I always woke up from the dream in a cold sweat, panting, and clutching the sheets. It was repeated at least once a week, especially during particularly stressful periods. I was fifteen and my waking hours in high school had given me the all-time high. My dream world seemed determined to mirror that feeling. Through this recurring nightmare, I came face to face not only with my real academic and social fears, but also with whatever twisted situations my brain could concoct in its sleep. The scene began with a thunderstorm ravaging a vast field, bullet-like raindrops slicking the earth. path in the mud. The road took me to a stone building far too large to be a normal school, with cracks adorning its walls and a medieval-looking moat and drawbridge surrounding it. There was a distinct smell of wood burning in the air, and it always gave me the feeling that there were enemy soldiers of some kind hiding around the fires, waiting to attack me. The school door was a towering crimson that seemed to scream at me to turn back. Like the victims in most bad horror movies, I ignored the warning and shuffled inside, picking up globs of mud on my shoes. Inside was a completely different environment, which dragged me out of the grim war scene and into total decadence. The walls had a golden hue and the floors sparkled and shined enough to show me my nervous reflection. Right in front of the entrance was a gigantic two-story foyer, with vaulted ceilings and a spiral staircase leading to the upstairs hallway. Eventually I saw some fellow students; they lounged lazily on plush sofas spread around a fireplace. This room gave a false sense of security, betrayed by the dungeons that I knew must exist beyond the corridors. Despite the room's attempt to relax me, I was... middle of paper... yes, painted entirely brown, through the dim candlelight, through boarded-up gymnasiums and cafeterias, and down what must have been hundreds of those covered stairs of rubber mats. I passed sudden crowds of students clogging the narrow paths. When I reached the front lobby, the walls and furniture were the same moldy gray stone that made up the building's exterior. I heard scratches as light as a whisper from below and looked down to see the floor covered in a carpet of spiders. The only thing to do was run outside into what was now a snowstorm. The glittering sheets of ice blinded me and sent me sliding down the hill. I was supposed to get on the school bus, but I fell so many times that I knew I would never make it to the line of buses, barely visible in the thick fog. I would be trapped in this strange hell forever... or until I woke up, still smelling those fires.