412 Contemplating

I woke up abruptly, my eyes snapping open and my breaths coming in ragged, uneven gasps as if I had narrowly escaped the clutches of death itself.

With my bleary eyes, I looked around the room through a bottle-glass blur, and the haunting remnants of the nightmare clung to my senses, giving me a sense of dread.

Beads of cold sweat slowly formed on my forehead, tracing a clammy path down my face as I continued to huff and puff.

My heart violently pounded against the ribs in my chest; each beat echoing a sense of panic that refused to subside.

The bedsheets stuck to me like a second skin, damp from the sweat and wrinkled from the struggle that made me wake up from the nightmare I was just experiencing.

In desperation to calm myself down, I brought my hands to my face and started massaging my cheeks with my trembling fingers while sitting straight up.

"Calm down," I told myself. "It was just a dream."