Nightmares

There's an hour of time that shouldn't exist. It doesn't appear on any clocks or watches anywhere on this Earth, and yet if you were to be awake at this time, you would find yourself in a world that is somewhat like our own, but with one terrifying difference.

You see, this hour, the thirteenth hour, if you will, has never been documented. Nor has it been discussed, debated or even thought about. That's because, in the most logical and analytical part of our brains, we as humans know that such a thing is impossible. We created the means to measure time, and we know that, whatever may happen, time will always continue in its linear and straightforward path. From one, to twelve, then back to one, and back to twelve once more. This is the only certainty in our world, our only sense of sanity and balance.

Yet, that primal part of our minds, that instinctual and primitive thought process that helped us develop into what we are today, knows better.

It knows, but thousands of years of cultural evolution have taught us to label the thirteenth hour manifestation with something easily remembered and dismissed as part of our over reactive imaginations.

Nightmares.

Those frightening dreams, those terrifying images that you experience when you sleep, they're not figments of your imagination. They're real.

They're real, and they wish to claw their way out of your dreams and enter the real world. Your world. They're real, and every time you see them in your dreams, they get stronger, and stronger. When you see these apparitions in your dreams, you are standing at the door between their world, and yours. That door is the thirteenth hour, the hour that shouldn't exist. It is the weakest point in the wall that protects and harbors you from the horrors of this nightmare world.

The thirteenth hour, the hour that resides in your dreams, holds the entrance to the nightmare world. A world where your deepest, darkest fears dwell, a world where the truest horrors of humanity are cast and forgotten.

But they never forget you, oh no. These terrors hunger for you, for your soul and your very being.

And every time you dream them, they just get stronger, and stronger, and the door that's holding them back, the one and only barrier gets weaker, and weaker until...

...Well, once the door shatters, going to Hell will be a blessing compared to the fate that is in store for you.

And the most terrifying part of all this is?

It's not a question of 'if'.

But when.