Just A Bad Nightmare

Chapter One
Just a Bad Nightmare

         I awoke in a room and was  surrounded by a deadly, raging inferno. The walls were melting and flames destroyed all that was contained within. I rubbed my eyes to clear my vision and my emotions were overcome by immense terror as I saw the ghastly scene that lay in front of me. I saw my parents, tied together by a strange creature.
         The creature was made of fire. Its face was a mask of pure contained flame. I stared at my parents. Their faces held distraught expressions of shame and disappointment. My mother looked at me and said in a piercing, sorrowful voice, ‘Why have you forsaken us?’  I couldn’t react to speak. All I could do was stare into my mother’s empty eyes, feeling an overwhelming burden of guilt. I’m sorry! I said in my mind, unable to voice my plead, Please forgive me! I felt cold tears dripping from my eyes as I watched events unfold.
         The creature tightened its grip on my parents, ‘You have failed them,’ it taunted, with a shrill hiss, ‘now you shall watch as they die.’ The flames of the creature tightened and grew, and licked around the entirety of my parents. My parents made ear-wrenching screams of pain and I felt my heart shatter as I watched their eyes dissolve into thin air and their skin char. Their faces melted into unrecognisable deformations. They continued to liquefy under the intense heat of the fire creature, until their bodies were mere piles of ash and dust on the floor.
         The fire creature evaporated the remains of my parents in one sudden finishing burst of heat. I fell to the floor after the horrifying scream that had swirled around the room.  ‘Their deaths were your fault,’ the creature hissed, ‘both of them, dead because of your failures and your selfishness.’ I wished I could retort at the creature and spit back in its face. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t summon the strength to move.
         The creature morphed into an almost humanoid shape of fire and walked slowly towards me.
         ‘For years you shall lie in hiding, unaware of your powers,’ the creature hissed once more, spurting out fire from its blank face, ‘and when you discover your abilities, you will kill the innocent, help the greedy and befriend the evil.’ The creature spat a flame in my face and I felt my skin blister. ‘You will rue the day you ever discovered your origins and then you shall die!’ The creature sprung forward towards me with a horrifyingly deadly snarl, fire spouting from its every orifice.

*    *    *    *

I screamed and sat up. My heart was pounding faster than ever before. I was at home. I could feel the sweat dripping down my face as I crawled into a small ball at the top of my bed, shaking. My father came running into the room ‘James!’ he squeaked, his voice breaking with worry, ‘are you okay?’ I leapt from my bed to my father, his large, trunk-like arms holding me there. I was overjoyed that it had been a dream.
          ‘I’m fine now,’ I said, as I released him and sat back on my bed. I wiped the sweat off my head and looked around the room for any fire... there was not a flame.
         I relaxed and lay back in my bed. ‘Are you sure?’ my father asked.
         ‘Yea,’ I said, feeling guilty for making him get up in the middle of the night, ‘It was just a bad nightmare.’ My father nodded at me before leaving the room and closing the door.
I breathed a sigh of relief that it had all been a dream and that my parents were alive. I closed my eyes again and began to drift back to sleep when I heard a very faint hissing voice say ‘It’s only a matter of time.’ I lay awake for the rest of the night, shaking in fear.