"The Nightmare" by Arushi Kashyap is a spooky tale of a dream gone wrong. It is told in eight parts, with each part whisking the reader into a new dreamscape. This is Chapter Five.
*Content Warning: Blood, death, rot, some violence
"The Nightmare" by Arushi Kashyap
Chapter Five: The House of Her
I opened my eyes.
Again.
The ache in my head was dull now, distant. My body felt lighter. Too light. I was lying on a couch. In a house that looked exactly like mine. Same curtains. Same clock ticking softly on the wall. Same framed photo of me and my mother laughing in the kitchen. I could even smell the faint trace of chai from mornings long gone. The air was too still. The shadows didn’t shift. And the photograph— We weren’t smiling in it anymore.
We were just... staring. Blank.
Image Description: A bloody bride pictured from the neck up with a sheer veil covering her face and hair. Her lips are painted blood-red, and her eye make-up matches her dark hair. Her face is smeared with blood, and a trickle of blood runs down the center of her face.
Credit: Breanne Mead / Pexels
I stood up, heart pounding louder than the clock. The windows showed no sky. Only a flat, grey fog. No birds. No sun. No trees. I walked to the hallway. Every step felt wrong, like I was walking through someone else's memory of my home. Then I saw the first door. It hadn’t been there before. It was painted yellow—like the walls of my childhood bedroom. I opened it, slowly. Inside: me.
Seven years old.
Braided hair. School uniform. Sitting on the floor, drawing with crayons.
But when she turned to look at me, her eyes were pitch black.
She smiled.
“You left me here,” she whispered. “You let me disappear.”
“You left me here,” she whispered. “You let me disappear.”
I slammed the door shut.
Another door appeared to my right. White. With lace trim. A veil draped across it. I knew what I’d find. I opened it. A version of me in a wedding dress stood at the vanity. Smiling at her reflection. But her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Blood trickled from her mouth. She turned slowly, her veil falling like torn skin.
“He never came,” she said softly. “They never come. Not for us.”
Behind me—more doors. Dozens. Each one led to a new version of me. A girl hiding in a closet. A teenager sobbing into a pillow. A woman curled on the floor of an office bathroom, shaking. Each room held one of me. All of them broken. All of them waiting.
I started to run. The hallway grew longer. Twisting. Stretching like it was alive. Door after door blurred past me. Until I saw it. A mirror. Hanging crookedly at the end of the hallway. I stopped in front of it, panting. At first, my reflection looked normal. Tired. Pale. Wide-eyed. Then it blinked—when I didn’t. I tilted my head left. It tilted right. Then—it smiled. I stepped back. The glass cracked from the center, spiraling out like a spiderweb. From behind the fracture, the reflection whispered:
“You are not the dreamer. You’re the dream.”
The mirror shattered.
I fell forward—
And landed at a dinner table.
Dozens of versions of me sat around it. Some old. Some young. Some dressed in funeral black. Some in hospital gowns. All of them stared at me. In unison, they spoke: “Sit. Accept it. You’ll never leave.” I stood frozen. Then—screams.
One of them began to convulse. Then another. Blood gushed from their mouths. Their skin peeled. They writhed and collapsed into the table. The candles flickered. The chandelier burst.
I ran.
I didn’t know where. The hallway folded in on itself. The lights went black. Something chased me. I couldn’t see it. But I could feel it. It was me. Laughing. Clawing. Weeping. And then—
I opened a door. And stepped through.
To Be Continued...
About the Author
Arushi Kashyap is a fiction writer from India who loves exploring different genres—from haunting thrillers to tender tales of love and loss. She finds inspiration in the blurred lines between dream and reality, often weaving emotion and imagination into every story she writes.
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