Challenge - 'Secret'

I struggled up towards the surface. I could see the glimmer of light, feel the hope fill me, but every advance towards it was like walking through cement. I felt the pull behind me, trying to drag me back, to keep me under. As I surfaced I shut the door, they were trapped now in my subconscious, I had won once more, but how long could I keep up the struggle?

I was awake, though it was hardly a reprieve. My leaden limbs felt like they had morphed with the bed. Every breath was laboured. I felt like a sleeping prince in a fairy tale who had slept for a thousand years, turned to stone. But there was no beautiful princess to kiss me and release me from my slumber. I would not leap up as fit as the day I was put under the spell.

Even opening my eyes was a chore and all I saw was a nurse busying herself around my bed, checking on me. She saw my eyes following her, her cheerful 'good morning' took a minute to penetrate my soggy brain, no comprehensible reply was forthcoming.

My blood flowed like lead through my veins, my thoughts moved at the speed of thick tar. Slowly I attempted to raise my arm from the bed. It weighed a hundred tonnes and was clumsy as it wiped gritty sleep from my eyes.

They had run dozens of tests, asked hundreds of questions, consulted specialists, but still they didn't know why I woke up more exhausted than when I went to sleep.

I knew, but I couldn't tell them, couldn't explain. They'd think I was mad, they'd lock me up, they'd drug me, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, sedatives, who knows what. Then how would I fight the knightmarians? I'd be defenceless, lost!

I can't remember now when it had first begun. I did not know why I had been chosen to fight the Knightmarians. I did not know how long the war might last or what might happen if I lost.  All I knew was that every time I closed my eyes, every time I succumbed to sleep, the battle resumed.

The Knightmarians wanted release. They wanted the freedom of the conscious world, and I was the guardian at the gateway. They were upon me as soon as consciousness left me, hoping to exhaust me, overwhelm me, subdue my subconscious, which was all that stood in the way of them and their goal.

I didn't know what they would do once in the conscious world, but I knew it would not be good.

In my dreams they took whatever forms they pleased, morphing and changing, taking delight in finding out my weaknesses, finding the forms to most horrify me, to trick me, to ultimately defeat me.

The battles were the same every time I slept. Like dreams they turned and twisted down odd avenues, harrying at me, always trying to catch me out and make me stumble. And exhausted at last I would see the glimmer of consciousness, my salvation. But they would see it too, and know that this was their chance. The fight before waking was always the hardest.

I felt my eyes drooping, my consciousness sliding away. I tried to resist the inexorable pull of oblivion. I had hardly rested but already sleep was descending on me once again. Like an irresistible weight, an all smothering blanket, I had no choice but to let it claim me. Wearily I steeled myself for the coming fight.