If Dreams Had Teeth

I used to think dreams were soft places—fleeting, strange, and safe. They were clouds you could walk through, colors you couldn’t name, people you missed but didn’t recognize. But all of that changed the night I learned that dreams, if twisted just enough, could grow teeth. And sometimes… they bite.

It started the week we moved into the old townhouse on the edge of Morrow Street. My mother said it was just temporary, that the creaky stairs and dusty walls would feel like home eventually. I didn’t believe her. The air inside the house was always cold, even when the sun sat high and warm outside. At night, I kept hearing things: a soft scraping under my bed, whispers that didn’t belong to anyone in the house.

My mom said it was stress. New place, new school, new everything. My dad, never one for big talks, simply told me to “man up.” So I kept the fear to myself. Until the dreams started.

They began with small things—a door I couldn’t open, a hallway that kept stretching no matter how far I walked, a shadow that followed me in silence. I’d wake up in a sweat, my heart racing like I’d just run a mile. But the worst part wasn’t what happened in the dream. It was what didn’t go away when I woke up.

Scratches on my windowpane. Footprints—bare, wet ones—leading from my closet to the bed. A tooth, small and sharp, left on my pillow like a token.

I stopped sleeping for more than a few hours at a time. I’d drift off, then jolt awake to something breathing too close. The line between dream and waking began to blur. Was I imagining it all? I had to be.

One night, I stayed up past 2 a.m. reading a comic under the covers with a flashlight. My eyelids grew heavy, the panels started blurring together—and before I knew it, I was asleep.

This dream was different. Realer.

I stood at the foot of my bed, watching myself sleep. The room was darker than usual, and the walls pulsed like they were alive. From the corner, it came—long, crawling limbs made of ash and smoke. Its eyes burned like hot coals, and its mouth was full of jagged teeth that clicked softly as it approached.

“Why do you run from me?” it asked, though its lips didn’t move. “I’ve been here all along.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t scream. I was trapped inside my own head, watching the nightmare lean over my sleeping body.

Then I woke up.

Only… I wasn’t in bed. I was still standing in the same spot—watching myself, asleep. It hadn't been a dream at all.

I wanted to run, to wake up for real. But my legs wouldn’t move. The thing turned and looked right at me.

“You called me,” it said. “You made me real.”

I remember falling—through the floor, through air, through something thicker than anything I’d ever felt. When I opened my eyes again, I was in my bed. Sunlight leaked through the blinds. The room was still. But the pillow beside me was stained with a dark, rust-colored smear. And in my palm was another tooth—bigger than before, almost human.

From that day on, I stopped telling myself it was just dreams. I stopped ignoring the signs.

The creature came every few nights. Sometimes I’d catch glimpses of it in the mirror, or behind me in windows. It never hurt me, not really. But it watched. It whispered. It grew.

The more afraid I became, the stronger it seemed to get.

I started sketching it, writing about it, giving it a name. It liked that. It fed off my attention. The more I gave it, the more it gave back—images, sounds, truths I couldn’t have known. I dreamt of people I hadn’t met yet, conversations that hadn’t happened but would. I became obsessed.

It wasn’t long before I realized it wasn’t just my dream anymore. It was *ours*.

One night, I asked it what it wanted.

“To be remembered,” it said.

“Why me?”

“Because you listened.”

It was right. Most people brushed off their nightmares. They forgot them with breakfast and sunlight. But I couldn’t forget. Not anymore.

The line between waking and dreaming didn’t exist for me now. Sometimes I’d blink and be back in that dark version of my room, staring at myself. Sometimes I’d wake up and find words scrawled on my walls—words I hadn’t written but knew were mine.

I told no one. How could I? What would I say?

But one morning, my mom came into my room and found a page full of drawings tacked to the wall—charcoal sketches of the thing with the teeth.

She stared at them for a long time. Then whispered, “You see it too?”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

That’s when I understood: this thing, this presence, didn’t belong only to me. It had lived in others before me—watching, waiting, feeding. Some ignored it. Some let it win. A few, like me, embraced it.

Dreams are not always safe. Some carry messages, some carry monsters.

And if you give them enough fear, enough attention…

They grow claws.

They grow teeth.

They grow *real*.