I know this is another nightmare before it begins. They are my mean shadow, and it follows me in my dreams and during the Horror of Daylight.

I am in front of a house I cannot recognize.I’m standing in the dark, everything in full HD, the colors all filled in.

Many years later I will realize it is my Father’s House.

This is so weird. They are always blue. The bad dreams should be blue.

I am more terrified than usual, as the light from the front of the house shines on top of my short body. In my nightmare I am not fat, but I am small again.

A consolation for the horror to come.

Something is here.

I grip the door of the 4 Wheel Drive MiniVan, it’s green shimmer entrancing. It’s cold and metallic feeling is stuck to my fingertips like ice, even though it's summer outside. My sweaty fingertips glide against its metal exterior, hoping that it will be my valiant knight against the monster that I could feel.

I can feel it in my soul. He is coming to get me. I don’t know who He is, but I can feel him approaching. Before I see him I can feel him invading my bones, crawling in my skin. His children come out of my eyes, scratching my eyelids and pushing against my retina.

I blink, and suddenly his children are gone. My skin is sweaty and pallid, my bones rickety and squeaking, the damage still there. All is quiet except for the sounds of the crickets, and I watch the flies buzz around the drive through lamp.

Everything outside of the scope of the small patch of pavement that leads to the road is gone. There is no escape. I am trapped with this unseen enemy, the thought of him enough to scare me before I have even seen him. I whimper and hold onto the door, wishing I knew how to drive.

Wishing I was an Adult.

Silently the creature turns around the 4 Wheel Drive MiniVan. He is here to greet me. He is silent, but I know what he wants.

Food.

His eyes are round and bulging, made of so many compartments they look almost fuzzy. I say nothing as he inches closer towards me, his silent footsteps inching closer.

Go away. Leave me alone.

His hairy legs have strange spikes in them, and I am afraid to get hurt. His large translucent wings, the color of a foggy window during rain, twitch a little, in excitement for me.

His Meal.

I try to move behind the 4 Wheel Drive MiniVan, the space between the garage door and the car. I hope that he can’t get me in there.

I slip in between, but suddenly it becomes difficult to move to the other side of the van. I have become fat again, and I’m wearing the blue and filthy shirt I hate so much.

He approaches the back of the van, and now I can see close up more of his face. Two gaping holes where the nose should be, breath hot air on my body. A strange black substance comes down his nose, and I notice as it hits the gravel, holes are left in the ground.

I tense up and prepare for the pain.

The hair on His body shifts in excitement and His gaping maw slowly opens. Acid pours out of His mouth, sticky and thick, lining the bottom and top of the mouth, pouring onto the pavement.

It slops and swirls onto the ground, the loud stings and smacks echoing in the silent void where only the front of the house exists, where it will always be night, which I can never escape.

Out slithers what looks like a snake. I cry as it slowly pushes out of Him, the acid boring holes into the pavement. He wants to take his time with His Meal.

He is a True Connoisseur.

His tongue smacked against the garage door, against the back window of the van, grasping wildy, flailing around for me. The acid destroyed the back garage, door, it melted the van and flew into my skin.

I could not feel it. I felt no pain. I knew I couldn’t feel anything, because this was a dream. I knew it. Yet I couldn’t make it stop. The helplessness from knowing something but never being able to stop it, was worse than seeing Him.

I close my eyes, my one and only defense mechanism, and hot tears fall onto the back ridge of the van. They slide down slowly, and they don’t make the cold metal warm up.

I shudder as his tongue bites my body and I know that I am Dead.

I thought he couldn’t get me in here.

But He could. He can find me anywhere.

He was bigger than the 4 Wheel Drive MiniVan, and even though his head couldn’t fit between the small gap of the garage door and the van, He would still have his way no matter what.

I wake up before He can hurt me.

I don’t cry.

I just sit in the dark.

Staring at nothing.

Mommy closed the door in my sleep.