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#113 Dreams and Nightmares

Different cultures and civilizations have been pondering the meaning of dreams for centuries. Whether you believe dreams reflect real life, or real life reflects our dreams, it’s difficult not to be intrigued by the personalized movies our brain creates while we’re asleep. This week’s prompts encourage you to explore what happens when we enter this liminal space between fantasy and reality — and how dreams can be beautiful, terrible, and everything in between.

🥇 Winner

Dream Weaver

Winner of Weekly Contest #113 🏆

In the dust that settles at the end of the world where the only light is the dimness of dawn, there is a woman sitting on a wooden chair. It is not a throne; she is not a queen. It is not a rocking chair; she is not a crone. It is a wooden chair you might find anywhere in the world, straight-backed and uncomfortable to sit on for long periods of time. She sits on it while she weaves with a cat sleeping lazily at her feet. There is a single flickering flame that lights her workspace, illuminating spools of thread in every imaginable color and...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write a story about a character who believes their dreams predict the future.

– 38 stories

Start or end your story with the line ‘This is my worst nightmare.’

– 73 stories

Write about two people whose dreams are somehow connected.

– 42 stories

Write a story about a character who interprets people’s dreams.

– 18 stories

Write about a character whose dreams are portals to other worlds.

– 54 stories

Stories

The Porch

Weekly Contest #113

Alice? ALICE? Can you hear me? The last time we met was approximately one week ago. I believe I managed to make contact but it was too brief. The nurses in the hospital managed to get you out from the REM state and the portal disappeared. I only saw you standing in front of a door but you were staring at me in, what I suppose, must have been a mirror. So, you were staring at yourself but in reality it was me. Reality; HUH! You remember I had been debating whether reality is the correct concept to describe our surroundings since I was a chil...

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Into The Wonderlands

Weekly Contest #113

..the waves of crescendoing waltzes filled the ballroom, the chandeliers were on fire, and the reflections in the shining mirrors amalgamated with the dancers in endless revolutions. The sugary, floral fragrances hovered over the hall, mildly exciting, tenderly intoxicating. “Fourteen, just a little too early for the balls?” “Oh, I come for the desserts,” I say, smiling And another dessert cart rolls by, the first tray taken by marble cakes and berry-covered pies, the second housed marzipan tartlets, and crispy pastry, third lodged w...

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The Recurring Dreams of Victor Dumoure

Weekly Contest #113

On an August morning as the sun cast its rays through the window, Victor Dumoure awakened from a dream. The handsome and successful singer got up, stretched, and crossed to his favorite chair, a Vintage from the Renaissance period. He sat down and crossed his silk clad legs. I haven’t had a dream like that since I was a young hard rocker, he thought. I was so terrified after that unforgettable performance, that I hired a private investigator to find out if someone had tried to kill me. How cunning my agent and Lenore were, slipping that drug...

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Clairvoyance

Weekly Contest #113

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this… thing. It didn’t start off as much. When I was about three I had this dream about a dog and saw the same one the next day; normal kid stuff you can write off, y’know? Then it started to get a little weirder, like knowing my sister was going to fall off the slide at the park or knowing what my cousins had gotten me for my birthday before they had even come to my party. By the time I told my parents I knew they were going to separate before they had even decided, they all knew something was up. ...

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The Death of Somnia

Weekly Contest #113

06:45 Jericho, Oxford Samia screamed and came round with a start. Her heart was racing and her head felt heavy and sweaty. She shivered, the clock was on 6:45 damn it, forty-five minutes before her alarm should have gone off. After that dream, she could not go back to sleep. She got out of bed with a huff and stomped downstairs. ‘Samia, sweetheart, you look like you got dragged through a hedge backwards and it’s only 6:45 am’ Sally said hand on her hips ‘Please don’t tell me you have just come in?’ ‘No Sal I have been in all night. I had a...

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The Dream

Weekly Contest #113

      The dream is floating, lazily along the recesses of my brain. It is rolling gently along the banks of my memory. It is fluttering as softly as butterfly wings delicately tapping on the windows of my soul trying to awaken the recollection of it. I am sure that the dream is coming from someplace within the depths of my being.          I try and remember the dream. It is sliding like the morning tide back into my memory bank. It is gliding swiftly through the recesses ...

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False Awakening

Weekly Contest #113

This is my worst nightmare. Is what Ethan said to himself when he woke up. It was only a few nights ago Ethan and Isabella arrived. Deep into the dense woods on the Maine mountaintops. Now sitting at the seemingly lifeless body of Isabella in their tent. He desperately tried to wake her, shaking her as hard as he could. It was far too late at this point and he knew she had passed. Trying to look past the tears in his eyes he looked for a cause. Nothing he saw explained any of this. He wondered if he was too rough with her last night. He knew...

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It's Good To Touch the Green, Green Grass of Home

Weekly Contest #113

Everything was loud and quiet at the same time. The air was deathly still as everyone waited for the jury to finish deliberating. The ticking clock on the courtroom’s wall sounded like miners’ pickaxes against solid rock and I could hear the rush of my own blood in my ears like the waters of the mighty roaring Niagara Falls. My heart beat as deafeningly as a battering ram against an ancient castle’s wooden gates. My pulse raced like a thousand charging cavalries in battle. Despite the cold airconditioned room, I felt sweat form under my hair...

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Great Balls of Spitfire

Weekly Contest #113

This is my worst nightmare.In retrospect, karma was never something I ever really bought into. I always assumed that it only appealed to people who delighted in the misfortune of those who had wronged them. I can see its appeal as a concept; someone cuts you up on a roundabout and the universe is supposed to flip their car or give them cancer. It has a strong USP. I'm not sure it's really a thing though. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's all bullshit, how could I know? I just think that the people who really deserve to get shafted...

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Jokes are Half-Meant: Musings, Meditation, and the Pandemic

Weekly Contest #113

This is my worst nightmare! What is it? The COVID19 pandemic! It’s what most people would call a nightmare – Well, isn’t it? People are anxious and scared everywhere! Maybe we would be more hopeful if we focused on the number of recoveries rather than the deaths from the virus. Yeah, okay, but I mean! We’ve only read about smallpox and Spanish flu in history books. Like, no, that’s history, it can’t happen to us. Like we’re so scientifically advanced to be hit by any pandemic! Well, now we’re part of history, too! Laughs. ...

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The one-time people

Weekly Contest #113

This is my worst nightmare. Consciousness has come to me for another day. I lift my head up and sigh. I look around, my eyelids heavy, perhaps from sleep, perhaps from the expectations of another long day ahead. I wonder if anything different will happen today. This is how it has been for weeks now, maybe months. I’m not sure. I don’t know why I am here. No one has tried to explain it to me. I am homesick. What happened to my family? Why was I taken from my house? I miss my family. I miss my toys. I miss the grassy backyard with the swi...

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This is my worst Nightmare! or Das ist mein schlimmster Albtraum!

Weekly Contest #113

I Off the southwestern coast of California, hidden away at the bottom of the ocean between Terminal Island and Catalina Island is an underwater structure in the shape of an upside-down pyramid. Its color is dark blue and its size is roughly the same as an average two story house you might find on the west side of Long Beach. The tip of its sky blue apex is approximately one micrometer away from fully touching the underwater soil below. It appears to be suspended perfectly straight as if by magic. Arriving outside of it, encased in a dark...

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The Nightmare's Protege

Weekly Contest #113

Content Warning: Witness of attempted physical assault and on-screen panic attackConnie Elizabeth’s life was this: Wake up, drink coffee, put on gloves, go to school, try to smile, run until it her feet bleed and her mind stopped thinking, stare at self in mirror and say “I will not have a nightmare. I will not have a nightmare. I will not- “, go to bed, have a nightmare, wake up, drink coffee-Her life had distilled down to a series of numbers:Two thousand ninety days since the nightmare began.16 foster homes- a girl who wakes up screaming e...

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Golden Eyes

Weekly Contest #113

She woke up abruptly and touched her sweaty face. The image of that boy was still completely clear on her retina, his golden eyes glittering and his immaculate smile against the light.- Anna! Breakfast! - called her mother.She didn't know the boy she'd dreamed of, but the dream had been so clear that Anna turned the memory over in her mind as she got ready for school.She was sitting at the desk, staring at the blackboard and the teacher's words passing through her head without being understood. She absentmindedly glanced across the room wher...

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We Build the City

Weekly Contest #113

New Orleans, 2021 Camille wakes with a gasp, just before the boy took her hand in his. Why do dreams always end just before the most heart-wrenching part? Closing her eyes against the gray morning light one more, Camille stubbornly tries to fall back into her dream. Just a few more minutes . . . But her phone’s alarm breaks her resolve with a not-so-gentle tinkling of bells, and she wants to cry. Couldn’t she get just a couple of more minutes with him? With a final, frustrated harumph, Camille rolls her limbs one by one out of bed and pads...

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