Death by Dawn

She still couldn't shake the previous night's dream. Not that she could actually remember it. There was just a lingering sense of doom. She had sat huddled in her twisted sweat soaked sheet with her back to the headboard and her arms wrapped around her up drawn knees. The acrid smell of fear lingered in the brightly lit room, she had turned on the harsh overhead lights as soon as she could after she come awake gasping for breath. She never used those lights. If she used any light in the room is would be the wonderful Art deco style stained glass lamp on the bedside table. This sudden irrational fear of the dark was not like her. She loved the dark and usually moved through the house at night with little to no light. The night was her time; it was when she was strongest. She had left her bed to sit on the crimson silk covered couch in her little sitting area. She turned on the T.V. and spent the rest of the night vegging out. She spent the whole of the next day working and attending to her daily rituals. With only periodic thoughts back to her interrupted sleep the night before.

There were no windows in her basement rooms so the burning light from the sun could not touch her. She ran her hands through her waist length dark red hair her long nail scratching pleasantly over her scalp. She needed to get her shattered nerves together. It had just been a dream. Her thoughts once again were caught up in a wave of unreasonable fear. Why did just thinking of her dream do this to her? She needed to get to sleep but she just couldn't bring herself to climb in bed and lay down. Knowing herself, she went upstairs and going strait back to the kitchen, she left the house by the back door. Stepping down off the porch, she took the brick path into the white picket fenced garden. She could feel the fragrant breeze ever so slightly caressing her skin. The night air was neither hot nor cold it was perfect for soaking up some moon rays. On the brick patio at the center of her garden was her hammock. She lay down on it and stretched her tired aching muscles. She fell asleep within moments.

Pitch darkness, heavy with ill intent, creeping toward her from all directions. The smell of burning incense cloying the air, she could see nothing, feel nothing. The only other sense she had was taste, and what she tasted was blood. It seemed to have become one with the very air itself. That same air seemed to be reaching into her throat to squeeze her heart. Her final sense, her sixth sense, was now online and what it showed her filled her with such horror she woke screaming for the second night in a row.

Her heart pounding in her chest, tears drying on her face and the fear in her mind were the only things she brought back from the dream world. She still could not remember what her dream. Why was she all of the sudden afraid to be in total darkness? If it weren't for the moon and the stars, she would be in pitch-black night. She knew she should go back in the house but she couldn't make herself. She couldn't even make herself get out of the hammock. She remained where she was frozen, frozen in fear and the dawn was coming.

She lay trembling watching the night sky gradually lighten and her heart thundered inside her chest, her lungs were seizing. Her eyes seemed to be permanently open she didn't think she had blinked at all since she woke. Her brain the only thing that seemed to be working was in overdrive. She could see the dawn coming and the lighter the sky the more she panicked. Finally, the first rays broke over the horizon and crept across the land. She had the urge to run and save herself but she still could not move. The rays reached her and as they crept across her body, she began to turn to stone. The last part of her to turn was her brain; she felt the agony of transformation, trapped in her immobile body. Her last thought was that she would never remember her dream now.

Her body of stone was so heavy it ripped the ties holding the hammock to its rack and fell to the ground. It was a short fall but as she was not made of natural stone she shattered into millions of peaces of stone shards and dust.

High above, a shadow on the face of the clouds smiled a sinister smile and rejoiced in the destruction he had wrought.