Dream Where Teeth Crumble Novels & Stories

It’s to be expected when its teeth sink into my unpinned shoulder, crunching through my bones. My own scream has me falling out of bed. Shit. Sweat slicks my skin and my hands are shaky as if it was real. It was just a dream. A dream I’ve had plenty of times before. It always ends the same. With me bleeding out in the ditch just like my mother.

As the castle crumbled, the debris cascading like a macabre rain, I strained to see any sign of Liam. My pleas for him echoed into the void, swallowed by the cacophony of the collapsing world. The ground beneath me trembled, mirroring the palpitations of my frantic heart as I was dragged relentlessly by the spectral hands of the elders. In the final throes of the nightmare, the air grew thick with the metallic scent of the blood rain. The landscape, now a chaotic dance of destruction, offered no solace. The haunting whispers of Diana's ominous warning lingered, and the grotesque tableau played out until the very fabric of the dreamland seemed to unravel.

“I’ll leave you to it.” I get up and brush my teeth. All the while, I’m thinking about the dream. I’m getting shivers even now, and there’s this bitter taste in my mouth that no amount of toothpaste can get rid of. I’m just flustered by what happened, and I hate that I had to have such a dream.

In the dream, we escaped and built a new house for ourselves in a sea of flowers. But the dream shattered at dawn, ripped apart by Dad's pained screams.

My finger bones started to snap and my fingers looked as though they were broken. I scream upon seeing them, I started to panicking. I jumped from my bed and cried as they start to snap back into place, causing pain to cloud my mind, my body ached all over, all I could do was cry in horror, I've never experienced this, I was confused and scared. My gums started to hurt, I thought someone was pulling my teeth out at the same time. My mouth felt heavy and packed, on instinct, I grazed my tongue against my teeth and they felt longer and sharper, causing my tongue the get cut and the metal taste the fill my taste buds.

I run toward him, screaming, but chains grow from the floor and wrap around my ankles. Then the dream changes. The walls of Blackridge melt into a forest of black trees where creatures with human teeth crawl after me on all fours. Their nails tear my skin. Their mouths rip flesh from my arms and chest while I keep running, unable to die, unable to wake. I see Lucas. I see Ryan. And I see myself drowning in blood while Ryan keeps asking one question. “Why?” The siren blares, jolting me awake. I wake with a violent gasp, my back soaked in sweat. Oliver glances at me from his bunk. “You look like hell.”

It works for a few seconds, but then he grabs my chin and forces me to look up at him. At first, all I see is the blurred-out face of a man. But then it starts to clear out until ocean blue eyes meet mine, and the shock of it shatters the last of my resistance. Almost at once, everything that’s been building up inside me explodes. "Tell me, Carmen. Dammit, tell me, please..." He roars. But it is too late. Just as my body shatters into a million pieces so does the dream. His face, a face that has no right to be so beautiful or breathtaking fades away, replaced by my mold-ridden, off-white bedroom ceiling.

The dream realm, broken and fragile as it was, slowly began to settle, trembling, wounded, but somehow still alive. I collapsed to my knees, gasping for breath, my whole body trembling. Sweat clung to my skin as I bent forward, my fingers loosening their grip on the necklace. It slipped from my hand and fell onto the cracked earth below, the crystal now dim and quiet. It was over. “Xiana! Look out!” Damien’s voice suddenly pierced the calm, sharp and panicked, like a crack through still glass. My eyes flew open, and I turned just in time to see it—a jagged shard of the dream realm itself, twisted and black, hurtling down from the shattered sky above. It tore through the air like a blade carv

My throat felt full of bees. She smiled with too many teeth. "And you're the zero." The grown-ups moved like thunder. Father grabbed me while Mother and the other-her (the nice clone who shared her snacks) put themselves between us. But Eight just laughed—a sound like breaking Christmas ornaments. "You don't remember your dreams yet." She pointed at the floor where my blood had fallen. "But the house does." My cut foot tingled. The blood drop shimmered, then *sank* into the stone like water into sand. The ground rumbled—

It was like gravity itself turned sideways, trying to fold the world in half. The Cradle braced herself, planting her feet into the trembling floor as debris, broken weapons, and cracked symbols tore loose from the walls and flew past her. But she held. She screamed, flinging the raw light toward him. It struck Kael’s chest—and for a moment, he convulsed. His back arched. A cry tore from his throat—not the thing’s voice. His. “Stop!” Kael gasped. Then his head snapped up again—and the Dream-Eater returned.