Sleeping With The CEO
Chapter 46: Honest Slumber

Chapter 46: Honest Slumber

There was something about being asleep that made the majority of human beings very honest. In their sleep people were robbed of the many barriers that they put up around themselves when they were awake. Sleep was not a place for secrets, it only allowed for honest desires and simple likes.

It was simple like that, which was why Emily was having herself some good sleep. She was surrounded by an earthy smell, the more she breathed it in, the more she felt as though she was taking a leisurely stroll in the park after a good bit of rain had fallen. The smell was really addictive and so she took in lungful after lungful of it. What made smell even better was the sound.

It went thump, thump, thump. Slow and steady, never missing a beat, and Emily felt as though she could listen it for eternity. But then wonderful smell, and the lovely sound both went away.

She tried to follow them, but the clutches of sleep would not let her go. All that she could do was cry, wanting it back but unable to get to it. She cried and cried, but even then she was not sure if she was heard, her lips too heavy, muffling her pleas for the scent and the sound to return.

But someone must have heard her because in the next moment there was a great shift, and it felt as though the earth itself was shaking. Something unbelievably huge making its presence felt amongst the plates that held the continents of the world together. It should have had her shaking in her boots, unable to form a single coherent thought. But for some reason, Emily was not even a little bit scared. This is a good earthquake though, her mind told her, and she believed it.

How could the earthquake be anything bad when shortly after it, the earth after a rainstorm smell was back, the steady thump, thump coming right back with it.

And then, just as she thought that things could not get any better, there was a third addition to the mix, and this third addition did not make things too cramped...no. Instead the third member of the group of wonderful things, made the combination just right. Fitting in amongst the other two seamlessly, like it had always been there and she had been the one who had forgotten that it was there.

The third addition was simple, something that she had herself, but coming from the other source, it was just perfect. The third addition was...warmth.

Wonderful, wonderful, warmth. It brought everything together wrapping it up in a neat bow, and Emily’s sleep got even better.

And as she sank deeper into sleep, she dreamed, and the dreams gave way to something that ate away at the young woman each night...bad dreams.

The nightmare began innocently enough, as they often do. She was with her mother, the two of them walking hand in hand through a deserted shopping mall. Then out of nowhere there rose a wave taller than all the skyscrapers she had ever seen, and it bore down on them fast. When she pulled at her mother’s hand, trying to get the older woman to run, her mother would not move, she simply stood where she was, frozen, awaiting her death like it was nothing. Then the wave was upon them and it ripped Emily from her mother, and when she tried to look for her in the water, it was no longer her mother, but her father. The long dead man looking at her, a look of pure fear in his eyes...and then Emily was drowning, drowning until she was not anymore. The warmth came for her, and where it touched the water receded, pushed back until all that was left was just her and the warmth and sleep was once again a welcoming place for her.

Her night terrors let her rest for a little bit, and then they were back. This time, there was thread, miles and miles of it. Layered so high and thick that Emily could no longer see the ground. And she tried to get off them, to look for somewhere where she could feel the grass beneath her feet instead of just thread, they came alive. And each one that became animated, zeroed in on her all of them moving with a hive mind.

She ran and they gave chase, she hid and they found her. Never tiring, wherever she was the threads were never far behind, whether they could smell her fear, or were following the too loud thumping of her terrified heart she did not know, but what she knew for sure was that they always found her always. She ran until she could not do it anymore, and the moment she fell, the threads attacked. A green thread wrapped itself around her throat. Four more latched on to her, all of them glowing, their green looking toxic, each of her four limbs held down. Leaving her hopeless as she felt the life get squeezed out of her. And then out of nowhere, the warmth was there, and this time it was blistering hot, and so very angry. Everything it touched turned to ash, it did not burn the threads, it ate them, and pretty soon, Emily was standing alone, her feet firmly on the newly revealed ground, the flames surrounding her in an impenetrable circle. Keeping all of the bad things away.

You are safe, it seemed to say, and she believed it. To everyone else, it might have looked like just a wall of wild fire, but for her, the fire was simply her warmth, and that was what was more important to her.

Throughout the night many nightmares rose up and try to come at her. But each time the warmth was there and it chased all of them away. Leaving Emily to sleep through the night for the first time in years without having to be woken up by nightmares.