Ch. 7: Advice

Darkness enveloped the room. I tried to turn and look around, but I found out that I couldn't move. No matter what I do, I laid motionless and stiff like a statue. I then felt a feel dread crawling up in the back of my mind and realized where I really am.

'No…Not again!' I immediately felt my nose start to twitch, as my heart was being filled up with fear. I looked around the room as best as I could, but I couldn't see anything. I couldn't even tell if I was even in the same room anymore. The more I tried to move, the heavier I felt, like something was holding me down; it felt like my arms and legs were shackled and bound by weights and my head was trapped in a vice. I eventually gave up trying to escape from invisible restraints through sheer force, before trying to think back to what ended the nightmare like last time. I was quickly pulled out from my thoughts, though, when I heard a sound at the foot of the bed; I saw a silhouette that was somehow darker than the unlit room around it, standing in front of the bed with little to no emotion. It didn't took me even a second to recognize who the silhouette belonged to.

'Nick! How did he get in? I locked the door! Wait... he did the same thing last time too...' The being then opened it's eyes to show the same green glow from last night, confirming my fears.

"Well, hello again, Carrots," Nick spoke with the same eerie, calm tone as before, though it did nothing to calm me down.

"Guess you couldn't stay away from me. Though I must admit that I'm confused," Nick began to circle around to the left side of my bed as he continued to talk. I could see him more clearly now and he was naked much like last night. "After what happened between us, why would you want to move closer to me? Did you actually enjoy it that much?"

'NO!' I tried desperately to move, to speak, to do anything to try and deny his claim. All I could utter out was a small squeaking noise; the more I tried to speak up, though, the heavier my throat felt. However, at least I know that based on his remark, I could confirm that it was only a dream like last night. Nick soon threw the blanket off of me, leaving me to feel only the Summer night air. He seemed to smirk when he saw that I was a bit more modestly dressed this time, wearing a light blue t-shirt as well as a pair of sweatpants.

"I see you at least covered up a bit, though you know as well as I do that it won't do you any good. This is my house and when you live under my roof..."

He grabbed the waist of my sweatpants and began to gently pull them off, though I still couldn't move to resist him. After he finished removing my pants and left me with my panties, he turned and looked at me with those orange, slit eyes from last time, before leaning closer to my face and whispering something to me that I probably could only hear, thanks to my long, rabbit ears.

"You follow my rules," He then grabbed the hem of my shirt, before starting to pull it up over my head, causing my arms to hit the side of the wall behind the bed, as I wince from the pain and casually threw it down on the floor. I could feel Nick's hand on me, feeling me up like before and causing my breathing to speed up.

"Let's see how much fun we can have this time," Nick spoke lustfully, as he began to kiss, lick and occasionally run his teeth along my neck, each action sending different sparks of pleasure, disgust, and fear, respectively. One of his paws found their way to my nipples, which caused my throat to utter a shriek of surprise from that action alone. Nick began to chuckle to himself, like he was proud of getting a reaction out of me, as he looked at my red-hot face.

"You look ready enough. Now for the second act," He spoke, followed by a sinister grin, as he moved down my body to between my legs.

'Ah… Please, no…' I would have begged if I could, but no matter how hard I tried, I uttered out nothing but frightened, nonsensical gibberish. It felt as if someone or something was squeezing my neck real tight around it. Nick just smirked at my futile attempt to speak, as he grabbed the waist of my panties and slowly lifted them off, my legs following upwards, until they were finally removed and landing down on my bed. Nick then held my panties to his nose and took a deep whiff of it, much to my disgust, before looking at my exposed and helpless body.

"Oh, you are most certainly ready, but I think we'll have to work our way up first," He chuckled at my last line of defense away, as he lowered his paw down on my legs, rubbing up and down them, before he got right above me and stared at me, as I felt his paw reached to it's destination of intent.

'Stay away from me!' I could feel one pad enter me, sending electricity up my spine and pulsating all over my body, as he gently fingered me. I shut my eyes from the pain, my face scrunched up more from the intensity. But without warning, one of my arms that had been weighed down all this time rocketed up and clotheslined Nick right off my bed. I could finally move at last! I didn't have a long time to process this, as a livid Nick jumped on top of me, now intending to feast upon me like the feral animal he has become.

"This could've been very easy for both of us, but now you want it rough? That's perfectly fine with me!" Nick tried to hold my arms down, but my legs were working just fine, as my foot hit him square in the jewels, sending him rolling off the bed into a wheezing pile of red flesh. I quickly jumped off the bed and over him, before trying the door. Much to my dismay, it wouldn't open, because I had locked it before going to bed. I didn't have the chance to unlock the door, however, as I heard Nick start to rise from the ground and glared at me.

"Get the hell away from me!" Nick started to chase me around the room, his arms raised up with his claws sheathed, his tongue sticking out and drooling uncontrollably, waiting to take a chunk out of me and he had the eyes of a crazed psychopath. Even though I was normally a better fighter than him, he was starting to overpower me. I resorted to some cheap moves that I learned to deal with much stronger opponents, allowing me to eventually force Nick off balance and flip him on his back. But this method proved ineffective, though, as he soon got back up, acting as if nothing happened.

"Oh Judy…" Nick began, shaking his head with bemusement, while I inched away from the crazed fox. "You're just making the inevitable even more worth it," he remarked with almost sadistic glee.

"No! Don't get near me!" I took up a defensive stance, before suddenly I heard Nick's voice...or rather, a different version of him.

"Judy, whatever it is, it'll be alright," His voice spoke with an echo and with a gentle tone, but it wasn't coming from the fox in front of me; that version of Nick, however, suddenly grew pale and looked as he had seen a ghost.

"Dammit! He must have heard your shouting! In that case..." Nick lunged at me, forcing me to try and fight him off.

"I said NO! Get away from me, Nick!" I shouted, as I swung my fist at his direction, squarely hitting him in the face head on.

"Son of a bitch! That fucking hurts!" I heard the two Nick voices synchronize with each other.

'What the hell is that?!' Nothing was making any sense at this point.

"Judy, you have to calm down!" Again, I heard Nick's voice coming out from nowhere, before the "Nick" that had been assaulting me shrugged off the hit and tackled me to the ground.

"I've had enough! No more foreplay! We're going right for the main course!" He lined his hard canine member up with me.

"NO!" I shouted with horror and fear, as I braced myself to be defiled by this monster...but it never came. I was still struggling against something that was holding me down, until I heard a familiar but friendly voice.

"Judy, wake up! I'm not here to hurt you! You have nothing to fear, so please, just wake up and tell me what's going on! I promise, I'll listen and understand you!" I opened my eyes to see a very concerned Nick was holding me down, only letting go of me once I stopped flailing, as I got a look at my surrounding. Nick was now fully clothed and so was I. More importantly, we were back in reality.

The nightmare was over...for now.


The next morning, after Nick left for work, I roamed the apartment, lost in my own thoughts. I was attempting to figure out the nightmare I had last night; it wasn't the same as before, but it was still terrifying regardless. I couldn't move, but then I could. I tried thinking of what caused it, but after a few minutes of this, I got nothing. I was only able to regain movement the moment when Nick disappeared. This time, though, the nightmare kept going and was only stopped when the real Nick woke me up from it. Why was I having a nightmare about another nightmare?

My head hurt just from thinking about it, as I had so little sleep and I was groggy as I've ever felt. I didn't even try to go back to sleep after what happened. I moved towards Nick's couch and just flopped onto it face first. I had to figure out a way of getting out of that nightmare on my own…or at least not have another one altogether.

I need some advice and more importantly, I need someone who could listen to my situation.

But I wouldn't have to tell them everything…just enough to get some help. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, looking for anyone that I could talk to without making the conversation awkward and also anyone who was free to talk. I couldn't take it to my family about it, though; it they knew what I was dreaming about, things might get out of hand and they would get worried, especially if mom and dad got involved. I found Clawhauser near the top; Ben was free on Sundays, so he might be able to help. I clicked on contact to call him, half hoping he wouldn't pick up, so I could say I tried without actually having to go through with this.

On second thought, I might have made a mistake right there.

"Hey Judy, what's going on?" Ben spoke with his normal jovial demeanor, which brought a smile to my face. I'm starting to have less regret about calling my friend.

"Quite a bit, Ben," I tried to return a friendly smile to Clawhauser. "My feet are starting to feel better, but I may still be a bit weak tomorrow."

"Oh, don't worry too much about that. Chief Bogo already had a plan for that, so you wouldn't miss too much of work. He figured it might stress you out too much if you couldn't be a cop," I was surprised that Clawhauser already knew what Chief Bogo had in stored for me when I get back to work.

"How did you know that?" Ben gave me an uncharacteristically sly grin when he heard my reply.

"Girl, this is me we're talking about. I'm both dispatch and Bogo's secretary all rolled up into one. I know everything that goes on in ZPD," I had to resist the urge to facepalm when I realized I forgot that Ben has two jobs at the police station. Who else would he tell?

"Anyway, are you busy right now?" I spoke, trying to be serious. He seemed to pick up on that cue, as he dropped his smile almost immediately.

"Not particularly. What's up?"

"I haven't been getting enough sleep lately. I've been having these bad dreams about me being unable to move and seeing…some bad things," I had to keep it vague. I couldn't say what really happened and I need to make sure that I don't reveal it to anyone. Not to my friends, my family or even Nick. Ben seemed to stop and think for a second, while I waited for a response from him.

"Was it like a dream where you were in your bed?" I nodded, as he continued. "And the more you tried to move, the heavier and intense everything became as some crazy things start happening?" I nodded again, becoming intrigued by his explanation. Ben then smiled, as he spoke again. "I think you're having sleep paralysis."

"Sleep paralysis?" I inquired. I have heard that term before, but I couldn't remember where I heard it from.

"You see..." Ben started off with his explanation. "When most people are in Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or REM sleep, they can't move so that they don't act out their dreams. Sleepwalkers are what happens when people don't have this. The effect, however, can still persist after REM sleep has ended or even before it has begun, so you can end up wide awake but unable to move. Simply trying to move would actually makes things worse, as the body gets more intense and you start to feel heavier," I was amazed by how much of this information made sense to me now and that Ben actually knew about this stuff. This was something I would never expect to hear from him at all

"How do you know all this?"

"I had a roommate in college who had these a lot and he would always like to rant about them, coming up with many methods to counter his sleep paralysis, though most of them didn't work. It's just one of those things I picked up from the cool people around me," Ben replied, as he shrugged.

"So how do I beat it?" I asked, eager for a solution.

"One of my roommate's methods that actually worked was scrunching up the face. They're the only muscles besides your organs that aren't paralyzed."

As soon as I heard this part, it instantly clicked for me. I thought over the dreams and realized that I was only able to move after my face started to reflex to what Nick was doing to me.

"I would careful though," Ben continued, "Now that you've had one of these hallucinations, you'll probably start having dreams about the same hallucination and the face scrunching won't be an escape method anymore," he spoke with a serious tone that filled me with dread, as I knew he was more accurate than he realized. I lost the fight last night and I would have been taken, if not for the real Nick waking me up. I was going to need to do more research by myself.

"Thanks, Ben. This will help a lot."

"No problem, Judy. Glad I could help out, though I would recommend talking to your parents. Sleep paralysis is thought to be hereditary," As soon as Ben made this suggestion, it reminded me that I probably first heard of the term from one of my family members. There was one more thing I had to ask.

"Is it possible to have sleep paralysis one night and be able to move while asleep the next?"

"Sure," Ben answered. "The paralysis isn't perfect, but it's rare to have it happen in such a short span of time, especially back to back. I take it you've already had a nightmare about the hallucination?" I nodded, confirming his question, before replying.

"I accidentally punched…a nearby wall last night, so I must have been flailing in my sleep," I lied. I hate doing that to anyone, especially to Ben, but I was afraid how he would react if he found out that I punched Nick's face last night. Like why I was at Nick's place to begin with.

"My roommate had that happen to him before, but only after suffering from sleep deprivation... or it could be genetic too. Have you been getting enough sleep before the hallucination?" No, I hadn't. Despite all appearances, I was normally running on average about five hours of actual sleep on a work day. My brain won't shut off when I want it to.

"Not really, no," was all I could say back to Clawhauser.

"Then get some sleep then, Judy. We really can't have an officer of the law running around without any sleep now, can we?" Ben then gave a warm smile that made me feel better.

"I'll try, though I won't promise success," I responded.

"Have confidence in yourself, Judy. You always wear it well. Anyway, I should probably go. I need to run some errands today."

"I'll let you go then. Thanks for everything, Ben," I waved goodbye to my friend, as he waved back.

"I'll see you to work tomorrow and you better show up with bright eyes and a bushy tail."

"You got it," I spoke, confidence renewed. The call ended and I admit that it was a good idea to call him after all. It was a lot to take in, but at least I knew where to start. I was going to have to figure out the rest on my own. I opened up my phone's browser and got to surfing the net, hopefully finding a solution to my nightmare dilemma before I have experience that nightmare all over again.

But at the very least, I'll try to prepare myself for the worst when that happens.