Monster

Monster

I'm not one for dreaming. Of course, everyone tells me I do. "Everyone dreams, they say. "It's just a part of sleeping. Well, not for me it isn't. When I sleep, it's for real.
But when I do dream, there's one dream I always have. I'm on water skis or an inner tube or something, and being pulled behind a motor boat. I'm having a great time, laughing it up, and of course doing insane stunts that no one on earth is truly capable of. I must be going seventy miles an hour, or something close to it, and I guess it must be knots if I'm on the water. After an hour of dream time, which could be close to a minute of real time (I'm a speed dreamer), in the middle of a very elaborate backflip-twist-maneuver, all hell breaks loose.
I glance behind me, and what I see, though I see it almost every time I dream, inevitably scares me almost to death (if it's possible to die in a dream¦) There behind me is the biggest water snake known to man, and if that's not enough, is seems hell bent on eating me.
At this point my surroundings start to close in, until it becomes clear that I'm on a small lake barely big enough for my boat to make a circle in, making it pretty hard to evade my hungry pursuer. I glance back at every chance I get, trying to get a glimpse of the horror that follows in my wake, but, as is the case with most dreams, I can never really tell what it looks like. So my dream self just puts a picture together in his head, and though I can't be certain, it's probably more frightening than the real thing. By the end, I have melded every alien, every zombie, and every fiend ever to make the big screen into one creature so hideous my dream self won't let himself look at it.
I picture a green, scaly snake with gleaming red eyes like a cat's, eyes so cunning and deep that they convey an intelligence that I hope to God isn't there. It must measure fifty or sixty feet in length and a good six or seven feet across, and it makes waves so gigantic pond that my buddies who are pulling me along have a hard time staying afloat. The snake doesn't swim like a water snake, with rippling coils and undulating streamlined motions. Instead, this one just thunders ahead like a cruise liner, moving forward with only my fear to fuel it. It makes a hissing, piercing screech loud enough to be heard over the spray and my own screaming, a sound much like the brakes of a subway train. It has black slits for nostrils and fangs the size of missiles, which for all I know function like them as well. It has an appetite for terror, and I'm feeding it plenty.
Eventually, after seconds or minutes or hours of this nightmare, my buddies finally capsize, and I'm left to end the chase myself, coasting across the lake knowing that when my momentum runs out, my life does too. The monster catches me before I start to drown, which saves me from one kind of horror but opens up doors to so many others. It catches me in its enormous jaws, water skis and all, and I catch a glimpse of its cavernous belly, and finally wake up thanking God that you never die in your dreams.