Hey, I'm back!

    It was a Wednesday. Wednesdays meant bad dreams. So did Fridays. And half of the Thursdays, as far as Samuel could tell. Then there was the scattering of them within the weekend and all the other days. Always there. No matter what he did.
    And if humans thought being chased in their dreams was bad, it had nothing on being a vampire. Samuel could write a book on how bad it was. And each and every time he woke up, he always forgot what had been chasing him. Or what had been hurting him. Or who was missing. Who was dead. What had been happening at all. Each time, he felt like he wasn't going to come out of it. He was never going to wake up and he would just ... be stuck.
He rolled over in his sleep, clutching at his pillow. There were about six, though two of them were on the ground already. The rest were piled around him, like a half-made pillow fort had collapsed. It really didn't seem to matter what he had over him, since he got neither hot or cold. However, the weight marginally helped sometimes. Or just gave something between himself and the outside world, should he suddenly bolt upward.
    Vampires had a very different way of sleeping than humans. They were often completely still for most of the night. There were, however, brief times when nightmares would get through. If they were particularly bad, Sam sleepwalked. Which was also different, for the most part, from humans. He more ... enacted the dreams. Keeping the door closed worked a couple times. But he had broken it in the past. Sometimes Missy or The Doctor would find him curled up somewhere unusual - or he wouldn't be found at all and had to wake up in a strange place.
He'd freaked The Doctor out once - and himself - by ending up in the pool. Face down. The dream had been about drowning too, which was ridiculous since he didn't need to breath. Suffice it to say, that didn't exactly happen often, but it happened enough times that Sam often refused to sleep for several days straight.
But he had to give in sooner or later.
    This one was about clouds. Rain pored down on him, drenching him head to toe. He couldn't feel the chill of it, even though the sky looked like it might threaten snow as well.
They always started innocently.
    The ground started writhing a couple minutes later, the water collecting into pools, growing and growing until they were six feet high. Samuel backed away, his hair getting into his face. A nonsensical fear grew in his chest, like some part of him knew this was something which could kill him. He backed up again, then turned and bolted. But wherever he was, the rain was still there, mud clinging to his feet and making his steps heavy.
    He tripped, rolling ...
    Into a different dream.
    It was a hallway. The lights were dim. It was night and Sam knew he shouldn't be up. His heart was beating loudly in his ears (he found something a bit odd about the heartbeat, but only because it had been a while since he felt it). He'd had to get up though. He hadn't been able to sleep. Not with the yelling.
His mother's voice was the loudest. He could hardly hear his dad's at all, but when he could he sounded pleading or frustrated. She sounded ... angry. Scary. Samuel shivered, pressing his hands to his slim arms. He nearly jumped out of his skin when his older brother set a hand on his shoulder. It was all Sam could do not to shout himself. But Pax lifted a finger to his lips. He looked just as frustrated and worried as his dad sounded. He was only ten to Samuel's five years of age. But he motioned Samuel to come to his room.
    Why hadn't he, then?
    Part of Samuel remembered following Pax. He remembered playing with him, the door closed, late into the night. The tired look on his dad's face when he woke them in the morning.
But the young Sam found himself in front of the room instead, the voices louder on the other side. His hand reached up for the handle of the door, despite the fact it was trembling. He didn't want to open the door. He didn't want to open the door ...
    But he did ...
    Samuel woke up a few seconds later with a shriek, twisting away from something, hands up, as he fell of the bed. This wasn't an odd thing for him to do, but this time the image from his dream was still burning in his eyes. The bedding was around him in a heap, several pillows with him, but he hardly noticed. He couldn't move, every muscle in his body limp.
It took five minutes for him to move. And only then, it was to curl up into a ball and start crying.