The nightmare started the same way it had since David was a small child.
He woke up in his little boy bedroom in the middle of the night. He didn't know what had woken him up, but now that he was up, he wanted a juice box and maybe to pee.
His small feet hit the carpeting as he shoved the covers back into a pile on the bed. He crossed his room without incident, avoiding the cheap toys which were scattered all over the bedroom floor. His door opened with a low creak and he headed down the short hallway to the living room.
The blonde haired woman was waiting for him, just as she had been in every nightmare he'd ever had. She was laying silently on the purple carpeting next to the front door. Her thick hair was matted black with clotted blood. The skin on her face had been split open. Her nasal cavity was exposed to the open air. Her teeth were laying on the carpeting beside her.
David reached down to touch her and her eyes flew open. Her right hand clawed out, grasping for him. She grabbed the fabric of his pajama pants as he tried to run away. He stared down at her, expecting to see the bloodshot, blown out pupils he'd always seen.
Except this time her eyes were large, liquid and brown. Her hair shifted from bleach blonde to dark chocolate. Her dead skin's pallor darkened to tan.
Gasping and terrified, David reached down to pry her hand from his pant leg. Her long fingers had changed too. Now they were short, brown and wide with teal and silver nails. She yanked him to the ground and began to claw at him. She pulled herself across his body, her ruined face above his. Blood rained down from her injuries, coursing down his face and neck.
David screamed.
He was still screaming when he bolted upright on the couch. His heart felt like it was going to explode inside his chest. He gasped for air, curling into a tight ball so that his chin could rest on his knees.
The same old nightmare with a new twist.
The same old nightmare except the blonde woman had turned into Ian's dead girl.
David closed his eyes and bit his lip so hard that blood filled his mouth. The taste of the blood was the only thing that had ever succeeded at making the terror fade. The blood was real. The blonde woman was not.
Cal's parents had paid for hundreds of hours of therapy in an effort to convince David's subconscious mind that the blonde woman was not, and had never been, real. The therapy seemed to have worked. He hadn't seen the blonde woman in his dreams in nearly a year.
He hadn't woken up screaming in nearly a year.
David forced his eyes open. He found they immediately went to the floor right inside the front door. He didn't ever remember having purple carpeting in this trailer, but every other detail of the dream matched his father's living room.
Everything, from the pale checkerboard wallpaper to the dusty clock hanging on the wall, had been real. The dead girl had been real. Out of place, most assuredly, but real.
Suddenly David felt like the walls on the trailer were closing in on him. There wasn't enough air in the room for him to breath.
David stood up so fast that he stumbled. He practically ran down the hallway to the very same bedroom where his nightmare always started off. A duffle bag was sitting in the far corner of the room. He'd never unpacked it when he'd come back to live with his father last month.
He snatched the bag off the ground and threw it over his shoulder. He grabbed his familiar black and red quilt off the bed as well. He wasn't about to leave it behind when he wasn't coming back.
And he wasn't coming back.
Screw waiting for Sunday and worrying about whether or not Pappy was going to say he'd told him so. David was going home.