Chapter 1: Chapter 1: No Monsters

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Athena ran across the open grass field, her shoes kicking up spots of dirt as she moved. She was fast. Too fast for a human being. Within seconds, she has covered hundreds of meters of ground on foot. The howling wind brushed past her cheeks and blew up her hair. Yet distance brought her little comfort. With the thing coming after her, distance offered her no protection. In fact, nothing could.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Athena’s hand gripped tightly onto her weapon. A one-meter long spear that looked like it belonged in a museum or in the home of some enthusiast of ancient warfare. Even as she moved, fresh red blood started endlessly dripping down from the tip of the spear as if it was connected to a pool of blood.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Athena paid no attention to the blood from the spear. The blood was a concerning sign, but it was the least of her worries right now. And the spear was hardly the most surprising, and terrifying, thing in the world she was currently in.

There were a number of entities in the sky above Athena. A sun. A moon. A handful of stars. It all sounded perfectly normal, but anyone who spared a single glance at the sky would be horrified by what they saw. Nothing was what they were supposed to be. Not the sun. Not the moon. Not the stars. Everything was completely wrong.

The sun was literally an orange circle with six orange lines around the circle perpendicular to the surface. The moon was the product of two arcs, with the space between the arcs filled in with a silver color. The stars were nothing more than star polygons filled with the same orange color as the sun.

Everything looked like they came right out of a child’s painting, and if one saw the sun and the moon in a drawing on the wall of a kindergarten or a child’s day care center, they might be amused. Yet when these things were hanging in the sky above, few would find it amusing.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Athena has been running for almost a full minute now. She had run for several kilometers on the grass field, but the field seemed to be the only thing in this world. There were no houses or trees or rivers or mountains. There was only the green grass as far as her eyes could see. The endless, ceaseless grass field that she could never escape from.

As her time was about to run out, Athena stopped moving. She slowly looked up at the sky and saw that all the cartoon celestial bodies had their eyes on her. Literally. Their eyes were nothing more than the combination of a few circles and dots, but even so Athena could see the amusement in their eyes.

She wasn’t making it out of here alive. She wasn’t making it out of here at all. She knew it. They knew it.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

In the last seconds of her life, Athena made peace with her fate. How long has it been since she first got into this horrific, hopeless world? A year? A decade? She couldn’t remember anymore. All she knew was that throughout the ages, she had seen so many of her friends and comrades fall. Now, it would be her turn.

She wasn’t afraid. This was always going to happen sooner or later. She has done so much in her life. Saved so many people. Contained so many monsters. She would do more if she could, but…

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

There was the voice of a child. An innocent, little girl. There was nothing odd with the voice except for the fact that despite being of average volume, it reached every corner of the endless grass field in the same instant.

Almost immediately, there was another voice from the child. This time, it was coming from behind Athena.

“Found you!”

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Crunch.

Crack.

The sound of bones cracking was followed by that of a body hitting the padded ground. Beside the body, the spear fell on the grass as well. There was no longer any blood coming out of the tip. The weapon has been snapped in two. Now both pieces rested there, right next to its former owner.

Soon, there was silence over the grass field.

In the sky, the crayon-drawn sun let out a warm, satisfied smile.

---

“Ding!”

Athena quietly opened the microwave door and retrieved a glass of heated milk. As she slowly started sipping on the delicious milk, her thoughts couldn’t help but go back to the nightmare she had last night.

The grass field. The sun and the moon and the grinning stars. Finally, the chilling voice of the entity that killed…whatever she was.

Everything was so realistic. She remembered the fear and despair she felt in the dream. She could still recall what it felt like when she saw the sun smiling down at her. She remembered the smell of grass in the air. She could still hear the sound of bones being snapped by an overwhelming force.

She wished she could say this was the first time this has happened, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was far from it.

Ever since Athena could remember, she has been having extremely realistic nightmares every single night. Almost all of these nightmares involved her in the point of view of some young woman. With no exception, these young women were going up against some sort…nightmarish force, for lack of a better term. Also with no exception, at the end of the nightmares, they would be brutally killed and Athena would wake up in her bed, soaked in sweat and sometimes in tears.

This wasn’t normal. Athena knew it from a very young age. Most people don’t have dreams every single night, and most people would forget the content of their dreams almost immediately after they wake up? Her? She forgot many of the dreams throughout the years, but for the more memorable ones, she could still recall plenty of details.

They didn't feel like dreams. Of course, they didn't feel like memories either. Athena had no idea what they were. The women whose perspective she shared were completely different from each other every time. Sometimes, they were carrying various weapons. Sometimes, they were empty-handed. Sometimes, they didn't have hands.

There was also a surprising amount of logic in her nightmares. From what other people told Athena, dreams tended to be chaotic and senseless. One second, a person might be in their classroom. The next second, they might be in a shopping mall. It was just one more piece of evidence that told Athena something was very wrong with her head.

As she finished the glass of milk, Athena turned to the toaster and started making the rest of her breakfast. Eggs. Ham. Toast. Yogurt. What she saw last night was creepy, but she more or less remained unfazed. She has encountered nightmares ten times more gory, and after almost a decade of being tormented by the nightmares every single night, she could wake up from the worst nightmares and still make herself a big breakfast.

When the nightmares first started all those years ago, the young Athena immediately went to her parents and told them what happened. A lot of things followed. Visits to therapists and psychologists. Medical examinations. Even visits to churches.

Eventually, when no one could figure out what was wrong and how to help her, she knew she had to learn to live with it. And she did.

There were only so many times she could be traumatized by gore and horror before she more or less got desensitized. It wasn’t like the horror in her nightmares could actually hurt her. She has been killed in her dream thousands of times, and every morning, she woke up as if nothing happened.

If anything, Athena was considering getting a career in writing horror stories or directing horror movies. Who knows? Maybe that could be her path to fame and wealth? That could be the one silver lining to the nightmares.

Athena carried her breakfast to the dining room and started eating. As she ate, she took out her phone and glanced at the time. 6:12. Great. She had plenty of time to finish her breakfast and head to school. Taking a bite out of a slice of toast, she scrolled on the screen and opened an obscure online blog in the web browser.

This was one of the few blogs she actually followed. The author of this blog often investigated supernatural incidents that he claimed to have happened in real life. In addition to blog posts, he sometimes uploaded videos and photos that were often too blurry to see anything for sure.

Many people have accused him of making things up, which was fair. Athena believed he was making up stories too, but he did put in a good effort with that and she respected him for it. Ever since she found the blog, she more or less treated it as a web novel to read when she was bored. At least the blog was more interesting than the news.

To her disappointment, this time, the blog didn't open when she entered the url and pressed enter. The website that hosted the blog simply stated that no such blog existed.

What the… Athena sighed. Maybe the blogger got burnt out and decided to spend his time on something with better returns? Or maybe there was a technical issue. She shook her head and tried to access another, similar blog. This time, it opened correctly.

After finishing breakfast, Athena washed all the plates and picked up her backpack at the door. Without a word, she headed out of the door and to her school, ready to go through another slow, boring, and uneventful day.

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