Tipsy Lit Flash Fiction Contest Entry

Dream Catcher

Lo padded slid the window of another bedroom open with the wave of a hand and heaved the bag of nightmares through the opening.  This was her punishment for appearing in town, which was forbidden, and being seen by a man driving a melon truck.  He had crashed and melons had spilled onto the road – almost crushing several pedestrians in an avalanche of fruit.

The people had shrieked and the news had come to cover the “alien story”, but she’d already hidden herself with a snap of her fingers by the time they had arrived and watched as drivers and pedestrians spoke fanatically with the journalists.

It must have been the unhuman tint to her skin or large eyes that had startled them.

She set the bag on the floor and pulled her hair up into a knot.  This child’s dream catcher was closer to his head than the last child and she didn’t want to tickle his face with it.  As she dragged the nightmares across the bedroom floor, it caught on a handle of the dresser and wouldn’t move further into the room.

Sighing, Lo snatched the dream catcher of the wall and set herself to the task of pulling the bad dreams out of it.  Some of them stuck and stretched when she yanked at them and would slap into her hand as they came loose.  Others smelled rotten or would growl as they were tossed into the bag.

Lo finished the catcher, put it back on the bedpost, grabbed the bag and pulled it as hard as she could toward the window.  The tear of fabric rang through the quiet bedroom and Lo turned, horrified, to see the nightmares slithering from the bottom of the bag.

They began to form a colony and, though she tried to hold them in the bag, overwhelmed her.  Her body was thrown against the wall.

“Someone’s in here,” a voice gasped awake in the other room

She heard the voice being quieted and comforted by another.  The newly formed monster was escaping through the window and she chased it, but it was too late.

The evil was released, turning the sky red.  She turned around to look at the child who lay sleeping just in time to see a nightmare rise above him.   It grinned wickedly and took a dive into his mind and he awoke screaming.

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