The door slammed shut as hot air wooshed past, threatening to singe the hair atop Simon’s head. The full weight of his body pressed against the door and he could hear the cracking and splintering of the wood on the opposite side. Closing his eyes tightly, he told himself that it was time to wake up from the sudden nightmare. 

When he opened his eyes, Simon was lying safely in bed drenched in sweat with the sheets tangled about his legs. His hand came up to his chest, feeling the pounding of his heartbeat, while he took deep breaths to calm himself. Dreams as well as nightmares had always been especially vivid for him, but since his dreams had become more intense over the past few months so had the unpleasant ones. 

Once his gasping subsided, Simon rolled over to click on the lamp sitting on his bedside table and picked up the pencil and stack of sticky notes. Much as he wanted to erase it from his mind, he had to record what he had seen in his dream. He sketched the face of the demon who had appeared on the other side of the door and tried to devour him with unhinged jaw and blazing eyes. The limbs of the monster were gangly, folded close to the body as if spring loaded to reach out when their prey was within reach. He completed the shading with rough hatching to get the ordeal over with as soon as possible. 

Shaking his head, Simon took the square of paper and added it to the collage on his wall. He stuck it in the upper left hand corner where he put all of his nightmares, twisted creatures he wished he could forget. They all watched him as he put up the new addition, a new set of eyes that bore into his soul. A shiver ran down his spine as he left the picture up there, a chill as if an icy finger had plunged into the very bone. 

When the chill passed Simon unclenched his jaw and stretched his arms in front of him to loosen the tension from his shoulders as he walked over to the closet. Ever since the flower incident, he had been dreading getting a nightmare worried what remnants would cross over from the dream realm. He reminded himself that only a couple of dreams had brought remnants to the waking world, so statistically there was little to worry about from one nightmare. 

Still, something worried him as he reached for the handle of the closet door. After a brief pause he told himself it was just the left over adrenaline coursing through his system putting him on edge, but as his hand closed around the handle the realization finally clicked. 

The door from his dream. The door that he had slammed in the demon’s face. It was this door. Simon let go of the handle and pressed his ear up to the wood and listened.