“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower
Water should never be red. That was the first thought Sam had, after reaching her bathroom door. The same obsession that led her to keep that door closed, also led her to keep the sanctuary within spotless; white gloves were not enough to satisfy her paranoia, nor would they ever be. She could not stand for anything less than absolute perfection; the Nightmare replica was as precise in mangling her sense of normalcy as she was in maintaining it.
The walls ran with the same revolting mixture that had invaded her apartment. She had not yet decided whether touching it would make her ill as well as insane. The toilet, she would not approach for any reason. The stench alone was enough to make her insides heave and her eyes water. She did not need to get any closer to see the filth that had scoured the bowl into an unrecognizable sin; the water was red and opaque. Her perfect sink was plugged with a vile tangle of what appeared to be thorn-covered vines and hair, too long and matted to be her own. That left only one possible hope in her mind; could the shower still be sacred?
It had been fifteen minutes, by her guess, since she’d frozen in place, debating in endless cycles with herself over whether to risk pulling back the shower curtain and checking. There was nothing she wanted more than a shower, unless it was to wake up from this world that she now called the Nightmare, but she knew better than to hope for that. If the toilet was any indication, it was all but guaranteed that there would be no clean water to wash with. From the brief glimpses of the outside hallway she had seen through her door, it seemed foolish to assume she could find any beyond her apartment, either. A shower, then, was out of the question. Dismissing the possibility seemed wiser, to Sam’s mind, than hoping against the Nightmare’s will.
One thing, at least, seemed certain. In order to venture out beyond the doorstep of her apartment, she was going to need to prepare herself. Her nightgown, once a beautiful but far more sturdy garment, was not going to protect her from anything but the shame of going naked into a world that was both alien and familiar at once. The chill in the air demanded attention as well; she would freeze, if given too long to wander without a source of warmth. Fall was giving way to winter, and in her own world, she had been all too eager to engage the dial of her heater and bask in its welcoming glow, but the Nightmare offered no such promises of safety and warmth. There wasn’t even a dial in the place where it belonged.
Beyond her clothing, there were necessities that were only beginning to register in her mind; food, water, shelter and protection were never things she had to concern herself with beyond the simple matter of having a home to provide them all. Her obsessive mind grasped the detailed pattern of needs well, but the fear of forgetting something necessary to her survival choked her with frigid hands of ice, making her slow and hesitant to act. Awareness of the need for a healthy amount of haste at last drove her onward; if the creature returned and found her mobile, who knew what might happen?
Trying to refocus on the fractured shopping list that began to emerge in her mind, Sam shut the door to her bathroom with a firmer hand than usual and approached her closet, wariness in every step. Her journey had to begin there; the cold was interrupting her attention at least as much as her own fear of failure. Reaching for the handle of the closet shattered her resolve again, as the creative part of her mind supplied old childhood fears of monsters and demons, lying in wait for an unsuspecting child to fling open the doors and unleash their evil into the world. It had taken her years to learn to doubt them, far longer than any other child she had ever known; perhaps she hadn’t learned, after all. It was not a fear she still possessed in the normal world, she knew; it was the knowledge that this Nightmare seemed to bring to life things that she had long since buried, or only imagined. If the Stone was real, what else might be real? What dreams had merged with reality?
Several minutes passed, with Sam caught between impatience and a complete unwillingness to see what fresh horrors the Nightmare had designed for her. The chill grew colder, as if beckoning her forward; she both resisted the call and longed for it. She had always been a maze of contradictions, a murky puddle of fears and regrets. In one breath she would flee her fears, and in the next she would turn, regretting the failure to face them. The doctors had taught her, during panic attacks, to focus inward, to seek the patterns and obsessions that seemed so natural to her; they were ways of breaking her mind away from what paralyzed it. It worked, most of the time, but Sam couldn’t help wondering how many of her obsessions and patterns were created from fear in the first place. How long would it be before her inner mind no longer supplied an escape from itself?
As with most of her decisions, Sam made hers suddenly, as if to free herself as fast as possible from the need to decide. A false sense of bravery, underlaid with thoughts of just getting it over with, at last won out. Grasping the handle with sweaty, trembling palms, she let out a loud shout and pulled as hard as she could. The door, unprepared for Sam’s adrenaline-laced strength, flew open and slammed hard against the adjacent wall, shattering the fragile hinges. At least she would never have to fear opening it again! Her gaze snapped away from the ruined door and toward her clothes, her mind attempting to prepare her for the possibility of further stress against her already fragile sanity.
More frightening than anything she had feared to find, was the absence of anything unnatural. Whatever had twisted the Nightmare into being had skipped over the monsters that lived in her mind, this time. She had never been a clothes horse, preferring simple overlarge hand-me-downs from her mother over the years. Holidays were always good excuses to force Sam to shop, as far as her relatives were concerned. Perhaps that was why there was no terror to be found in the closet, Sam thought. She didn’t care enough about it in the first place. It was not one of her self-imposed sanctuaries; a place where she felt safe enough to let all her fears and worries go. The Nightmare had already tainted those, it seemed. With a sigh and an inward curse, she began to sort through her meager rack of clothing.
The quickest garment that came to her hands turned out to be a fancier pair of dark jeans that fit her too well for her liking. Her mother had claimed they would “bring out her assets,” but Sam had not been keen on continuing that discussion. It always led to boyfriends and marriage, and her lack of either. For the moment, the only thing that mattered was that denim was sturdy, and that would indeed be an asset in this situation! Recalling that most hikers and explorers dressed in layers, her next move went toward a pair of simple layered tank tops and a light leather jacket. Her favorite sturdy but ugly boots would protect her feet well. A flash of sudden inspiration led her to grab careless handfuls of the foolish decorative scarves that her mother had bullied her into buying. They would serve well as bandages. Her mother would just have to kill her – if she survived.
A low, guttural grinding sound cut into the oppressive silence just as Sam pulled her jacket on, challenging the nerve that she had begun to build up since defeating the closet. The noise continued for a moment or two before fading into nothingness again. What had the monster done, this time? The sound was both like and unlike the one that had accompanied her freedom from her bed. It was distant, at least, which reassured Sam to a small extent that the creature was not returning anytime soon. Thankful for small favors, she took a deep breath and abandoned the closet, forging ahead once again into the Nightmare replica of her apartment. She still had preparations to make.
She had left the Stone of Promise on her small coffee table, unwilling to handle it more than was strictly necessary. Picking it up again with only a slight hesitation, she shoved it into one of the back pockets of her jeans. Knowing its power, she could not plan to use it often; but if forced, she would need it close at hand. Determining that her other needs would require assistance to carry them, she managed to dive beneath the couch to retrieve her old college backpack. Since she had not bothered to use it often, preferring the quiet solitude of the shadowed spots on campus to the busy intrusion of classrooms, it was in near perfect condition. Perhaps there had been some point to her attendance after all!
A studious frown crept onto Sam’s face as she tore around the room in a crazed sort of inner focus. The items on her fragmented list were set in stone, but now was her time to guess, and second guess, herself on what the list contained. How could she know what would be of use to her in this Nightmare? She didn’t even know how long she would be forced to endure it, much less what sort of preparation enduring it would require. She had played the high school games about what items she would take to a deserted island, but those were never about survival; those were about prestige, and what expensive gadgets a person had fallen in love with that week. This time, forgetting something would kill her. The colleges all purported to teach “life skills,” but now she knew that was an equal amount of bullshit to her own psychology studies. The only grim humor she could find in the situation lay in the fact that any other girl she knew would have long since died from fright.
Her flashlight, and the largest pack of batteries she owned, came first. Beyond her window, she could see that the day outside was covered in a thick array of threatening clouds; she would need all the help she could find in navigating the grim and fading light that the Nightmare provided. Her wallet was a safe second assumption, though she had to wonder how useful her credit card or cash would be in this world. If nothing else, at least she knew that if she died, someone could find her identification, and inform her family – assuming, of course, that anyone human even existed here.
Painkillers, the kind she took for her frequent headaches, came next. If her headaches were not reason enough to pack them at once, her disposition toward accidents and clumsiness sealed the deal. Following that thought to its logical conclusion, an empty notebook and pen joined the haphazard pile in her backpack. They would be useful in the event that she needed to take notes on something, but they would be far more important if she got lost. She had not spent much time beyond her apartment and its immediate vicinity; she would have to map herself through, or risk being forever unreachable in this world or any other.
Though she couldn’t fathom eating in such a world, she knew better than to leave the apartment without raiding the cupboard for nonperishables and water bottles. The sight of clean water brought her almost to tears, but her focus was too intense to allow them to fall. Stale granola bars and dried fruit would have to suffice, for the foreseeable future. She pushed back a longing for a warm, fresh vegetarian pizza with a shudder; now was not the time for wishful thinking! More grim humor invaded her mind; what would happen if she tried to order a pizza here? A laugh, dangerous and trembling with nerves, escaped her before she could think about the possibility of detection. She did not laugh again.
One last survey of the room and the contents of her backpack alerted Sam to the fact that she had failed to address the most important aspect of her flight; a means of defense. She had prepared herself to be harmed, but not for the very distinct possibility of needing to harm someone – or something – else. The thought was almost too much; how could she harm another living creature, even in self defense? Despite her misgivings, she could not deny that necessity dictated the inclusion of a weapon in her plans. Searching for further justification, she reminded herself that weapons were not just used to kill; they might get her through other obstacles as well. She would never kill, not if she could help it. Nothing was worth the careless destruction of life. She chose not to think too long on whether un-life shared the same distinction.
A quick search around the apartment produced nothing that Sam could even begin to visualize as a weapon. She was a girl, first and foremost; fuzzy, soft things were her element, not sharp or blunt objects. She had done her best to avoid them, if for no other reason than her own inability to avoid injuring herself on them. A knife from the kitchen would have been the classic move to make; even that would not serve. She had yet to buy her own; her previous dormitory residence had outlawed such things for safety purposes. Just as frustration and panic began to set in, the beam of her flashlight passed over something that glistened; her car keys. She would have had to take them anyway, knowing that her car was perhaps the safest place she could be, but she could always use them to cut and scrape in the worst scenarios, as well. They wouldn’t be much in a fight, but she would have to make do.
Keys in hand, Sam at last came to the realization that she was as prepared as she would ever be to leave the apartment. Fear of what lay beyond clawed at her heart, but it could not win this time; not with the knowledge that outside lay her only potential chance for rescue. Hoisting her backpack onto her shoulders, she took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Where she intended to go, she wasn’t certain. Running without any sort of aim would be, at best, foolish. What safe haven could there be in such a place? Where could she go for answers? If she tried to locate the police, they would laugh. If she tried to locate her doctors, they would have her institutionalized. Perhaps that was the best recourse, but the idea of spending the rest of her life in a hospital left her breathless; they would never let a cat live with her in a hospital. The thought was a mistake before it even crossed her mind.
Despite her frantic searching of the apartment, Poe had not emerged. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had been trying to promise herself the best; that he was hiding, unwilling to brave the troubling world he’d come to. He was, after all, as much a creature of habit as Sam herself was. However, it was unlike him to ignore her calls and searches, even at his most distressed. That left only three conclusions, none of which Sam wanted to think about very hard. The first; he had not come to this world in the first place, and still lazed about her real apartment, wondering where she had gone. The second; he had run when the creature opened her door, and now wandered the Nightmare alone. The last; he was no longer alive, in this world or any other. It was foolish of her not to prepare for the worst.
Her teeth ground together and her fists clenched into tight balls, Sam rounded on the apartment door with a ferocity she did not often possess. Poe was, if only a cat, her sole friend and companion in the world. Whatever journey awaited her beyond the door of the apartment; an apartment that was becoming impossible to tolerate any longer, it would be with an eye toward finding Poe, as well as finding her way home. Forgetting him, or dismissing him as capable of his own self preservation, offended her heart and soul as much as anything that she had yet seen in the Nightmare. It was time to move on, to be sure; but every step would bring her one step closer to Poe, and to her freedom. It had to.
As her hand reached for the dilapidated doorknob, Sam’s mind began to work its way back to a dull and methodical focus. So far, she had been confronted with concepts outside the very expectations and assumptions of man; what right had she to assume that her most basic sources of assistance would be available to her, anyway? Whatever this world was, it was a challenge for her; a challenge to survive, and to make it to safety. Assuming anything outside of her immediate human needs and necessities would see her to an early death. Running to the police, or to the hospital, would have to wait; the first task lay in escape to the outside. Nothing else would matter until she’d made it that far.
With all the strength she could muster, Sam pushed open the door and stepped beyond her apartment’s threshold, gazing outward into the Nightmare for the first time.