I woke up my hair plastered to my neck with sweat. I was panting my chest heaved up and down as if I had run a mile. I had actually, in my sleep. In my dream. I had been running away from the fire. The fire that was filling up every dream that I had, the fire that burned me. No matter how hard I ran, no matter which path I chose, no matter what I did to escape the fire I always lost at the end of every dream.  The fire always reached up surrounding me never letting me leave. I sat up my heart slowing a little, I could still here the thrum of the heartbeat in my ears. I could still here the screaming of people getting burned alive. I couldn't still feel the heat and smell the burning wood in my nostrils.

I had this dream every night and in every dream I could never find my family. I could only hear their screams echoing with the others. Nothing else. I swung my legs over the side of my bed and got up. My  oversized Mickey Mouse shirt stuck to my stomach as if I had gone swimming. I grabbed a change of clothes and walked in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, my pupils were huge and my skin pale as a sheet as sweat beads rolled down my forehead.

What was this dream doing to me? Or rather what would it do to me?