Flashes of some sort. Whirls of the dark. The yells of people...
My eyes fluttered open to bright, white light. I saw dark splotches at first, of course. But after 3 seconds of blinking, my eyes managed to stay open. I looked around the room, confused. I felt the covers twisted around my body, stuck like a sweaty T-shirt. I reached down and rubbed my knee to find it sweaty, in fact.
"Whoa, Eric," I heard a familiar voice and turned to the door, where dad was standing, fixing his neck-tie, obviously a surprised look on his thin, pale face. Something that was rare for him. "Hey, dad," I croaked. Dad oddly chuckled. "This is the first time you've woken up so quickly. Though it's not early," I rubbed my eyes, and grabbed handfuls of my sheet, and pushed them away, frustrated. "Dad. You believe in nightmares?" The word felt unfamiliar as it left my tongue. I hadn't used the word ever since I was taught it at school just once. It had belonged to the category of words with only one star-little importance. I bet that on almost everyone, though. Nightmares were the same as myths.
"Nightmares?" Dad looked frustrated himself. He nervously checked his watch and gave his finished neck-tie an unnecessary twist, which provided him more time to waste shoving it back in place.
"You must know the meaning, at least," I muttered as I slowly slipped my feet out from under the covers. Dad nodded, looking more confused. "Of course I do. Why, did you just have one?" I bit my lip. "I'm not sure," I said after an eternity. Dad checked his watch again. "Hmm, Eric, I'm afraid I don't have the time to-" "Sure, sure," I said. I had expected dad to be a lousy answerer, but still, somehow, probably because of his so smart-looking impression now, I had expected some good answer. False hopes, Rick. "Sorry. Guess I'll-" He flashed a smile. Huh? "See you later. Have a good day," Dad gave his suit one last tug, ready to leave my room.
  I nodded and hastily said the childish 3 word sentence back at him, and watched him get away from my room, get his papers and stuff, and get out of home.My dad was always so formal and modest, the sharp type. The one that always succeeds in doing a task. I wished that he could be different than that sometimes. Like, couldn't he just stop sighing when I got a couple of calc. questions wrong or something? It was unprecedented that he taught me the answers swiftly and flash his grin at me afterwards.
I finally landed my feet on the hard floor, then let them take the entire weight of me. I felt awful upright. The blood rushed to my head, and I could feel the pulse in my fingertips. Plus, I felt drenched in a heavy shower of sweat.
I slowly walked to the shower, and finally relaxed as the steam and cool water shot out of the shower. My mind naturally wandered across a plethora of stuff, leading to a tail to a tail... I wondered why dad had smiled at me. Maybe because I woke up quickly, unlike waking after an hour he put on the lights in my room, which was the usual thing. Then why had I gotten up so quickly? Oh, right-the strange flashes, whirls of dark, and the yelps. It was extra-strange that I remembered my dreams. It was as unprecedented as dad being a lazy slump for just one Sunday evening. Plus, they were strange...
They must be the nightmares.
The other guys at school mentioned nightmares at lunch quite often. It wasn't 'cause it was good or the latest trend. Since they were so uncommon and only a few seniors or adults had them in the whole world, they kind of had gotten used to talking of the nightmares as something people undergo to reach 'perfection' or 'get out of their minds' forever in their lives. Lame, lame, lame, I had murmured to my best and only friend at school, Jake, who liked to build up stories about the people who had experienced it to be famous enough on the Internet. Or it would be better to say it as 'infamous'.
And here I was, standing in the shower, chewing dumbly at the thing that had happened just this morning.
I was 18, and a normal person, with no mental health problems at all. I was as healthy as a horse...
Just then, a loud buzzing sound hit my ears among the sound of water.
I had been so tense and nervous from the start of the day that I jumped and nearly slipped on the water. I thankfully got a grip, noticed that it was just my phone buzzing like hell, and pondered on whether to ignore it. But there was only a few possibilities in the world that an emergency might have happened to me in the morning just before school, so I took the lazy option. I finished my shower, and just as I stepped out of the booth, the calls ended. I dried myself completely, even my hair, then checked my phone. There was the call, and a text message-from Jake, of course. I tried not to sigh and went into our chat room.

Holy Bible:
Dude, I hope u're up

This biology project is killing me and my teammates

Woah, i must be stupid. When was it due?

Seriously? He would text me because of merely a school homework? Jake wasn't the type who asked his friend on when the school project was due-he was simply too busy minding his own business, which included hanging out with other friends. Actually, my friend was best-known in the whole school for knowing every location of anyone's house hosting a party of any kind at school. It didn't actually have to be his friends at school, since he sometimes even went to parties that only adults could get in, but somehow, he passed. Hell, I couldn't still understand how he'd gotten to become my best bud.

Err,,eek:
Today

Hope you did research on it-it's quite hard

I could put me and Jake into a movie slide and just imagine his reaction-hopping up and down, racing to give the biology teacher, Mr. Grim, a good excuse, then scold me in a corner of school for not reminding him of the date earlier, obviously.
I quickly got into my clothes: just my jeans, a T-shirt, and a grey hoodie above the shirt. Trying hard not to think of the nightmare.
I didn't receive any more texts from Jake, and slung my bag over my shoulder and hopped into my SUV, which was a one that dad had driven for some 5 years or something. Dad had utilized my legitimate age for driving as a chance to get a brand new Jaguar.
I drove the thing to my school. I didn't turn the radio or CD player on like usual, since I wasn't in the mood nor in the mood to improve the mood.
School was thankfully the same, and I started to relax. As usual, the feeling of wishing it would be rather different started to come back as I parked and headed off for Biology. I lamely realized that Jake was spared for now, with his Biology project in his second class.
I was in time, and the class started right after I walked in. Mr. Grim only raised his eyebrows, fixed his glasses, then opened his book to the page on chromosomes. I already had a general idea of what they were from dad's talks over the dinner table when I had asked 'why do we need to learn those kind of stuff if I don't want to have a job in those fields?' , then in the process of proving the efficiency of our education, the chromosomes had popped out as an example somehow, though I had forgotten what his real point was.
However, after some 20 minutes, I started to lose focus. Mr Grim's Biology classes were infamous for being boring, and add the nightmares to that situation.
My body automatically shivered at the recurring thought that I had experienced those stuff just at this age. Still, it was foreign to me. I kept on making tail-to-tail questions, then got curious of the real identity and meaning of the dreams. But when I was about to sneak my phone under the desk, the teacher gave out prints, and I was forced to do it. But since I hadn't been there to memorize every word that had come out of Mr. Grim's mouth, I copied the book slowly. -Thus ended at the end of the class.
I miserably got out of the classroom. At least, I had a chance out here. I slipped to my closet and piled some books into my back, then leaned deep into it, smelling the mold, and the bright light of the screen shining off my face.
I typed in 'nightmare' into the search box of Google, then waited. The WiFi here was fine, so the results popped out pretty soon. I checked the time, nervous. Six minutes left. Good.
I skimmed over the histories and recent stories and 'prophecies' of the few who'd had the dreams. They were actually jolly, and I thought that I was maybe being a little bit obsessive with the nightmares.
I found the Wikipedia site among the others and clicked in, felling a tiny more relaxed than before...
But then the words came, something unprecedented to me, on the search engine-

                    No results

Huh?
Just then, I heard the feet, then heard the hand as it came slapping me on the back, hard. It was a usual thing, though.
"What're you up to?" I slowly turned to face Jake. I quickly turned my phone to the home screen, and sniffed the air between us-no sign of alcohol in his breathe-he was sane enough today.
"Just searching lame stuff," I said lazily, though my feet were twitching as they always did when I was nervous.
Jake gave me a curious glance, then squeezed his eyes shut. "I think I'm doomed," He finally said. Good for you, Jacob-forget me and my nightmare...and my twitching feet. "Jesus, that project was one of the most important, and I was even sane and sober yesterday night," "Sane? Sober? You're never un-drunk at parties," I murmured. Jake luckily didn't seem ready to slap me again. "For real, dude. Plus, it wasn't a party. It was a group meeting for the damned biology project thingy. Anyway, Sandra had run out of beer, and as you know, the mart is far from her house. So we just talked of the popular guys at school and those stuff. That was all. Then what had happened after that? Well, I do have a firm reason to excuse myself from Mr. Grim, Rick, believe me," "Just remember that I'm not Mr. Grim. If you tell me this now, you'll have to say it once more to him to get safely off the old man's punishments," I slipped my phone into my jean pockets. Jake barely noticed-and I had to admit, he did look a bit alarmed and worried, and that wasn't going to be about the project-for at least now.
He leaned on the other closets and twisted his ankles, then winced.
"Yup. Sandra let us leave at 8. I went through the other streets with Thomas and James. They were a bit drunk from the beer they had luckily brought from home. They waved me off in front of their house, and I walked alone, hands in my pockets, along the road home. Well, I had used GPS, and barely knew the place since Tom had hitched me a ride. And that's why I was surprised when I saw a wooden shack near an old apartment," Jake took a deep breathe. "You believe it?" He whispered.
"Well, there can be a shack, they say everything is possible," I said, but Jake was shaking his head even before I had said 'everything'.
"No, no. I have never seen a shack in real life before. I mean, shacks are unusual," "But why are you so obsessed on it?" I asked, raising my eyebrows-strangely, Jake's situation coincided with mine. However, in an unfortunate way today. Was today some cursed day or something?
"It seemed so... weird. Why would there be wooden shack? As I told you before, I wasn't drunk. I saw every detail of it," "So what did you do?" I checked my time on the phone as dad had did. Great, 2 minutes left. I waved it at Jake, but he didn't seem to mind. Maybe he was intent on skipping Biology afterall. No surprise in that.
"Yeah, here comes the strange part. I went to the shack and leaped over the fence, went in and holy shit, it was empty. Nothing inside. I was terrified by the wind and emptiness. I just came home shaking my head," That was what he was exactly doing now. I wanted to sigh to him for being lame again, but I couldn't. This case did sound strange.
Shacks were as unfamiliar to us as nightmares. We had concrete, and the government had promised to demolish every wooden and ancient building for the matter of safety, for those wooden houses burned too easily. And they had kept heir word. But a plain old shack in the middle of town?
"That does sound strange," I muttered as the bell rang. Jake gave me a nod while staring at me real seriously. "I only told you this. The others might consider me insane. As you know, the location of the shack was a bit far from the dense part of the city. Not many should know this shack. As I said, it was in the desolate and old part," He inhaled deeply, then looked up from the floor, from my twitching feet. I suddenly pondered if I should tell him my nightmare, since he had told me his abnormal occurrence. But before I could open my mouth, Jake groaned and slapped his own head. "Biology! Jesus. I'm doomed. Guess I'll see you after school. I'll probably be in the principal's office from Mr. Grim's tattletaling, which is sure to begin as soon as I enter the room,"
He left in a brisk pace after that and I just stared at his retreating figure.
The nightmare, and now the shack.
This couldn't be some lame coincidence, right?