Chapter 1
The Dream Begins

She opened up her eyes and blinked. The stale air would keep anyone awake. She scratched her mouse brown hair and sat up. She placed her hands on her mattress. It felt rough and gritty at the touch. She jerked her hand up and looked down and saw the filthy blood soaked sheets. She stood quickly and looked around her room, but it wasn't her room.

The room was small with a full size bed in the middle. The bed was covered with the rusty red blood which trailed the floor and walls before stopping above the bed. She crinkled her feet on the floor, but she noticed how stuck they were to it. She looked down and saw she was standing in a half dried puddle of the red substance. She stepped off of it quickly and looked back to the bed. Echoes of screams hollowed in her ears.

"Rod!" it screamed. "Help me!"

"TINA!" another screamed.

She turned to the door and pulled it open and ran from the room quickly shutting the door behind her. She stood a moment still holding the door handle in her hand. Her heart was beating quickly as she fought the feeling of panic down to the pit of her stomach. She turned around slowly and looked at her new surroundings. She was in a hallway, but it was no longer in a house. It was a school hallway. Lockers traced the walls down what seemed like a never ending corridor. It was dark and the floor was covered with dust. She looked at the hallway where a stripe of crusty blood training down the middle.

'I should run,' she thought, but she found herself following the trail.

"Nancy." A voice moaned. She jerked around, but no one was there.

'Who is Nancy?' She wondered.

She followed the blood down the hallway where it turned. Carefully she peeked down the new hallway, but it wasn't a school anymore, it was a hospital. A rusted wheelchair sat in a corner next to what must have been a nurse's desk. What must have been a food tray lay carelessly on the floor in front of it. It was then she noticed the bloody footprints and drops of blood that now replaced the trail of blood. A boy's cringes of pain pasted her ears. She jerked around, but the school hall was gone and replaced by hospital doors. She pushed against them but they were locked. She turned back around, her heart beating wildly in her chest again.

'Trapped' she thought.

She followed the footprints and looked into the open doors as she passed. The rooms were all empty. A melted tricycle lay at the foot of a bed. Another echoing scream pierced the silence, but when she looked around again there was nothing there.

Her heart pumped in her ears, her breathing sped up but she was refusing to panic. She continued on walking slowly listening for any sound in the silence when suddenly she heard a breaking noise. She looked in the room she passed and saw the burnt wall and crushed television set. She cringed at the site of the gaping hole left inside the screen. For a second she could almost smell burnt hair. She continued to walk until she noticed one door slowly open from what seemed its own free will. She peeked inside to what looked like was once a padded room.

She stopped and walked into it, looking around at the shredded walls. She could still hear the echoing screams around her. "Stay together!"

Suddenly she fell in the center of the room. It was as though she were in quicksand. Her feet sank in the matting and she could feel someone pulling her down. She screamed and kicked but could not seem to hold on. She wrapped her hands around a scrap of cloth and pulled just to have it tear farther until it snapped loose. She disappeared into the feathers and scraps.