A/N: This short story was requested by: Sorry-Idon'tHave-a-Username. Please leave a review, request your phobia choice and review! And please be aware that I will only choose the first one I see for this chapter.
Clinophobia - Fear of Going to Bed
I sat, wide awake in the starch-white room before me, in a velvet-red chair. I was staring at a wall and, looking around, I could not see a single window or door leading out of this room I found myself in. I did however, see a single bed with velvety-red looking sheets and pillows. It looked so inviting, but that was not important to me now. What was important was the undeniable fact that I had no inkling of when or how I had gotten here. I only knew that I was tired. So, so tired and staying conscious only grew harder and harder by the second.
I was fighting myself, my own body and brain to stay awake. I could feel myself beginning to nod and suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of fear, as if someone had pulled a gun to my face. Yet, there was no one before me, not a sound in the room. The only thing I heard was a deafening silence that I could only compare to the sound of a wave crashing overhead. Gripping the arms of the chair I sat in, I increasingly struggled to not fall into that unconsciousness that awaited me with a sickening smile.
Why did I feel fear? Why could I not fall asleep when my mind and body so clearly wanted to? I was so lost in thought thinking of these questions, trying to come up with answers that I had completely missed the fact that a television had just been lowered from a freshly opened wound in the ceiling. Looking up at the wound, I only saw blood slowly leaking from the ceiling and I screamed. I screamed and writhed around in the chair, unable to move and unsure as to why I was screaming. As I screamed for life, I looked down and found restraints upon my arms, connected me to the arms of the chair. They were black in color and appeared to be made of leather, neither of them were there before.
But none of that mattered to me.
What mattered to me was the fact that I had mysteriously been tied up and I could not escape the oncoming flow of blood from the ceiling. And as I screamed, the television came on. Within the confines of its screen, I saw people dying in their sleep. Killed by chainsaw wielding clowns and machete wielding monkeys. I saw those who had fallen asleep, drown in a river of blood, still unconscious and unmoving. The images were constantly of people dying in their sleep.
I tried to close my eyes desperately, unwilling to see the images I was now being forced to watch. I could not see them, but it felt as if there were an invisible set of hands holding my eyes open, unwilling to let me blink. At first, it was excruciatingly painful, being unable to blink. The fresh cool air hitting my eyes unrelentingly and mercilessly. Eventually, the pain seemed to lessen ever so slightly and I was left to stare at the television.
It seemed like an endless eternity as I sat in that chair, body slack and mind blank, as I watched clowns and people alike kill each other. Some were disemboweled and others beheaded. But all had one thing in common. They were all left to bleed out and I was forced to watch. By this point, the ceiling's wound, still bleeding, had created a shallow pool of blood around my ankles.
I disregarded this fact and continued to watch because no matter how much I fought before this point, I was indisputably hooked on what I had been forced to watch for so long. Now, looking back at the screen, I saw a baby doll slowly come to life. The doll, slowly but surely began to move, towards the kitchen. Then, getting to the knives, the baby doll grabbed one and made its way to the bedroom.
Surprisingly, within moments, cries of pain and agony could be heard all around me.
"Interesting isn't it?" mused an unseen voice,
"What do you want with me?!" I cried, sick of watching those sick and twisted things.
There was hysterical laughter all around me. "What do I want with you?!"
A soft chuckle this time before the voice continued. "I want nothing to do with you young child. I only wish to help."
"How is this helping me?!" I screamed, writhing around in the chair, desperately trying to escape my confines.
"I am showing you movie scenes. I am trying to show you that none of it is real." The voice explained, soothingly.
"It's all real!" I screamed at the voice. "All of it is real! You can't fake this amount of blood!"
The blood, stilling spilling into the room, was up to the bottom of my knees by now. It was still warm, as if every ounce of it was from a fresh body. Was I inside of someone's body? There was so much of it. There was no way that this was from multiple people and still this warm. As if reading my mind, the voice spoke again.
"You are not inside someone's body. You're in your own mind."
"How can I be in my own mind?!" I screamed, jolting and kicking about, trying to escape from the restraints.
I believe that it was the kicking that caused the chair to tip over. The events before my eyes seemed to slow down dramatically before my very eyes, to snail's pace. My world, as slow as it was moving, was about to end. It seemed like forever, but it did not take very long for blood to reach the farthest corners of my vision. It was at that moment, that I felt the chair hit the every growing pool of blood and not long after, my head hit the headrest area of the chair. After that, it all sped up and the next thing I knew, I was drowning in a room full of blood.
That was when I felt the restraints on my arms release.
In moments, I was trying my best to move around to gain my footing, but it was hard. Especially when my lungs were screaming in agony for air, doing everything they could to make sure they were heard. Just as my lungs were about to give out and I lost hope, my feet found the ground and my head broke the surface. The blood was to my chin now, but I did not care for that. What I cared for, was the air that I was so greedily taking into my starved lungs.
"You see? You cannot die in your own mind." The voice spoke again.
"Shut up!" I yelled at the voice. This person was seriously aggravating. "You haven't been helpful whatsoever since you said your first word!"
"On the contrary, if you would heed my words and listen, you would already be out of this little world you find so terrifying. Let go of your fear of the bed. The movie scenes are fake, they never happened." The voice said, condescendingly.
I looked at the bed again, which was somehow floating on the surface of the blood that was now to the bottom of my nose if I looked forward. However, I kept my chin above the blood. I really didn't want to trust the voice and my gut feeling was screaming at me to not trust the voice. But, I found myself slowly inching towards the bed and about halfway through the journey, that inching became treading blood.
"That's right. Get on the bed and escape the tormenting confines of your mind fueled by your fears of going to bed. Go to bed." The voice said demandingly.
"I'm not scared of going to bed!" I exclaimed indignantly.
"Prove me wrong then and go to bed." The voice said in matter-of-fact tone.
Now that I was next to the bed, my hand resting on it to stay afloat, I felt an even greater tinge of fear than I did earlier.
"Look at that, you're trembling, are you sure you are no scared of going to bed?" the voice asked me mockingly.
"I am not!" I exclaimed.
"Then prove it! Get on the fucking bed and prove me wrong!" the voice screamed at me angrily.
The voice's angry scream was enough to jolt me in the right direction. Slowly and shakily, I climbed up onto the bed and sat down. The blood had reached the bottom of the television that hung from the ceiling. I was running out of time to do this. As I sat in the bed, I could not help but feel an immense amount of fear. That fear was what slowed my head's descent onto the pillow. I felt that if I did, I would die next or the world would suddenly end and I would be left all alone in the ever expanding darkness of the void.
My head hit the pillow. Nothing happened.
"You see!?" The voice exclaimed. "There was noth-"
Suddenly, the sound of the pouring blood stopped and the room was silent again. However, from the other side of the ceiling I was left to face, I heard a loud noise. I could not place my finger on it, but the noise sounded inexplicably familiar. Only when I realized what the sound was from exactly, did anything happen next.
The ceiling opened, just as it had previously, pouring blood once again and this time, there above me, was a clown with a chainsaw. The clown's smile was maddening, it was full of evil intent. The last thing I heard was the clown's malicious laughter and the sound of that chainsaw cutting into my flesh. I'm not even sure if I had time to let out a scream of fear and pain.
Line Break
I jolted awake, sitting up in my bed with enough speed to rival a cheetah in speed.
"I told you that you were in your own mind. You were dreaming." Said the voice...
A/N: I hope that you all enjoyed this latest installment of phobia related short stories! Tune in next time for another request from a new reader! Review and let me know what you all think.