooh..." The nightmare seemed really interested, seeing the young woman appear. "How did you find us, my dear? Mom let you come to me finally?"
Aislinn wasn't moving, nor was she talking. It seemed that she had already said it all, and there was no point in discussing it anymore. Her stare was sharp, straight in the Dark Figure's eyes; her arms were crossed. Those eyes, which seemed always smooth to Park Chung-Ho, were like weapons at this very moment. He never saw such a stare.
"So you want me to let him go... I haven't spied on you for nothing, my dear. I travelled back to this place for a thing. And I don't feel like giving up on it this easily. It's been almost twenty years since that day… He should have died too, you know. So I'm only here to finish the job."
While the nightmare was talking, Aislinn placed her hand on Park Chung-Ho's shoulder, but he felt no pain. It was quite the opposite; she was warm and reassuring. Then, she whispered to his ear.
"I'm sorry for all this."
The nightmare drew his knife again and was ready to strike when Aislinn kissed Chung-Ho on the lips, and he felt like something was going down his throat. Like a kind wind, warm and full of hope.
It felt like he was able to move again, but she was already up and turning her back to him, pushing the dark figure with both her hands. She looked over her shoulder and muttered
"See you."
When she looked at him, her eyes were not as light as usual, nor were they the same as the ones he had seen a few seconds ago. No. At this very moment, they were sad and full of tears.
She grabbed the nightmare, absorbing all the darkness in the room. The Nightmare disappeared as she fell on the ground.