For whatever reason we’ve been sitting on this for far too long. This is definitely raw, and something that should have been posted long ago, but at least everyone is getting it now! Don’t forget there is a Nightmarish Contest and you do still have time to enter. This excerpt comes from Before I Wake, the first in the new series called The Nightmare Chronicles.

Kathryn Smith… Raw and Unedited…

E-X-C-E-R-P-T

The Nightmare Chronicles

“You’re a Nightmare.”

Diet Dr. Pepper half way to my lips I paused, staring at the old man standing beside me at the Duane Reade checkout. My heart nudged hard against my ribs. “Excuse me?”

His face was the color and texture of a worn piece of leather and his hair was a mass of tight, frizzy gray curls. But his eyes were as sharp as a child’s. “You’re a Nightmare, girl. What’re you doin’ here?”

I glanced around to see if anyone else in the drugstore had heard the old fella’s surprising — and very vocal — accusations. If anyone had, they were pretending they hadn’t.

He was just a crazy old man. No need to panic. No need to do anything. “Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are not of this plane,” he insisted, doing this weird little stomp with his foot that made me wonder if he had to pee. “You shouldn’t be here.”

I took a step away just in case his bladder gave out. It was instinct, driven by pure self-preservation. One thing living in a city the size of New York teaches you is that some people just don’t have the same boundaries as the rest of us.

Also, he creeped me out.

“Uh, okay. I shouldn’t be here.” I twisted the cap back on to my Dr. Pepper as the cashier started scanning my items. Just a few more moments and I’d be out of there. I should have gone straight home after work, but I needed tampons.

“You do know, don’t you?”

I had hoped that agreeing with him would end the conversation. Apparently, I was wrong. “Know what?”

“What you are.” He was staring at me now with a look of wonder. “Shee–oot. I bet you don’t even know how you got here.”

“I walked.” I would not, however, be walking home. God, I hoped I’d be able to hail a cab pronto once I left the pharmacy. I never wanted to be somewhere else quite so badly in all my life.

He did that foot thing again, only this time his face twisted in annoyance. I took another step away. “I don’t mean here. I mean here. On this earth.”

I swallowed. My throat felt like I’d just swallowed a piece of carpet. “Sir, I was born here. Same as you.” Maybe it was all the years of psychology classes, or maybe it was a little fear, but I needed to bring him back to the real world. This one.

He peered at me — a little too closely for my liking. “You may have been born here, girlie, but you don’t belong. I wonder how you managed to slip through.”

I wanted to get the heck out of there. What the hell was he talking about? “Just luck, I guess.”

He stared at me with eyes that were slightly rheumy, but keen. “Luck, nothing. How old are you?”

“Sir, I’m not going to tell you that.” Next he was going to ask my weight and I’d have to kill him.

“Twenty-eight.”

His voice rang in my head like a gong. He was right. If I was creeped out before, I was ten times that now. It could have been a lucky guess, but I doubted it.

“You’re mature,” he informed me. “At your full potential. No tellin’ what havoc you might wreak.”

That was it. I threw some money at the clerk. I hadn’t heard the total, so I could only hope it was enough. I grabbed my bag and started for the door, grateful for once that most of my five feet ten inches was leg. The clerk didn’t yell after me, so I assumed I had given her enough to cover my bill.

I miraculously hailed a cab right outside and jumped in. As we drove off, I looked out the window to see the old man standing on the sidewalk near the door, watching me. He was drinking a bottle of Brisk — bought with my change I bet. He waved as the cab pulled away, and he yelled something. I couldn’t quite hear the words, but to my paranoid ears it sounded as though he yelled, “YOU. DON’T. BELONG.”
I knew I didn’t. The question was, how the hell did he?