The sound reverberated around the small room. Sean's heartbeat was drowned out- all he could hear was the terrified shriek.

Then the cry was joined by a second, and Sean felt the tentacles loosen their grip on his ankles. He braced himself for the killing bite, but instead felt his body hit the floor with a thud.

Sean opened his eyes and his brain immediately doubted what his vision showed: Mrs. Queen was being engulfed, slowly, by a swirling multicolored mass. It was unlike anything Sean had ever witnessed. Slowly but surely, every part of Mrs. Queen was covered by the strange phenomenon. First her tentacles, then her pink dress, her face, and, finally, her screaming mouth.

A second later she was gone.

Annemarie's scream, which had carried on the whole time, abruptly stopped as she fell to the carpeted floor. Sean quickly joined her, falling into a deep sleep.

o-O-o

It was warm. Must've been sometime in the summer. Mom was baking cookies; I could smell it in the air. I was young, so I turned on the TV to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Instead I saw the news. "A break in occurred early this morning on Elm Street," the anchor told the camera. That was her street.

"Police have informed us that the suspect snuck in through the back door, which appeared to be unlocked. The suspect made their way to the bedroom, and encountered and killed the home's elderly resident. HPD has not yet released the victim's name. The suspect then made his way back out..."

I stared at the television in a daze. Their was a knock on the door, a police officer in our home, and a scream of an anguished child learning her mother was gone. A scream only drowned out by that of a child without a grandmother.

o-O-o

Sean tasted leaves.

Upon opening his eyes he found himself buried in a mound of dead foliage, like that of a child's autumn playdays. He sat up and spit the leaves onto the ground. It appeared he was in a forest full of naked trees. All the leaves were brown and fallen to the forest floor. There was a sort of haze in the air; everything within a few feet was obscured by gray mist.

"Annemarie?" Sean called. He didn't hear a reply. He slowly got to his feet, brushed the leaves off of his jeans, and began walking around, looking for his ginger-haired accomplice. He quickly stumbled across her- quite literally.

A surprised, "Ah!" escaped Sean's lips as his foot caught something soft and he went down.

"No Mom, five more minutes..." Annemarie groaned and rolled over.

Sean pushed himself back to his feet and shook Annemarie's arm gently. "Hey, wake up."

Annemarie's eyelids opened slightly, then flicked open suddenly as all the previous events came back to her. She sat up sharply.

"Woah!" Sean jerked back to avoid getting smacked.

"The kitchen. The monster. Was all that real?"

"Well... sorta." Sean took a breath. "Right now we're in the dream world."

"Dream world?"

"Yeah, the 'Realm of Dreams'!" Sean sarcastically motioned air quotes.

"So we're in my dream? Or your dream? Or-" Annemarie began massaging her temples. "This is extremely confusing."

"Think of it as... channel surfing- you know what that is, or...?"

"Yes, I know what that is." Annemarie rolled her eyes. "I'm a millennial, I know of a world without Netflix."

"Okay, so channel surfing. I mean, dream walking-"

"Is that really what it's called?"

"That's what I call it."

She shrugged. "It's kinda lame..."

"Lame? Lame?!?" Sean gasped and put his hand to his chest, feigning offense. "It took me weeks to think of that!"

"Well," Annemarie caught his eye, a kind of head-tilted, eyes-half-squinted look that Sean had seen some cheerleaders give to their football counterparts. His mind began to wander for a second, gazing into her emerald eyes, but snapped back as she turned to inspect the tree she was leaned against. "It sounds like a poetry book."

"And what's wrong with poetry?" Sean asked skeptically, eyebrow raised.

"It's abstract and boring." She kept picking at the tree's bark. Sean glanced up. He recognized the needles as those of a pine, thanks to that semester of botany he took because he was bored.

"Well, I think poetry is very exciting. It can be a gateway into how a person thinks."

"Oh, are you psychoanalyzing me, Dr. Sean?" The look made a reappearance, more intense than before. Sean felt his body go numb, and he uttered, "Maybe..."

He felt himself lean forward.

Felt his tingling lips part slightly.

Felt the world spin around him.

Felt his forehead hit the dead foliage littering the ground.

Sean sat back up quickly, a slight heat in his cheeks. Luckily Annemarie didn't seem to notice. She was looking off into the mist, her back turned. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"It sounded like... you falling on your face." Annemarie turned to face him, her giggle soon turning to a full on belly laugh. A sound that reminded Sean of easier times, a cozy bed, home cooked meals, stuffed bears....

Bears.

Black bears.

Black bears climb pine trees.

"Uh, Annemarie?"

Through tears and a stomach sore from laughter, Annemarie managed to squeak a "Yes?"

"We should run."

Her laughter cut short, just as something big, black, and angry slid down the tree next to hers.

The two were certainly not dream walking then.

As they pushed through branches, running at top speed, Annemarie shouted, "So how do we escape?!"

"We run!" Sean responded.

"No, the dream! Not the bears!"

"Bears?! Like, plural?!"

"Look behind you!"

Sean swiveled his head and saw a whole herd of black bears chasing behind, more sliding down from pine trees, oak trees, every tree in the woods. Then pain bloomed from his shoulder and he spun around, nearly losing his balance, but kept running. He noticed the trees were getting narrower and narrower; soon he and Annemarie were fleeing in single file.

"Do we just have to beat the bears?" Annemarie turned her head and asked over her shoulder.

"Huh?"

"To escape!"

"It's not that simple!" Sean did his best to explain while conserving his breath- he wasn't used to running for this long. "We have to find the dreamer and-"

"A little kid?"

"Usually! How'd you-"

"Little child in the woods, dead ahead!"

Sean glanced forwards and saw the trees narrow to a slit. His and Annemarie's progress slowed as they turned sideways and shuffled through the trees, the bears somehow not slowing a bit.

They just barely managed to squeeze through the the tree "gate" before the bears. With the sound of a spring bouncing, another tree sprouted in the gap, trapping the bears outside. Annemarie ran to the child who was standing in the middle of what Sean noticed was a ring of tall pines.

"Hey, you okay?" Annemarie asked. The little boy was in his wolf pajamas, holding a little stuffed wolf pup, and sniffling.

"Oh, don't cry. The bears can't hurt you now."

"Uh, Annemarie?" Sean called.

"Just a second, comforting a child."

"This may be more important."

Annemarie turned around. "What's more important than a- oh."

The black bears, one by one, appeared at the tops of the trees surrounding Sean, Annemarie, and the child. A loud growling sound filled the air, and the bears began sliding down the pines, gaining speed as they neared the ground.

"Okay, I have a plan," Sean kneeled down next to the child, who was shivering with terror. "What's your name kid?"

The kid, quivering, said nothing.

"Well my name is Sean." He held the child's shoulders, looking the boy in the eyes. "My dad taught me something about scaring bears a long time ago. You want to hear it?"

The little boy managed to nod, his saucer-sized eyes meeting Sean's.

"All you have to do to scare the bears is to act tougher than them," Sean stood halfway up and mimicked a bear's standing lumber. "Just walk like this," he told the boy, "and then turn and ROAR!" He mimicked a bear's roar and the boy jumped a foot in the air.

And then smiled.

"Ready?" Sean asked, Annemarie tugging his sleeve and pointing at the approaching mass of angry woodland mammals coming from all sides. Sean stood next to the child. "First, walk like a bear." They both bent over and began lumbering towards the sea of bears. "Now roar!"

The both of them shouted at the top of their lungs.

The bears stopped.

The bears began to back away.

And then they all disappeared, one by one, in a puff of black smoke.

Sean and the boy turned and looked at each other, the boy hugging his wolf and beaming. Then suddenly he was squeezing Sean's leg instead. "Great job," Sean mussed the kid's hair, "now run along."

The boy backed away from Sean, turned, and ran towards the trees. As he reached them, a wolf pack came from the trees and joined him. The boy, with a sound of pure joy, vanished among the woods.

"Will he be okay?" Annemarie asked, making Sean jump. "You jumpy?"

"Forgot you were there." Sean rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, he'll be fine."

"How do you know?"

"Context clues. His PJs, his stuffed wolf. This is how the dream was supposed to be."

"So now...?" Annemarie suddenly stumbled. "Whoa!"

"Now," Sean yawned, the sudden urge to sleep slipping over him like a warm blanket, "we fall asleep."

"And we wake up in the next dream?" Annemarie was sitting now, leaning heavily on her arm for support.

"Ex-" Sean yawned again, more heavily. He laid down, feeling the soft bed of pine needles beneath his body. "Actly."

And he drifted into darkness.