Erin's Living Nightmare - Ch 2

I wish that…

The bridge was exactly as Erin remembered: a cracked, stony arch forming a tunnel over a mossy ditch that was either a dried-up river or a long-forgotten railway. The road over it was quiet, the area overgrown with gnarled trees, so the tunnel felt a long way from anything and anyone, and it came with its own unique smell of rot and damp. Erin cringed as her shoe sank into something slimy, pushing her way through the narrow hedge path into a clearing where weeds wound around old chunks of wood and a rusted shopping trolley.

The woman was there.

She was huddled against one wall, half in shadow, elbows resting on her knees as she watched Erin entering her domain. A raggedly dressed homeless woman in patchwork trousers and a greatcoat straight out of a former century, a ratty flat cap pulled down over erratic dark hair and big clunky boots with the laces partly undone. Her right foot poked out of the broken toe of its boot, showing off crumbling woollen socks, but she leaned back and grinned at Erin as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Despite her general appearance and home, the woman was young with clear skin underneath the dirt, her teeth straight and clean though punctuated by a couple of gold additions and one of a more dull metal. Her eyes were big, bright and eager, and she had chunky rings on all her fingers – all exactly as Erin remembered.

Still, she couldn’t help saying, meekly, “Excuse me. Have we met? Here, before?”

The tramp nodded slowly, holding Erin’s eyes without blinking, and if she’d had any doubt before Erin knew now this woman was much more than what she appeared. There was too deep and dark an intelligence in her expression. An aura around her and this unsettling bridge.

“What are you?” Erin asked, almost too quiet to hear. “What’s happening to me?”

“Nothing that I can see right now?” the woman replied, voice friendly if rough. “What do you think’s happening?”

“I…” Erin looked over her shoulder, back the way she’d come, up the weedy embankment. Back to the office, and the awful morning she’d been having seemingly only moments ago. Janet, inexplicably big, eating her friend alive and no one but her caring about it. She had to say it aloud, to test if it was real: “They were sat around all morning, just carrying on with their work as though it were normal. Janet… She’s a giant. Like. She was right there, impossible to miss. Bigger than you can believe. And she swallowed him. She ate Boran.” Erin’s voice hitched with the memory, his legs kicking about between stretched lips. Worse, her stomach pulsing as he struggled inside her. “Then they just – she just… digested him. He was getting smaller in her stomach, I could see it. Everyone could. Slowly, she was absorbing him and no one was saying or doing anything. Russel started a conversation with her about the Bake Off and they were laughing about it while we could see Boran melting in her stomach!”

Erin had to stop and catch her breath, having sped up, talking more and faster than she had done for weeks. She put a hand on her heaving chest to steady herself, but the woman prompted for more: “Kind of like…”

“A nightmare.” Erin completed the thought sharply, meeting the woman’s eye again. Pushing the horror of Boran’s death aside, she refocused on where she was and why. “It’s been like living a nightmare. With Janet and all that, and everyone behaving all natural about it – it was unreal like a nightmare. What did you do?”

“Not me,” the woman shook her head, still smiling, still not blinking. She lifted a finger, pointed a dirty nail. “You remember, don’t you?”

Erin closed her eyes for a moment, recalling. Picturing this bridge again, only at night, when she’d somehow stumbled through here. She’d been upset. She’d met this woman and they must’ve talked, though she couldn’t recall how it started or what they’d said. She would never normally have spoken to a stranger, but she must’ve been just upset enough… It didn’t matter, what mattered was where it had lead, and that phrase that stuck in Erin’s mind.

I wish…

“I said I wish everyone could see what a nightmare my life is,” Erin recalled out loud. She knotted her brow, wanting to deny it knowing in her heart it was true. “You made it happen, didn’t you? This is a living nightmare. Who are you? What are you? A witch? Demon? Genie?”

“Something like that.” The homeless woman shrugged, again like this was all perfectly normal. She gestured to herself. “Radik, you can call me. And you’ve already figured out I grant wishes. Sit down, join me before your legs give out and you hit your head. Let’s talk about it.”

The woman, Radik, patted a patch of old wooden pallet beside her and Erin hesitated, then found herself complying. She sat carefully and hung her head, saying, “It is a dream, isn’t it? How do I wake up?”

“It’s not a dream,” Radik said. “You wanted everyone to see, as you say, your living nightmare, so that’s what it is. The things you endure, and the way you perceive people and yourself, it’s seeping out, isn’t it? Let me guess, your coworker who bullies you is now even more monstrous?”

“She’s a giant. I said – she ate my friend. This is impossible!” Erin almost stood again, wanting to pace away, to run from this reality, but she restrained herself, instead breathing deeply. “I just have to wake up…”

“That’s not going to happen. You know it’s real. However strange it feels to you. And you wished for everyone to see it, which means everything you do, everything you touch, could warp the world around you. It was a good one, Erin – I haven’t had a wish with such potential in a long time.”

“But you can reverse it!” Erin shot her a determined look. “I can wish that I never made the wish at all. We can –”

“Ah ah!” Radik put up an open hand, for the first time faltering in her confident smile. “Be careful, very careful. Haven’t you ever read a book, seen a film, heard of the monkey’s paw? Wishes bring trouble. They’re always open to abuse and trickster spirits will find a way to make you suffer.”

Erin scowled. “Why? Wasn’t I already suffering enough? Why not help me?”

“Why do dogs chase cars? I don’t make the rules. But I would like to see this one play out a bit, so just watch out with that wish word around me. You want to wish that you never said something, it could blink you out of existence. Wish your coworkers were nicer to you, it might be because you’re dying, understand?”

Erin let that sink in, giving herself a moment of silent scolding. Of course she knew this, everyone did. You didn’t have to believe in things like genies to appreciate the dangers of getting what you wished for. She said, “Why didn’t you warn me before?”

“I didn’t know you were going to make that wish!” Radik laughed. “Anyway, I’m only warning you now because this is a fun one.”

“Then I wish you’d just explain!” Erin cut in hotly and made the woman’s face fix in shock. They both froze for a second, as if the uttering of a badly thought-out wish might make the world crumble around them. Then Radik’s face broke into a smile and she winked.

“Okay. That’s not a tragic one. So. We were just having a good chinwag with you moaning about how everyone ignores you or hates you and you have too much work and nothing else going on and blah blah, then I asked what’d make it better, and there you said it. You wished everyone could see your life was a nightmare.”

“But it was barely different to normal, just worse,” Erin said slowly, still cautious after uttering another wish. Radik did appear to be merely explaining, though. “Nightmares are full of monsters and random, nasty, terrifying…” She trailed off. A giantess in the office devouring her coworker did fit the bill. “Well. Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it? They can see Janet’s a monster too, now, and they let her eat someone.”

“Ah, therein lies the dilemma. See, I’m guessing you thought a big part of your problem was always that no one noticed you. If only everyone knew how hard you had it, things would be different, huh? Only, they always saw you, didn’t they. They always knew things were bad for you and they preferred to get on with their own lives than interfere. So now you get to see the nightmares more literally, and everyone else will too, but I’m guessing they’re still not going to help you out.”

Erin tried to keep calm. Boran had wanted to help her and died for it. She had to tread very carefully, clearly, to avoid anyone else she liked getting hurt. There would be a way out; with nightmares, you just had to get a handle on the rules, turn things around. She asked, “What can I do? What can you do?”

“Nice, thinking proactively now.” Radik winked and reached into her coat. She drew a dented metal tin from an inside pocket, an antique for storing mints, and slid back the lid. “See, this is already proving instructive for you. The Erin I met before was just wallowing in self-pity.”

“I can’t –” Erin stopped as Radik tilted the tin above her open hand. Little people fell out. A half dozen people, only a centimetre tall, tumbling over each other and rolling into her palm. They made tiny noises of fear as they scrambled about, trying to get upright and run, but the woman lifted her hand and idly thrust it towards her opening mouth. Erin gasped, transfixed as Radik slurped them in and chewed, a couple of frantic tiny arms reaching out between her teeth. Her lips closed on them and she worked her jaw with small crunching noises, quietening the tiny screams, then swallowed and noticed Erin staring.

“Oh, want some?” Radik said, holding up the tin.

Erin recoiled, quickly shaking her head. “Oh my God, no! What’s going on?”

“Go on, they’re really good.” Radik rattled the tin, eliciting another round of miniature screams, the thing apparently packed with more people.

 Erin jumped to her feet and backed off. “Get away from me! What’s wrong with you?”

Radik wasn’t moving from her seat, merely grinning.

“I don’t normally eat little people,” the woman said. “At least, I don’t think so. Did you recognise them? Probably the cast of your favourite TV show or something. You’re doing this, Erin. All this.” She waved a hand up to encompass the setting, too. “Do you even remember, exactly, how or where we met before? It’s a bit hazy for me at the moment, but I’m pretty sure I had better digs than this.”

Now she said it, Erin realised she couldn’t properly remember their meeting. She inherently knew this woman, and that they’d connected, but had she ever been to this bridge before? Where even was it? It was part of the nightmare, maybe for Radik’s benefit – anything could change, if it meant outwardly demonstrating how unsettling everything felt for Erin. But –

“Why tiny people? Cannibalism? There’s a pattern here, after Janet.”

“Mm, two things,” Radik replied, thoughtfully picking at her teeth with a nail. Was that someone’s leg she was dislodging? “First, your fears, and stress, I’m guessing are all related to people. People looking down on you, people taking advantage of you, ignoring you. It’s all how other people make you feel. Which, I’m guessing, is rather small? And people using you. What’s worse than someone using you for food? It’s callous and savage at the same time, right? Anyway. Second thing, I’m what we’d call an exo size wisher. My kind, we all have particular talents. Mine manifest through altering the size of things.” Radik paused, rethinking that as she probed her teeth with her tongue now. “I’m not sure if that’s because of your wish, too. Like I said, it’s one with a lot of potential, that everyone word and all. In which case, circle back to point one, I guess? Do you have a phobia of size – or the opposite, I guess – are you a closet macrophile?”

“A what?”

“You know, if you had desires that also scared you. The best ingredient of any nightmare.”

Erin stared again at this grubby woman so flippantly talking about the altering of reality. Radik was as bad as her coworkers ignoring Janet murdering Boran, eerily calm about this horror, natural as a dream. But if she couldn’t wake up, there had to be another way through this. “Can I make more wishes?”

“Yes.” Radik nodded enthusiastically. “With a few rules. I’m an exo size wisher, the exo part of that means I only grant wishes that are externally focused. As in, you can’t wish something for yourself, only for others – which is why your nightmare one worked so well. And here’s a loophole warning: if you had wished you never made your wish, it might’ve just made someone else make the wish instead. Anyway, I shouldn’t need to say it again, but you have to be very, very careful with how you word these things.”

Possibilities immediately jumped to Erin’s mind, ways that she might get out of this right now. I wish everything was back to normal. But could normal be misinterpreted? I wish I could control this nightmare. What kind of control would that give her, and might she get punished for it? Maybe she should go for something general and positive: I wish my life was better. But it might be better if she was a toad or something else absurd. Exasperated, she huffed quickly, “I wish you’d tell me a way out of this.”

Radik grinned at her, like she’d been waiting for an opportunity like this. She lifted her metal tin and shook it, tossing the people trapped inside about, then she reached in and plucked one out between finger and thumb. The tiny person, too small to even identify as a man or woman, bucked about like a worm on a wire. Radik lifted them over her mouth and dropped them in, holding Erin’s gaze the whole time. She swallowed her victim and licked her lips, then at last said, “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Erin demanded, folding her arms. One good thing in this, she supposed, was that in her upset and indignation she had found some courage to stand up to this strange woman. “I wished it. You have to tell me.”

Radik wagged a finger. “You wished, that I’d just explain. Erin, there are always drawbacks.”

Erin swore – even that innocuous comment had come back to bite her. Could Radik even grant more wishes now?

“I’m not bound by the same rules as you, it’ll be fine,” the woman said, as if reading her thoughts. “The catches are picky and inconsistent and don’t always make total sense, as you could guess – otherwise I might’ve actually just explained and not, say, eaten little people or even continued breathing, I don’t know. The point is there’s always some catch. Just go away, think about it, come back when you’re ready. We’ll figure something out.”

Conceding with a nod, Erin slumped and turned away. She tried to stay positive, telling herself that there would be a solution, she just needed to give it some thought. She’d get home, have a hot drink and some food, consider all her choices and produce the perfect wish to reverse everything. In the meantime, she’d stay away from everyone else – if there was no one around to witness her nightmare life, maybe the wish would stop working. Maybe…