Story classification: Original fiction. This story was created for darkrecord’s Dreams & Premonitions archive and is not presented as personal testimony or a documented event.
Elise dreamed about a funeral before she knew the dead man’s name, but the flowers were only the beginning of the warning.
Elise dreamed about the funeral on a Monday night.
It took place inside a narrow chapel she did not recognize. Rain moved down the stained-glass windows, although sunlight filled the room. Forty-two people sat in the pews.
She counted them because none of them had faces.
The coffin was made of ash wood. Three white lilies lay across its lid, tied with black thread. A photograph stood beside it, but the picture had been turned toward the wall.
Elise was arranging flowers near the altar.
Her hands moved without instruction.
White roses.
Sea holly.
Seven branches of flowering rosemary.
No chrysanthemums.
A voice inside the coffin whispered, “You have forgotten the moth.”
Elise looked down.
A large white moth crawled from beneath the lid.
It opened its wings.
Written across them in tiny black letters were four words:
DO NOT LET ME WAKE.
Elise awoke with the smell of rosemary in her bedroom.
She owned a small flower shop called Winter Bloom. Funerals made up much of her business, particularly during the colder months. She had seen thousands of arrangements and heard every imaginable request.
Dreaming about one was hardly surprising.
Yet the chapel remained unusually clear in her memory.
On Tuesday afternoon, a woman entered Winter Bloom carrying a folded sheet of paper.
“My brother left instructions,” she said. “For his funeral.”
Elise glanced automatically at the order.
Three white lilies.
White roses.
Sea holly.
Seven branches of rosemary.
Bound with black thread.
Her fingers tightened around the page.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “When did he pass?”
“He hasn’t.”
The woman’s name was Catherine Vale. Her brother, Owen, was forty-six and apparently healthy. He had handed her the funeral instructions that morning, then left town without explaining where he was going.
“He’s always been strange about dreams,” Catherine said. “He told me I might need these soon.”
Elise tried to return the page.
“I don’t think I can prepare flowers for someone who is still alive.”
Catherine looked exhausted rather than offended.
“He specifically requested your shop.”
“I’ve never met him.”
“He said you would say that.”
Catherine reached into her coat and placed an envelope on the counter.
Elise’s name was written across it in unfamiliar handwriting.
Inside was a single sentence.
You counted forty-two people, but there were forty-three.
Elise felt the shop tilt around her.
“Where is your brother?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
That night, Elise resisted sleep until nearly dawn.
When she finally closed her eyes, she was back inside the chapel.
The faceless mourners had turned toward her.
There were forty-three of them now.
The additional figure sat in the final pew. Unlike the others, he had a face. He was thin, dark-haired and visibly terrified.
Owen Vale.
Elise knew him without being told.
He pressed one finger to his lips.
The coffin behind her creaked.
“Do not listen when I ask you to open it,” he whispered.
A fist struck the inside of the lid.
Elise woke to someone knocking on her shop door.
It was 5:08 a.m.
Owen stood outside.
He looked exactly as he had in the dream, except for the blood running from one nostril.
Elise unlocked the door but kept the chain fastened.
“You need to call your sister.”
“I can’t speak to her yet.”
“You ordered funeral flowers from me.”
“I needed to make sure the dream had chosen the right person.”
“What does that mean?”
Owen looked over his shoulder at the empty street.
“Have you ever dreamed a place you later visited?”
Elise said nothing.
“When I was twelve, I dreamed my father’s accident. When I was nineteen, I dreamed the house where my mother would die. The dreams always showed me something that would happen.”
“And now you dreamed your funeral?”
“No. I dreamed yours.”
The chain between them gave a small metallic tremor.
Owen continued.
“You were inside the coffin. I was arranging the flowers. Every time I tried to change something, the dream changed me instead. I started forgetting my own life.”
He held up his hands.
Words had been written across his palms in black ink.
THE DREAM NEEDS A WITNESS.
“I thought that if I found the person dreaming from the other side, we might stop it.”
Elise remembered the whisper from inside the coffin.
You have forgotten the moth.
“Why did it tell me not to let you wake?”
Owen’s expression collapsed.
“Because I’m not awake now.”
The lights inside the flower shop went out.
For one impossible second, the front window reflected a chapel instead of the street. Faceless mourners filled the pews behind Elise.
Owen looked toward them.
“They found me.”
He pushed something through the gap beneath the door.
A white moth.
Its wings fluttered against the floor.
Elise stepped back.
When she looked up, Owen was gone.
The police found his car later that morning near an abandoned quarry. There was no sign of him.
Three days passed.
Then Catherine called.
Her brother had been found alive inside a locked storage room beneath the chapel of Saint Jude’s Hospital. He was unconscious and severely dehydrated.
The chapel matched Elise’s dream.
Owen never regained consciousness.
His funeral took place two weeks later.
There were forty-two mourners.
Elise supplied the flowers but refused to attend. She remained in her shop, surrounded by the scent of rosemary, watching the clock until the service ended.
At 2:16 p.m., someone knocked on the back door.
Three slow taps.
Elise did not answer.
The knocking continued.
Then Owen’s voice came through the wood.
“You forgot the moth.”
She stood motionless until sunset.
When she finally opened the door, no one was there.
A sympathy card lay on the step.
The handwriting was hers.
Inside, beneath her own name, someone had written tomorrow’s date.
Elise slept in the shop that night.
She dreamed of the chapel again.
This time, she was inside the coffin.
Through a narrow crack above her, she saw a woman arranging white lilies across the lid.
The woman had Elise’s face.
Forty-two faceless mourners watched from the pews.
A white moth settled on Elise’s chest.
Across its wings, new words appeared.
THERE ARE FORTY-FOUR NOW.
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