Hello everyone, this is a fanfic I typed up awhile back, right after the newest Halloween came out. I was mostly inspired by the video game Dead by Daylight, and was tempted to post it in that area but I don't really feel like it fits.

Just so you all know, please excuse any formatting errors such as spaces where there should be apostrophes. That's just what happened when I moved this over from my phone.

I also decided to change tenses in the middle of writing this story so there might be some errors there too.

I'm always open and appreciative of suggestions on how to fix the story. I do plan to continue this at some point although I am not working on it right now.

Thanks in advance!

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Ever since going to see that movie, I haven't been able to sleep even a wink.

I've been waking up engulfed in sheer terror, overcome with incredible stress and fear. My body has been shaking, jerking, and sweating profusely in my sleep.

And I just can't figure out why.

Horror movies have never frightened me, really. Neither have the killers within them. As I'd watched this movie, my mind consumed with murder after bloody murder, I felt more intrigued than terrified.

I liked the way he stalked his victims. I thought it was cool they way he walked with the blade pointed in his hand. I loved how he still survived after suffering so many major wounds. It was just cool to me.

But now, he is haunting my dreams. I feel as if this fictional character is visiting me in my sleep. Reaching out to me.

Searching for me.

A shiver ran up and down my spine. I attempted to ignore these mind-numbing, paranoid thoughts, but they still remained stuck like glue in the back of my head.

I yanked the comforter off of myself and swung my legs over the bed, preparing to ready myself for work.

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It had been a busy day at the store.

My hands were covered in grime, wood stain, and an array of different colored paints.

My coworkers had all finally left, and I was by myself to close. I breathed a sigh of relief at my aloneness; finally a chance to work or sit without someone else watching me.

I carried on the rest of the night absentmindedly, not concerning myself much with the horrors of a fantasy serial killer, until I began to head home. My mind reacquainted itself with thoughts of the past two nights; waking up in a panic, and praying to anything up above that I wouldn't be suffering the horrors of the same dream again tonight.

The dream itself felt so odd, and so much different from what most of my dreams tended to feel like. It seemed as if I was actually waking up in another world, even though it had always taken place within my own bedroom.

In the dream, I open my eyes up slowly, staring listlessly up at the ceiling. I am laying there for just a moment, and I know that someone is looking at me, watching me sleep. I can feel it.

But the feeling is just so real. It is permeating. I lay on the bed, paralyzed in fear although I haven't even seen anything yet. I can just feel some... creature's eyes boring into me, jabbing my nerves like a hot, burning needle.

I'm too afraid to look anywhere but at the ceiling. Then I'm startled by a footstep trampling heavily across my floor.

Then another..

Then one more.

The hairs at the back of my neck were beginning to prickle, just recalling this. Goosebumps began forming along my arms. The only way that I can describe the way it makes me feel is like a rat trapped in a cage, dumbfounded with an old man in a lab coat staring down at me. I knew I could run, but it would be no use.

My eyes widened at the gleam of a kitchen knife suspended in the air above my chest. If I ever felt like I was terrified before, this was a completely new feeling. I felt as if I were holding my breath, and it seemed as if it was forever before he finally brought that infamous blade down.

My eyes fly open just before the blade pierces my skin.

I awoke in my bed, gasping in fear, heart beating out of my chest, eyeballs wide once again.

Third night in a row. But this time, it was so different. It was so much worse.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks as I was completely and utterly shocked at the scenes my brain had just played before me.

I wasn't in my room anymore. I didn't know where I was at all. Actually, it seemed strangely as if I were in multiple places all at once.

I experienced something like six different brutal murders, all in one night.

As if I were really there.

I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. That feeling of fear was still so real, when in the last two nights it had usually dissipated by now, when the real feeling of my bedcovers was apparent on my real skin.

This morning, those lines seemed to be blurred.

I saw many deep blacks. Inky, wet shadows. Nasty, rugged, dirty browns. Short glimpses of a navy jumpsuit. A white mask. Shining blade.

Crimson. Blood. So much shiny, dripping, scarlet red blood.

Wet blood. Dry blood. Decorating doors. Windows. Leaves. Car handles. Multicolored tiles. A beautiful flower arrangement. All of these things and more, spattered with what seemed like gallons of humanity's life essence.

Terrorized screaming in my ears. Frantic, desperate cries for help. Women. Men. And children. That hurt me the most.

I heard gurgling. I heard fleshy shik, shik, shiks, over and over again. And I never once heard a single noise from the assailant.

I still haven't truly seen him. But I know it's him. I know it's the Shape in my dreams.

But I also know he is just a fictional character.

So what in the hell am I dreaming about then?

Wholly disturbed, I was unable to move from my bed. I'd become afraid to glance in the direction of my room that I'd been dreaming he was standing in. A tear drifted down my cheek, and I began to wonder if there was something horribly wrong with me.

Is this how people go crazy?

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As the days passed, I continued to be assailed by violent nightmares. They seemed to only get worse as the nights continued on. The dreams swapped back and forth between the original; the masked man standing over me, and the second, which was always a random compilation of various people and animals being gruesomely murdered in numerous different ways.

I preferred the first dream by far. The screams of pain and agony that still echoed in my brain of the other had been pushing me farther and farther from my scheduled bedtime each night.

The lack of sleep was beginning to wear on my mentality. I came into work appearing so shell-shocked that my coworkers all thought I was sick. I'd seen myself in the mirror, in a few quick glances. I looked like a sick person, with dark, sunken eyes that usually seemed so bright compared to this.

I began to shiver and quake throughout the day, in fear of every single hour that passed, counting down the minutes until it was time for me to return home, and inevitably, to my bed.

This continued for two weeks. Two weeks of constant mind-torture, mind-numbing INCESSANT PAIN and constant fear, and paranoia and I just CANT fucking sleep anymore!

I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't know what's happening to me.

If he was going to kill me, I wish he would do it already.

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Quiet of the night nearly tears my brain in two.

My eyes flicker open. Closed. Open... closed.

Open. They stay open.

Bloodshot. Petrified.

I fall asleep eventually, for an hour or two each night.

That seems to make it hard for my brain to squeeze these nightmares in.

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Darkness envelops me once again.

Maybe I m becoming accustomed to the fear, but something is suddenly different in this dream.

I'm no longer staring at the ceiling. My eyes are gently closed, lids rested unmoving atop a bed of placid eyelashes.

I can feel him watching me. I can feel him in my room, even closer now. I just don't know what to do anymore.

The nightmares had become more real to me each and every day. These dreams began to seep into my entire reality. Every waking moment has been based around this night, every single night since that movie.

So I lay there. Still. Unmoving.

The presence matching me. As he always does, until that first step forward.

Thump.

Heavy, heavy boots that would have startled me had it not been this same dream...

Thump.

Even closer. I might as well have been touching his body. I could just feel him there.

Thump.

The third and final step. His presence looming over me.

My eyes remained closed. Not clenched. Quiet, and peaceful. Nearly asleep.

It's just a dream... no matter how real it feels, I attempted to calm myself.

I laid there for what felt like an eternity. Seconds, minutes, or hours crawled by as I laid there, feigning bravery under the gaze of a leering, bloodthirsty killer.

I tried not to imagine the scenes of ruthless, brutal murder. Mindless, almost demonic slaughter. But my mind wandered. Faltered.

Images of the blood and horror of so many different people crossed over my mind.

Then my shell began to crack, shattering to pieces in the presence of my worst fear; the true culprit of all these nightmares.

My eyes flew open...

Darkness, at first. Unadjusted to the complete lack of light in this impalpable hypnogogic reality.

The shape wasn't directly in my foresight, once they adjusted. Now his presence seemed to be creeping up on me physically, although the odd dark mound stayed in its place in the corner of my vision. I began to feel the sensation of a million tiny spiders of fear crawling around my shoulders, into my neck, and between my collarbones, an innate and completely animalistic terror taking over me.

I froze in panic as my eyes adjusted more.

As I faced directly up to the ceiling, his white mask became a stark contrast against the incredibly faint omnipresent light that emanated my room in these dreams.

I laid there for an eternity. What is he waiting for? Kill me.

Just kill me.

"What do you want from me?" I whispered shakily into the unnaturally quiet night. My voice cracked in fear.

I received no response.

"What do you want from me?!" I nearly screamed this time.

My eyes finally snapped over and settled on that ghostly white mask. Some almost tangible feeling passed between the creature and I as I gazed fearfully into those empty pockets of eyes.

Suddenly, I was no longer breathing. That terror welled up in my chest once again.

In half of a second, my subconscious made a fight-or-flight decision.

My body erupted from beneath the covers of my bed as a frenzied mass of flailing arms and legs, sending the bedclothes flying. My ankle caught in the sheets as I attempted to throw myself off the bed. Instead of landing on my feet as I'd wished, I tumbled to the floor at the end of the mattress, my foot still tethered in the sheet. I held myself up by my forearms and once again began attempting to scramble away.

I just couldn t move quickly enough.

In most dreams like these, my body feels like a bag of sand. I can feel my legs moving quickly, but they only carry me as if I were wading in a thick bog of mud.

Not this one. I was moving fine. Fairly quickly, even.

Still, I was simply no match for him.

I shrieked in terror as a strong hand clamped firmly around the calf of my left leg. He needn't run after me at all. He only needed to turn his body and stoop over to catch me, like a fish stuck to a lure. Or magnet to another magnet.

I cried out again as I twisted and shook my body as much as was physically possible. I felt a painful crack erupt from where my leg met my hips as I twisted and thrashed around. The doorway to my room sat just in front of my face, the kitchen light down the hall illuminating its surroundings in a faint orange glow.

He held on so tightly. His grasp was absolutely merciless, with no care for my physical comfort or easily bruised skin. I don't know what I expected. But it seemed as if a pair of pliers had been clamped hard around my limb.

Suddenly, my right calf was also clasped in the hand of the Shape s unforgiving, inhuman grip.

I sobbed and shrieked loudly, almost like an enraged child, hot tears suddenly cascading down my cheeks in a steady stream, pouring from my eyes and dripping to the floor. It was no use. My terror had finally caught up to me. I was trapped. I could do nothing to stop this.

He yanked me backward by my calves, toward his feet, standing just behind me. My shirt caught on the carpet and rode up my stomach as he dragged me back toward him. My hands reached and flailed for anything to grab onto, but there was nothing.

His fingers suddenly wrapped around the middle of the waistband of my pants, from the back. With my legs now free, I scrambled to my feet and attempted to sprint for the door, but was yanked roughly backward by the band of my pants. The force of being violently yanked around had me reeling, and I fell to my knees on the floor once again.

He gave me a hard push and I flew over onto my side. Not half a second passed before his hand came down hard on my shoulder, shoving me down onto my back.

Just as quickly, he was above me, and I was staring up at him with gaping, wide, terrorized eyes, as both of his hands closed around my throat.

I felt like a tube of Gogurt. Or, a tube of toothpaste, with a wrestler attempting to squeeze out that last little bit.

I felt as if my eyes were going to pop out of my head. I felt as if my tongue was going to implode. I choked and gurgled.

Now I sounded just like the people in my dreams.

I reached out with my hands, slapping his shoulders, chest, and mask weakly, desperately. I tried to scratch, baring my fingernails. He looked down at me calm and unmoving as my hands slapped so meekly at the front of his mask, my fingers attempting to worm their way into his holes of eyes.

Black dots were crowding into my vision now. The small orange glow of the kitchen light was disappearing. The white mask gazed down at me. Merciless. Sadistic. Uncaring.

Bloodthirsty.