The door creaked open slowly. He peered around the corner, his bright blue eyes looking into my soul. I was paralyzed. Who was this man? Next came the big creepy grin right before he threw the door open all the way and rushed full speed at me. I struggled and fought, but nothing could get him away. Everything went dark.

I sat up abruptly gasping for air. The same nightmare once again. Each time it gets more and more vivid, as if I am truly living this nightmare. At this point, I can feel it coming. I can play out each moment of the nightmare in my mind as if it were constantly replaying. Something about the familiarity of the man and the hopeless struggle that always comes with it, never sits right with me. It is like I know what is going on, but I can not recall the memory that goes with it.

Unable to fall back asleep, I decided to get up and make myself some tea. I trudged down the hall and turned on the lights in the kitchen. Suddenly, I got the feeling that someone was in the room with me. I quickly turned around and looked. Nobody. The paranoia that comes with these nightmares only gets stronger each time. I opened the cupboard and grabbed a cup. As I reached for the tea, something caught my eye. A keychain with one single key was laying on the floor across the room. 

I picked it up and turned it over in my hand a few times. This was not mine. There is no lock in the house that would match this key, and I have never seen this keychain before. Someone must have been in here. No. That is just my paranoia. Obviously nobody could have gotten in and this is probably mine that I forgot about. I set the keychain on the counter and went back to my room.

As I laid in bed, all I could think about was the keychain. What if it somehow tied in with my recurring nightmare? The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. That’s when I heard something that made my stomach do a flip. Somewhere in my house a door slammed. This time it was not my paranoia speaking. I was paralyzed with fear and the sound of my heart pounding was all I could hear. 

I crept out of my room and went up to the attic where the sound had come from. Slowly, I cracked the door open and as I peered in and watched my reflection in the mirror, I felt the blood drain from my face. Everything about this moment felt familiar and I experienced a rush of deja vu. The man I saw in the mirror was the same as the man in my nightmares, but there was nobody around. I was the man of my nightmares.