“In Dreams” a Halloween Serialized story by Nat Weaver, Parts I and II
Welcome to spooky season at Weaver’s Deep Thoughts! And welcome to the third annual Halloween Special wherein I release a serialized short story over the course of October — with two new chapters every Friday delivered to your inbox. This project has been one of my favorite things on this newsletter and I’m excited to bring you a new serial this year. I don’t want to waste too much time with an intro, so let’s get to the good stuff.
And be sure to hop in the comments, the community that develops around these serials is half the fun.
Rated R: Creepy creature nightmare fuel, foul language, adult themes, low mood depressive character (she’s seen some sh*t), and some manipulative behavior.
-
Copyright © 2026 by Nat Weaver.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or used in the training of AI, for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. For permission requests, write to the author, with subject “In Dreams” at the following email address: nat@weaver.wtf.
In Dreams
a short story by nat weaver
I. Nightmares
Circe opened and laid her eyes on a long, beige hallway and an eerily familiar sense of dread. Cream colored tiles were beneath her feet and both sides of the hall were lined with brown doors she knew in her soul to be professor offices, though she didn’t recall seeing any professors. She couldn’t even recall what campus she was standing on. What university, what state, what country. She knew this place yet she was hazy on the details. Her heart felt heavy and the air felt dry. Her mouth was chalky from fear.
“Circe…” a woman’s voice called gently from behind her.
She turned to put a face to the voice and it was a familiar companion. Like her surroundings, she knew this young woman yet couldn’t say how or what their relationship was. She was a short, stout, and stern looking Black woman of roughly twenty-two years old based on her appearance. About her own age. She wore a black jacket with blue jeans and a white t-shirt, and brown boots. Her eyes were green, warm and inviting, though they looked tired and hurt.
The woman raised her palms in a calming gesture. “It’s me, it’s Kassandra, let’s take it easy this time.”
What does she mean by “this time?”
“Just—whatever you do—don’t run.” Kassandra said calmly and took a few steps towards her. “Please don’t run.”
The panic was starting to grip Circe’s chest and she was breathing recklessly. She knew, somehow and someway, that what came next was what she had been dreading.
“Slow your breathing,” Kassandra implored. “You know what to do—”
A deep and thunderous voice raised from further inside the building, so loud and powerful that Circe’s ears hurt, her whole body vibrated.
“I KNOW YOU’RE HERE. I. SMELL. YOU.”
This is it. This is it. Oh god…
“That’s Leviathan,” Kassandra explained. “Stay focused, we can do this. You got this. Just focus. You have to remember. And whatever you do—do not run.”
“I’M GOING TO GET YOU.” The voice roared and let out a maniacal laugh that shook the beige walls and cream tiles, the fluorescent lighting flickered.
She stumbled but caught her balance by holding her hands out.
Nope.
Circe spun and took off in the opposite direction of Leviathan. Whoever it was, whatever it was, she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She sure as hell didn’t want to know what this Leviathan did when it got ahold of her. She glanced back at the hall behind her and saw that Kassandra had yet to move, she looked defeated.
At the other end of the corridor, she saw Leviathan for the first time. He tore around the corner, hunched over and crawling beneath the low ceiling compared to his enormous stature. He was in the shape of a man but was also a black mass, devoid of any semblance of detail, intangible. She could make out the outline of a man through this misty darkness such as bulky arms and thick calves, but he had no face and what should have been skin was merely a moving dark matter. He placed a large palm against the wall and by the look of it was staring in her direction, bent down on one knee, and with what appeared to be a penis dangling between his cloudy legs.
“I SEE YOU, BITCH. YOU. ARE. MINE.”
Leviathan lunged into a gallop on all fours and within moments he was halfway to Kassandra who turned around to face him. She pulled a stick from out of her jacket and held it to her side. It extended into a long spear with a three-pronged blade at the end of it. She was prepared to face off against the nothingness that was Leviathan.
This isn’t real.
Circe stopped so abruptly that she nearly fell over face first. “This is just a dream,” she said aloud to convince herself. “This isn’t really happening. It isn’t real.” She turned to face Leviathan just as Kassandra took a defensive position and thrust her spear at him, but he swatted her away with one arm and she crashed against a door and fell to the tiles. She didn’t even manage to slow him down. Leviathan kept pursuing Circe who planted her feet and held her hands apart, “When I clap my hands, I will wake and be safely in my bed.”
“I’M GOING TO GET YOU. I’M GOING TO GET YOU.”
“This is just a dream and when I clap my hands, I will wake and be safely in my bed.”
“I’M GOING TO GET YOU.”
He lunged through the air, large hands outstretched towards her.
She clapped her hands with all her might.
II. Familiar Places
She sprung up so fast from her bed that the head rush nearly knocked her right back out. Circe was back in her apartment. She was in her bed. She was safe. The clap had worked. As it always had since she’d learned to use it. She had been having the Leviathan nightmare for as long as she could remember. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she could just go to bed at night without a care in the world of what would happen next. In the early days, she had no way of controlling it, and it would continue endlessly as she ran and ran until eventually she just woke up. Perhaps it was her heart deciding it couldn’t handle the stress anymore and forcing her awake, perhaps it was her mind on the verge of a meltdown refusing to sleep anymore. She couldn’t be sure but when she finally told a friend, Markus, about her nightmare, he had given her the suggestion of acknowledging that it wasn’t real. To take back her agency from the dream state, while using the clap as a means to tell her body to wake the fuck up. It worked, though she never knew how long it would take for her dream self to start thinking rationally again.
She slipped out of her blanket, placing her bare feet on the hardwood floor. Her sweaty feet sent a cold sensation up her legs. That cold sensation was always keen to help her reorient her mind. She was home. She was back in the real world. But that nightmare always felt so real, so vivid, that she could feel the vibrations from Leviathan’s voice. Even now, in her apartment, her body still felt numb from shaking. She rubbed her arms and legs a little to get the lingering feeling of vibration out of her muscles.
It’s not real. She stomped her feet on the floor. This is fucking real.
It was raining outside, again. So much rain, so much dreariness. For a weird moment, she tried remembering the last time she’d seen the sunshine, but she shook that feeling. What an absurd thought.
You’re just depressed.
She went to her bathroom and fetched a tiny pill to calm herself. A little something for anxiety Markus snuck to her in free samples, because her job at Zeus Tech had the shittiest health insurance plan known to man. Combining that with her abysmal salary that hadn’t seen a raise in three years, rising inflation amidst layoffs, and an increased workload, despite Zeus’s year-over-year record profit, she had very little money to her name by the end of each month.
She was tired. So fucking tired. Tired of struggling. Tired of not having enough money for simple things, much less luxuries, or even healthcare. She had been slowly reducing her food intake over the past two months, in an attempt to save some cash as the landlord had announced a rent increase coming in December. The weight loss was ok, so long as it didn’t get too out of hand. But mostly, she was just tired from not getting good sleep. The exhaustion was unreal and she had felt this way for at least a decade, maybe more, she couldn’t even remember. She figured the fatigue was starting to mess with her ability to recall things. That’s why everything was getting so hazy.
I must not go out during the daytime much. I’m at work during the daytime, that’s it. That’s why I have trouble remembering the sunshine.
Standing in front of the bathroom sink, she lifted her tank top and pinched her torso. She had lost some more fat. Her pelvis was becoming more defined. She rubbed across her rib cage, and from the touch, she figured it wouldn’t be too long before all of her ribs were exposed, her skin clinging to them like a spider’s web.
Looking back at her bed she knew she wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep tonight. She took a cold shower to remind herself she was still awake, packed her work laptop, and looked longingly at her home office that she could no longer use because they had demanded everyone come back to the office or risk losing their job. Some, who couldn’t, were let go, and she was doing their tasks now. She missed the joy of flex time and work from home, and enjoying the work she did. She missed feeling like she was doing something that mattered. Zeus had moved away from consumer-facing work and shuttered down all of the nonprofit charitable work that had brought her to the company so many years before. Nothing was free anymore. Even subscription services which used to remove ads showed those fifteen and thirty second bastards without remorse.
What were people even paying for anymore? Nothing was owned yet everything was sold. Jesus, this pill needs to kick in.
Down on the streets, she crossed to Tom’s Diner. It wasn’t Cheers, but its familiarity did offer some comfort. She shook the rain off her as she entered the ghost town of a diner where the only noise came from an old jukebox in the corner, a slow-tempo 10cc song played. Tom nodded to her from behind the counter. These past few years had been especially hard on him as COVID took his wife of thirty-some years, his daughter, and both his parents. He was the only one in his family left. He too looked tired, his eyes now inset with black rings around them.
He looked at his watch, “Nightmare again?” He asked her. She nodded. “Sorry, kid. Toast and coffee?”
“Actually,” Circe said, “can I have an actual meal tonight? Just nothing pricey.”
“Sure, kid.”
She sat on a stool at the counter and grabbed a few packets of sugar for her coffee. Splurging on a meal was going to have to last the whole damn day. Depending on what Tom cooked up, maybe she could make it stretch out until breakfast the following morning. Her stomach grumbled.
The hell?
Standing outside the window was the woman from her nightmare, Kassandra. She had her back to her, but she’d recognize her anywhere and from any angle.
Impossible.
She looked away. There was no way she was seeing a woman she’d only ever known from a recurring nightmare out in the real world. She counted to three and looked back.
Impossible.
She was still there, but not for long, as she darted across the street. Circe hopped up and bolted out the door. Kassandra had already made it to the other side and was scurrying towards the metro with that black leather jacket flapping behind her. Circe sprinted through the rain and street lights after her. At the top of the stairs to the metro, she saw Kassandra disappear around the corner at the bottom. Circe hustled down the stairs, careful not to slip in her wet shoes. She could hear the train was boarding and about to leave the station. She picked up her pace and when the wet soles of her shoes touched the floor at the bottom, she slipped and tumbled across the the hard tiles. She looked up as the train departed and saw Kassandra staring out the window at her. Kassandra’s head pivoting slowly as the train picked up momentum, eyes locked. She’d recognize those green eyes anywhere.
Fucking impossible.
