"Everything we think and see is just a dream within a dream"

- Edgar Allan Poe

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The writer awoke from his nightmare to a series of quizzes surrounding his newfound environment.

Oh, for the writer was good at finding and solving pressing questions. Thus when he peeled his weary eyes open in a small room of which he had no recollection of existing in prior, he fought the exhaustion in his core for an answer as to why. 

His irises made predominate observations of the beds copied and laid on either side of a dull mahogany end table, hosting a snuffed oil lamp and wearied book of scripture. The man in question, Andrew Anderson, looked to the bed untouched by him, where forth he found the resting body of a boy he knows all so well. His mind supplied the name Peter, and a gregarious feeling let his heart rest from the persevering pounding it had pursued.

All questions were seemingly quelled by the camaraderie presumption that he was situated at an inn. Perhaps a holiday was amidst, or possibly a meeting was to be seen in his future.

Andrew pushed the inquiry aside, finding solidarity in the single fact that his son was breathing. See, the writer had just awoken from a night terror in which his child for forever lain to rest by a terrible disease, now a generation old. Ah, and within that dream another, though he can't quite remember whatever off.

Internally, the father promised himself that he would not abandon the child until the marrow when the memory of the terror dream has been expelled from his memory. Sure enough, the day would come. Thus, to fill the waiting period Andrew nudged the sleeping teen only for a moment to bask in the idiosyncratic brown eyes whose light kept in tied to reality.

Peter hummed softly at the touch, looking up and blinking twice before falling into unconsciousness once again. It was enough fallacious evidence of his son's existence for Andrew to drag himself to his own bed and let himself drift into an unusually peaceful rest.

There should've been questions raised by the absurd peace in the night, the lack of memory in Andrew's head, the need to know something isn't wrong.

Yet, as good at solving them as he was, the writer was too tired for questions.
And that was a fatal notion.

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Andrew awoke for a second time to a pair of icy hands nudging his shoulder. For it was a frightened Peter, with pallor to his cheeks and a dark, unforgiving panic in his eyes.

"Papa?" the child mumbled.

The change in location was notable nearly immediately. Now, the father and son sat in a freezing room of stone and plaster. The place was black as starless midnight, the only exception being a small pane of glass on the upper wall allowing a single beam of the sun to shine into the room.

It was cold, almost like an icebox, or rather the damp frozen basements that wealthy families keep their preserves in. The air was dusty and dry as it was inhaled into Andrew's lungs. His throat burned with the sensation.

The writer looked into Peter's eyes, breaking past any stoic wall to infer if his darling child was in pain. Alas, there was pain to be seen. The boy's eyes were red and puffy, though it was hard to see in the dark. He was clutching his shirt, pulling the collar out away from him as if it was difficult for him to breathe.

Expectantly, both of them shivered violently in the spartan chill.

Andrew carefully pulled Peter into him, transferring heat from himself to his son. He whispered, voice low and partially taken by the sponge-like oxygen, "Child. I know not why we came here, nor how we arrived. Have you any clue? I awoke in the room of an inn and now here."

"I know nothing... we came to the inn for a holiday. Grandmother thought it would help with your health. we fell asleep at night, and when I awoke---" the boy didn't have to finish. Even so, he would never have the chance.

A large iron door that went unnoticed until now slammed open to reveal a woman dressed in a nurse outfit. She had raven black, frizzy hair, unkempt under her cap. She walked with force and determination, her leather heel pounding against the floor.

Andrew grabbed Peter by the arm and pulled him close. For it was no use. The nurse held the boy by his arms and yanked him towards her. Andrew failed to fight, weekend from the cold and fatigue.

The woman pushed Peter against the wall pulling an iron syringe from her pocket, the liquid inside unseen. The teen struggled under her hold but eventually gave in and sat frozen and fearful in her grasp.

With nimble fingers, the nurse pricked the poor child's skin with the hollowed needle and swiftly pressed the handle, forcing an unknown solute into his veins. Blood dripped from the hole on Peter's neck. His eyes when wide and lost focus momentarily. With a shutter, he collapsed against the wall.

The nurse backed away and turned to Andrew. Unblinking, she tilted her head at the writer and spoke two masked simple words.

"Save him."

Andrew, still shocked, took shaken breaths in the woman's presence, "Pardon?"

"Save. Him."

With that notion, the nurse departed.

Calm was no longer in question. Not for the writer. Not when some unknown insidious poison was mixing with the pure blood of his boy.

Peter was shaking violently, paling by the minute his eyesight, disoriented, and his breathing erratic. He stared, almost unseeing at Andrew, pleading, in pain.

There was something about the shaking that Andrew recognized, something he knew all too well. However, the notion of what that could be escaped his mind just as quickly as it came when Peter stuttered, "Papa," from his sorrowful place against the wall.

Andrew had a spark of action. He scrambled to meet Peter's side, hands hovering over the fragile boy in a panic to understand what had happened.

"What has she done to you, child?" Andrew questioned, a trembling hand hovering over the spot of the injection.

There is but a mumble in response as Peter falls into the comfort of Andrew's chest. In the moment of panic and pain, it would be easy for one to want nothing more than hold their loved one and forget themselves. Andrew himself felt the temptation of disguised comfort. Still, somehow he found the strength to pull away from his son and rise in determination.

A small cry reckoned in response. But the nurse's words boomed louder in the writer's ears. For, by asking Andrew to save Peter, there was an implication that there was some way that he could be saved. 

And if there was such a way, Andrew needed to discover it.

"Fear nothing, oh my darling boy, joy shall return to us soon."

Andrew began his quest by searching the space around him; darkness, brick, chill, and iron locked in every which way. For, nothing accompanied the pair besides their own bodies and the walls around them.

Perhaps, though, the writer had read before that trinkets may be hidden in the wall or beneath the floor. Thus he took to a fastidious examination of every milometer surrounding him.

First, the floor, too rock-solid—nothing hidden as far as he could tell.

And with the failed attempt came the convulsing and dry heaves from Peter. Harsh coughing and harsher trusting of limbs imprinted themselves in Andrew's visuals.

Next to the walls on which the writer pounded and pulled and picked at until the tips of his fingers ripped free and bled with the failure of his attempts

In frustration and heavy grief, Andrew sent his fist flying into the bricks, a sharp snap and pained cry echoing in the tiny room. Andrew sank to the floor, collapsing against the freezing wall behind him. Scared to look in Peter's direction in case it was the last time.

Was there no way to rid his grief? To save his son?

There was not. There never had been. The mere hope was but an illusion. For, it was all a trap set by the wicked nurse.

The wicked nurse who seemed strangely familiar, like a damsel from a dream. Though this hatred of her was new, Andrew was sure he'd seen the woman before; sure, he'd heard her voice.

If any of that mattered now, he'd dwell on it.

Instead, the writer found himself maneuvering his son, once erratic and floundering involuntarily, now stilled, into his lap. The child was limp, though breathing. His infected body chilled rapidly, and it became a serious notion that this was the blade that would cut his life short.

And oh, the sheer pain that ripped through Andrew, tearing him to soupy remains of what he once was. It was a deep thrashing grind that separated every piece of his heart by the stringy organ flesh and let the blood drown him until he was nothing; not a father; not a man; not a living being.

They should've killed him. This was torture unimaginable to man.

A loud, evil, animalistic howl of pain and grief ripped from his lungs. "Please!" he cried, "Save him! Please! Please!"

A voice came through the walls, soft and feminine, "It's not real."

"What?"

"Wake up! Learn what's true."

True?

True was pain. True was grief and guilt, and loss and loneliness.

So, the writer, who had crafted so many realities before, strayed away from his own, wanting desperately to hold onto something different.

Watching the face of his poisoned boy go slack and lifeless, the writer breathed a simple command...

"No..."