Dream Killer

Don’t waste your time or time will waste you. This was something Eli never thought of on the night where his worst dreams came true. It was a night like any other night Eli was going to bed. Eli had always been a strange kid making up stories that people couldn’t explain. His dreams, always coming true in some sort of way. No one ever knew why, but they just did. As much as Eli tried to forget them, they were always coming true or at least they happened in some way. Eli was a 17-year-old boy, soon to be 18. Not really special, but what made him unique was his ability to go out and do anything new almost perfectly. Like he was God’s son.

The perfect child.

It was a stormy night. He was asleep on his bed in his dreams. There was an old house. This one house was found in a forest, though. It looked like there had been people there decades ago. Eli could see himself and a shadow in the far distance, a cold shadow, pitch black. As he kept walking, a cold wind rushed through, and it felt like all his happy memories were gone. Laughter sounded like a little girl, but then, screams from far away—screams like the ones he heard from his sister on the night she died.

He turned around, then BANG! A gunshot. Eli jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat, shaking uncontrollably, as if he couldn’t control his own body. He felt the pain in his chest where the bullet had hit him, but that was in the dream. Why did he feel it? Eli questioned himself, though he didn’t have an answer.

His head throbbed. His vision was blurry. His eyes were scarlet red. He got up from bed. His hands shook, as though they were no longer his own. Dally, his older brother, came to his room, lecturing him about how he needed to get to school. Eli, shivering under the covers, didn’t care. He ignored the lecture, ignoring the fear creeping into his mind.

It was only a dream. Only a dream.

He dressed quickly, pretending everything was fine. He couldn’t tell Dally what happened. He’d never believe it.

Once dressed, Eli slipped out the door. He waited for the coast to be clear before bolting toward the forest. He didn’t know why, but he had to. He had to see it.

Once inside the woods, he felt the strange pull. Everything felt wrong. His heart raced faster with every step, and his breath came in shallow gasps. He had to keep walking. He had to make sure this was just a dream.

Then he saw it.

The house.

It was exactly as he’d seen it in his dream—rotten, broken, surrounded by trees with twisted limbs that looked like skeletal arms reaching toward him. A deep sense of dread washed over him, but he pressed on. The shadow from his dream loomed in his mind, always at the edge of his vision.

He stepped closer, deeper into the house’s shadow.

The wind howled, and for a split second, the screams from his sister’s death rang in his ears again, chilling his bones.

Then, through the broken windows, he heard it—screams. A little girl’s screams.

His breath caught in his throat.

The walls of the house were crumbling, almost as if the wood itself was rotting before his eyes. It looked like something straight out of a horror film. He felt the trees watching him, their twisted faces seeming to leer as he passed.

Every instinct screamed for him to turn back, but something deeper inside urged him to keep going. He couldn’t stop now. He needed answers.

As he neared the house, the ground under his feet began to tremble slightly, as though the earth was rejecting his presence. Eli clenched his fists.

Then he saw it.

Atop the house was the weathervane, battered and rusted. He had noticed it in his dream, but it looked even worse in person—scratched, clawed. Like something had torn at it with sharp, monstrous talons.

He reached out, his fingers trembling as he traced the claw marks. Something felt wrong. So wrong. The air seemed thicker, colder, the silence suffocating. And then—

BANG.

The sound of a gunshot pierced through the silence, and Eli’s chest exploded with pain. He fell to his knees, his body unable to move. Blood poured from the wound. He looked up, trying to make sense of it, trying to find the shooter.

It was Dally.

His brother stood there, holding the gun, eyes cold and distant.

“Dally…?” Eli whispered, struggling for breath. His vision was fading, the world turning to a blur.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Dally’s voice was eerily calm.

“Dally, why?” Eli croaked, confusion and betrayal mixing in his voice. “Why would you—?”

Dally’s face twisted, his lips curling into a grim smile. “You really thought it was all a dream, didn’t you, Eli? But dreams are more re`al than you think.”

Eli’s mind spun, trying to make sense of the words. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

“You’re the reason she’s gone,” Dally continued, his voice barely a whisper. “All those years, those dreams you had… They weren’t dreams. They were warnings. Warnings you never listened to.”

Eli’s heart pounded in his chest, each beat weaker than the last.

“Dally, no… please. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen…”

His brother stepped closer, the gun still aimed at Eli. “You never meant to, but you always did. And now, you’ll pay the price.”

The world was closing in on Eli. He felt his life slipping away, the gunshot’s echo still ringing in his ears. He blinked, and in the last moments of consciousness, a twisted realization hit him. His dreams had always been warnings, but he had never understood them. He was the dream killer.

And Dally?

Dally had always known.

Litzy Ortiz Diaz is a 12 year old girl. She has been writing stories for a while now. She

goes to Roseland Elementary school. She has been writing since fourth grade. This is her first publication.