Rated R for scary images! (T for teen)

I have very vivid, detailed dreams. This particular nightmare featured a Ghostface killer (spoiler free, I think...), terror, self-defense, and a near wake-up call that turns into a simple teaser for Part II. Read and Review! :) Note: I have only seen the 1st movie, and enjoyed it immensely. Though, I don't recommend it really.

A SCREAM DREAM

By Pippin Strange

I was going to have a Scary Movie night, and invited a bunch of friends over for the self-induced sleepover of terror. Some people had arrived already and were milling about in the kitchen, watching my popping microwave popcorn while I was in the living room, arranging the furniture around the television correctly, and looking out the window for more guests, and using a spray cleaner on dusty surfaces.

I noticed the curtain for the patio door was hitched up on the corner, and since no one would need it, I stood up on a chair and took it down, spreading it across to close up the back of the room. No need to have an open area to the outside while watching scary movies—it'd throw the super-hyper girls into a fear frenzy—increasing the paranoia that someone would be standing on the porch waiting to scare us. Hilarious, but unnecessary, the movies should be scary enough without giving them a phobia of motion-sensor porch lights, too.

When I turned around, someone stood behind me in a "Scream mask" and hooded cape. I screeched with fear, yelped and jumped—very nearly fell—off the chair. Its arms were stretched out towards me like the Oogie Boogie Man saying Rar, and getting over the initial fear, I fell apart in laughter.

Whomever it was stood there, chortling silently also, holding his or her sides with mirth. The great white face seemed to wail with an elongated mouth shape and gaping, empty eyes. Edward Munch's melancholy painting was captured in its essence, but the grim-reaper-ghost appearance was very unlike the golden yellow of the original painting. The face was pasty white, the eyes and mouth black netting—so whoever is inside can see me, but I can't see him… or her.

"Okay, okay," I breathed, "Who is it?"

The figure shrugged playfully.

"Holly?"

It shook its head.

"Yeah, Holly wouldn't be caught dead in one of these," I mused. The person was tall, and quite a bit thicker. It seemed to stand at full, serious attention now.

"Willy?"

Again, a no, with a headshake that lolled slowly from side to side as if drawling out a silent "Noooo."

"Josiah!" I knew it for sure this time.

It shook its head again. Something in my heart seemed to give a twinge of uneasiness. Isn't this how it always started? The person doesn't take it seriously—and thinks it's a joke—then doesn't someone always end up 'gutted like a fish'?

"Okay, well, if you're not going to tell me who you are…" I trailed off, listening for the voices and laughter in the kitchen. At the moment, I heard nothing.

I tried to step around the Ghostface, but it stepped with me, standing in my path.

My stomach crept up my throat. I stepped to the left, and it stepped in front of me again, his head tilted slowly as if observing me like a puppy might watch a toy with curiosity.

"Excuse me," I said, my voice arcing up to a shrill tone. All this fear would be for nothing when he'd rip off his mask and turn out to be a best friend having too much fun at my expense…

The Ghostface looked down at me pityingly, with another shake of its gruesome head. Who says 'no' to 'excuse me'?

"If you're just going to play anonymous, then don't expect me to treat you nicely," I said stiffly. "The joke is over. Come on now. Don't leave me hanging."

Ghostface looked up slowly.

I followed its gaze up to the chandelier, and didn't understand. Then, my intestines seemed to plummet and my knees grew weak. Obviouly, Ghostface always left SOMEONE "hanging". Usually with a noose and without important organs.

Without thinking about the consequences if it had just turned out to be Daniel or Tyler… I grabbed the spray bottle of cleaner off the nearby end table and sprayed it full force into the mask's mouth.

The figure flinched backwards with sudden hacking and coughing, and a rough voice cursed from deep inside, and I didn't recognize the voice. Very few of my friends dropped F-bombs in front of me, anyway.

Terrified, I shoved the cloaked person out of my way with every ounce of strength I had, and ran past him. Its hand grabbed a fistful of my hair, and caught off balance, my head whiplashed back and I fell to the ground with a crash.

I screamed as loudly as humanly possible. I could have sworn I heard a clatter in the kitchen, I thought my friends would come to my rescue.

I scrambled to my feet, kicking out behind me blindly. The hand had let go of my hair, and I turned and kicked the Ghostface—who was kneeling on the ground, wheezing, with a handful of my hair in his hand—as hard as I could in the groin area. With a howl of pain it grabbed my ankle, wrenching it as hard as he could. He keeled towards the wooden floor and we both fell in a heap, and I hit my head on the coffee table. I kicked it in the face, but it wasn't hard enough—I was completely woozy and my ears started ringing.

I crawled a few feet, and Ghostface was starting to recover too. With startling swiftness, he was on his feet, grasping me by my hoodie, and flipping me over onto my back. My head hit the floor this time and I started seeing double. It slapped me in the face like a girl might slap in a fight, my mouth filled up with blood and my eyes watered so profusely I could hardly see.

I fought as hard as I could, but what seemed like adequate self-defense to me in my stupor was—to him—me simply waving my hands around woozily, mumbling, "Stop—stop—stop…" (Which is not very affective)

Blinking three or four times, I suddenly felt myself waking up. The nightmare is over, I thought. Time to recollect what a silly dream this was, and tell all my friends about it—I have a knack for waking up from a bad dream before it gets too bad. I felt relaxed and heavy with sleep but I opened my eyes anyway.

I was horrified to find my wrists tied together with rope, and my feet tied together as well, lying on the same living room floor. I noted that it wasn't my house, and that I thought—for sure—that I had been waking up. Guess not… Maybe this IS real.

My abdomen was a bloody mess, red stains covered my white-T and blue HMS hoodie, and I couldn't figure out if I felt any pain. Something about my middle hurt, but I couldn't imagine getting stabbed and not feeling horrendous, hell-like sharp pains. This felt like mild discomfort. Part of my mind suggested that I could be in shock, but who listens to common sense when in a complete panic that could be real or not?

Ghostface was kneeling beside me, the cloak had been thrown aside, and he was removing his mask. It wasn't some important, ceremonious moment. He wasn't even looking at me. It just seemed like this task was completed, and the next stage didn't require the mask.

The mask fell from his hand to the floor, and he ran a dirty hand through his shaggy, ash blond haircut. It was a teenager boy, something like a cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and Kevin Zegers—straight up middle-school heartthrobs of the 90s.

His smile seemed to say Hi, nice to meet you, and his eyes looked friendly and kind. But the stiff way his chin twitched hinted at cruelty. His knotted eyebrows seemed to be concentrating much too hard on attaining perfection, committing—and completing—a bloody, will-be-in-headlines-for-decades-afterwards crime.

Then he finally seemed to acknowledge that I was lying on the floor beside him—with lids that squinted around their orbs, looking over to me out of the corners of his eyes.

I tried to ask him "Why?" but my mouth was duct-taped shut.

He gave me a tired look, as if I were an annoying younger sister that he was tired of babysitting while parents were out for the night. He sighed and said, "Here, hold this."

Into my tied fists he thrust the handle very large kitchen knife. The steel was covered in fresh red smears, and the handle was crusty with older blood.

I was crying, and the tears slid down, tickling slowly all the way to the duct tape, where they festered with a painful itch. The knife sat useless in my hands, bound together painfully tight. I could feel the blood circulation coming to a halt in my wrists.

The young man stood, and his white T-shirt was also covered in blood. I didn't know if it was mine or belonging to someone else. He kicked aside the Ghostface mask and hummed as if trying to remember something. I could still hear the sounds of all my friends in the kitchen. They had no idea what happened in the living room.

I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I assured myself. They would have heard me scream. This isn't my living room. I don't even know who this person is. I must be dreaming.

"Let's see, let's see," the boy mused to himself, looking around the room. He straightened his shoulders and said delightedly, "Oh—yes!" having just remembered what he was going to do next. He turned his head and looked towards the kitchen.

I rolled as hard as I could to the right, ramming him in the shins. Surprised, he cried, "Whoa!" just as I sat up and slashed the knife as hard as I could across his nearest ankle.

He screamed and bent over, clutching at his ankle with one hand. I put my elbow up on the footstool by the couch and tucked my heels beneath me, pushing myself onto my feet and standing.

Crying inside the tape, I held the knife shakily in front of me, hoping to ward him off. He was still trying to hold his ankle, and watch me, and was doing a horrible job at them both.

He finally looked at me clearly. When our eyes met, there felt like there was some kind of sick connection there. Almost as if attacking me and threatening me with a knife had somehow bonded us. And it did, almost. He could very well turn out to be my murderer. The man who takes my life. I no longer felt afraid of him, only afraid of what he could do… I pitied my family, who may never know this face that I fully memorized in this singular second. If my sister or brother passed him on the street, would they make eye contact and see the same nonchalant guilt that I could see now? Would he be caught? Would he prey on someone I knew when he was done with me?

Those thoughts passed in a bare millisecond.

With an innocent expression, he growled, "Oh no you DON'T!"

He jumped forward for the knife, and I stepped out of his way. He limped and tried to make a U-turn, but I was already hopping quickly for the kitchen. His strides were still longer, and I had literally JUST jumped through the kitchen entrance—into the startled crowd of my friends all crying "WHAT HAPPENED?" "WHAT THE HELL?"—when he launched himself forward, throwing his arms around me, attempting to tackle me to the ground.

We fell into the kitchen, I felt the jolt of hitting the linoleum, and my whole body jumped—a jump that seemed to jerk consciousness out of one mind, my alter-ego, into the other mind—my real mind, the one I controlled, the one I could feel growing stronger and taking over my limbs.

This time, I was finally waking up in my room. My bedroom, my new bedroom, in Rochester House, where I'm living on the Walden University Campus for the summer.

It was dark, sometime before 5 AM. I needed to pee really bad.

The orange lights of the city street lamps shone gloomily against the wall, and the traffic swished by with rhythmic stability. I shivered in the darkness and held my blankets close to my chest. I wondered why my mouth was so dry, because my reactions had all been in my nightmare. They weren't real.

…But my throat could still feel the scream.

THE END

Like I said, my dreams are super detailed. This all happened in my mind as I slept just the way I wrote it. I left out two little things that happened in the dream that spoiled the end of the first movie, but that was a small edit in itself. It doesn't change the nature of the strange story that seemed to emerge from my restless, intense night.

Well! I'm off to a much more pleasant sleep now (I hope!) and now must wish you all... Sweet Dreams =)

PS: Oh, I guess for the record, I should specify that I wasn't super terrified when I woke up. As soon as am fully awake, I view dreams as some kind of weird adventure and with the potential of being writing material. Thanks for the well wishes, though. =)