Story 1188: Dreams Eaten by Smoke

The village of Marrowridge was not on any map. It sat nestled between hills perpetually wreathed in fog, the kind that tasted like ash and clung to the lungs like guilt. The people who lived there didn’t dream anymore.

Because something in the smoke ate dreams.

It began with whispers.

A child named Orrin was the first to complain. He said the shadows beneath his bed were breathing. That something thick and gray had crawled into his mouth at night and drank his thoughts. His parents dismissed it as a nightmare, until they, too, began waking with blank stares and black phlegm in their throats.

Soon, no one slept.

Not truly.

Instead, the villagers sat up in their beds, eyes open, unblinking, staring into nothing as curling tendrils of soot drifted in through cracks, under doors, through keyholes. It didn’t burn. It caressed. It invaded.

And it feasted.