Blind panic.

I'm inside my cottage, but it's not my cottage. The familiar situation we all find inside our dreams, things are never as they seem. Glimpses of an unidentifiable form dart across my vision through the open window, calling my curiosity from the heavy darkness.

Instead of going through the front door, i find myself climbing through the window, and launching myself into the unknown world that beckons me, all caution thrown to the wind, until it's just too late.

I'm running, in blind panic, heavy, awkward footfalls behind me increasing their pace at an alarming rate. The trees ahead are a welcome safety net, but climbing up would prove the challenge. The dream world holds no bounds, and in an instant i am cloaked within the safety of it's leaves and branches, like a voyeur watching and waiting to discover what or who is chasing me. Into view a tall and wretched creature, long skinny legs and huge lumbering feet, a wide muscular torso and the head of a wolf, sniffs the air and bares it's teeth. Thick globular drool slides from it's jaw like sticky string, pooling onto it's torso, clinging to the matted hair that also covers the rest of it.

I try not to breath, please don't hear me, please don't smell me. It's ears are pricked, listening for the slightest sound, then, like a flash of lightning, it's gone, alerted by some distant sound, perhaps another poor soul for it to prey on.

I take my opportunity and leave my hiding place, again running in blind panic, hoping in all hope to find shelter, now in unfamiliar surroundings and disorientated with fear.

A building up ahead, strong concrete walls and a sturdy roof, perfect for a hiding place. Closeness reveals false hope, no doors, no windows, but still i go inside to seek salvation, or is it sanity.

It's like a shower block, troughs and water drainage channels, tiled floors and tiled walls, thick with the grime of decades of misuse.

Dragging sounds, more heavy footsteps, i hear them as clear as day, approaching steadily and surely, closer and closer to the beating of my heart.

They appear like a wall at the empty doorway, lumbering, lurching from side to side as they near my hiding place. Undead souls, their rotting flesh hanging from their bones like tattered ribbons.

I close my eyes, maybe if i stay as still as a statue they won't see me, they won't hear me. Closer and closer they approach me, the stench of them getting stronger and stronger, burning my nostrils and making me nauseous. I feel clothing touching my bare arm, in panic and with a faint glimmer of hope that this isn't really happening i open my eyes with a start, and nothing, they're gone, as if they were just a hallucination.

With a massive inhalation of breath, perspiration beading across my forehead, i'm sitting bolt upright in bed, dazed with the confusion of a vague and distant memory, just for a few seconds, and then it comes flooding back to me, this twisted nightmare tale, another dream that will stay with me for a while.