Dream#1: How much time did I have?

⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story contains themes of death, blood, medical imagery, pandemic-like illness, and psychological tension.

(First Person POV)

 

[Part 1 – OPENING]

The sky looked bruised.

Clouds hung low, soaked in a dull blue-grey, and the air tasted like rain that never finished falling.

Evening hadn’t fully taken over yet. The sky was cloud-thick but glowing faint, like it couldn’t decide whether to break open or disappear.

I stepped out of the building. The outer wall was familiar—same color, same pattern, same place I used to be back in school. 

Didn’t think much of it. Just wanted to get home before the real dark settled in.

A cab waited across the road—engine on, headlights flicking between amber and white.

It felt like it had been waiting for me.

I picked up my pace.

That’s when she came—

quick hands, silent steps, and something was gone from my grip before I even saw her face.

I shouted. Ran.

Didn’t know why I was chasing.

Didn’t even know what she took until I saw it fly—

a glint of metal soaring over the wall ahead, disappearing inside.

A key.

It had to be.

She vanished.

I was alone again, panting in the empty street.

My shoes slapped the pavement too loudly.

I moved to the wall.

Not too tall. Just high enough to make you doubt it.

I climbed up, peered over.

The land inside was strange. Wrong.

Inside, it didn’t look like the school.

Not exactly.

Blocks that looked like uni hostels.

Small houses, scattered like they’d been dropped there by mistake.

The layout felt wrong; too open in some places, too crowded in others.

I should’ve turned back.

Instead—I ran. Jumped.

And landed wrong.

 [PART 2 – The Backyard/Inside the House]

I wasn’t supposed to land here.

That much I knew before I even hit the ground.

It wasn’t a backyard exactly—just a tight space at the back of the house. Roughly 8ft×4ft, not sure. Walled in. Concrete on three sides. 

Silent.

My feet hit the ground, and something in me dropped lower than that.

A sick feeling—slow and sudden all at once.

The sky was darker now. The kind of dark that felt wet and heavy.

There was no going back.

The ground was higher outside—I couldn’t climb back out. There was a door that led Inside the house.

I moved through that small inner door, careful not to make a sound. 

I should’ve waited.

Should’ve listened.

But panic doesn’t wait for permission.

I slipped in.

The moment I stepped in, everything shifted. The air. The light. My heartbeat. Everything.

Two voices filtered in from the next room. A man and a woman. Talking—not whispering. Their tone was too calm, too practiced. I held my breath and pressed myself against the wall. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear every word. 

They were talking about a body. Not how to help. Not how it happened.

Just what to do next. Where to dump it. What tools to carry. What time to move.

There was a metal trolley left near the hallway—cotton balls, stained scissors, something glinting like surgical steel–a scalpel?. I knew these didn’t belong in a normal home. It looked like they’d built their own operating room, right here in a backroom.

That’s when it hit me.

They weren’t afraid of what they’d done—but I was. Because something was off. Not with their actions—but with the body itself.

Something in their conversation—maybe the symptoms they casually mentioned, the words they used without thinking—triggered it. Vomiting blood, they said. Breath fading into choking, unconsciousness within minutes.

It wasn’t just murder. It was something else. Something sick. A sickness I could feel before I named it. Something viral, new and deadly. They thought the death was their doing, another mark on their ledger. But they had no idea it had fallen to something else entirely—a contagion, perhaps, spreading silently in the dark. I was sure, it had already permeated within them, a silent threat lurking within.

I felt it in the air, a chill that ran down my spine. My heart raced, and my breath caught in my throat. They didn’t know. But I did.

The body hadn’t just died—it carried something. Something capable of spreading.

And I was breathing the– SAME AIR?!!

I could hear them moving toward the entrance, maybe to check. Maybe because they sensed something.

I backed away from the hallway, but footsteps echoed from the front.

I had no way left. Not back, not through.

The only place left to go—was the room.

 That room.

[PART 3 – The Room]

I was already walking towards the door, halfway there, before I realized I'd be facing something deadly that would risk my life.

The door was open just a crack. I covered my face with my sleeve and stepped in.

The air changed again. Thicker. Metallic. Faintly so. And something beneath it—a staleness that made my skin tighten.

It was a bedroom, but not a normal one. A steel stretcher sat in the center. A tray beside it with hospital tools. Gauze. Forceps. And cotton—heaps of it. Some white. Some soaked. The floor carried dark blotches where it had bled through.

I walked forward. Slowly.

The sheet covered the body. A girl, I could tell even before I touched it. But when I pulled it off —

She was around my age. She looked Pale, almost grey under the room’s dull light. Her lips were stained, a deep red, like dried blood which wasn't ordinary. Blood marked her dress, like it had spilled from inside her—not just out of her mouth or anywhere. Her arms were still. Her eyes closed.

And it didn’t feel like she just died. It felt like she changed.

I didn’t know her. But she felt familiar.

Not like someone I met. More like a warning.

And I couldn’t stop thinking— If this was what killed her... how much time did I have?...

(This isn’t just a story; it’s a piece of my subconscious, raw and unfiltered. Based on a dream I had that wouldn’t let me go.)

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