Short, very short story, based on a dream my sister Kelley had. Creepy. Enjoy!

UNREST

She languished in her bed, restless. She had been having the dream again. Whispering, the sounds of rustling fabric. As soon as she opened her eyes, silence. Never before had a dream felt so real, sounded so life-like. The smell of moth balls and sour, decrepit linen had filled her nostrils. As she awoke with a jolt, the smell dissipated immediately, but the memory of it and the hushed voices haunted her. Yet in the dream she was blind. There were no visuals to match the strange sounds and smells.

As time went on she had the dream more frequently. It increased from rarely to nearly every night, to multiple times a night. When she awoke, it took her longer and longer to rid her eyes of the clouds. Rubbing them, she convinced herself that she was just exhausted, not losing her vision. Yet nearsightedness gave way to contacts, which gave way to coke bottle glasses that still left her squinting to read street signs, books, food labels. After close to a year she conceded it was no longer safe to drive.

The declining vision was not the only effect of the dreams. Her weight dropped, her clothes sliding off her shrunken hips. Her once lovely hair, the color of a shiny penny, fell out in handfuls. Her alabaster skin took on a greyish hue. The blue eyes were now clouded over like a much older woman, revealing their loss of vision as a white film muddied them.

She underwent tests- tests for poisoning, cancer, allergies...but found no explanation for her decline. She had her house checked for mold, gas leaks, anything that could explain her ill health. No longer able to work, she lay in bed most days, trying to sleep without having the dream, which seemed to occupy all of her dream space.

It was then that the boundary between waking and sleeping broke down. She could no longer tell when she was awake or asleep. The whispering was constant, the smells overpowering. And when they came to tell her what was the cause, she had lost her capacity to reason.

It’s the people in the closet, she heard them say. They’ve been living in there for over a year. They used to be dancers, but after they lost their music they crawled up onto the shelf and began to decompose. They were quiet at first, careful, but as time drew on and no one seemed to notice, their whispers became more audible, their poorly preserved costumes shredding into powder, flaking into the air. As their bodies rotted they shifted uncomfortably, emitting the smells of decay. By the time they had been found they were merely dust, fine particles floating in the half light, unaware of their deadly influence.

After she had been moved out of her house, and it had been quarantined, her physical health returned. Unfortunately she had gone mad. Muttering about arabesques, concertos and plies, she remained in an institution, unable to perform the simplest tasks. When she passed the room smelled of moth balls and sour fabric, and by the time the coroner arrived she was nothing but dust.

Or:

After she had been moved out of her house, her health and sanity slowly returned. However she had no recollection of that year, the dream, or anything having to do with the illness she had suffered. Her hair grew back in a shiny silver, and her blue eyes had turned steel grey.