Dream Time — Michael Sean Erickson

Open your imagination. Face your fears. Listen to the boogeyman howling in the wind outside your bedroom window. You may be in the throes of a dream just then. Or perhaps you are in that strange twilight between asleep and awake. Regardless, you are disoriented, afraid, primal, all too certain at that moment that you will never again know the relative peace and comfort of the daytime hours. Time is different then in large part because you are so much more conscious of it. Depending upon the dream, you do not have enough time to get away from the beast; or you are repeating the same time loop; or the times are a changing, my brother, and you are about to lose the way of life you hold most dear. In these pages, there are various stories of suspense and horror. Sometimes, a story will descend outright into the macabre. At other times, a story will remain throughout more light and fanciful. Do not be fooled by the lighter moments, though. Whenever you unveil the thin barrier between asleep and awake, and view for yourself how dream time is so unrelenting, like a screw forever twisting clockwise into the soul, or a clock inevitably bleeding out from behind the pupil of an eye, you will be prone to those nightmares that live on after you have awakened.