FictionPress.com - let the words flow| FictionPress.com - let the words flow |
| Home Just In Communities Forums Beta Readers Dictionary Search | Login Register Extras |
Author's Note: I'm attempting to write 40,000 words this July, and Nightmare is thus going to make little to now sense at times; I'm more worried about quantity than quality. Please suggest ideas to improve the story, but no editing will take place until July is finished. Enjoy!
Nightmare
There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Ok, there was ground and air (or so Morton McCallum assumed; he was lying on something hard, and seemed to be having no trouble breathing), but other than that, there was nothing.
Looking to one side, Morton could see a vast reddish plain. Ok… The same could be said of the area to his right. Sitting up, Morton could see the same rusty field in front of him. He turned around to see if it continued behind him and-
“Oh!” Morton scurried away from the very large dog behind him. No dog should be that tall! Standing, its head would probably be as high as his, and Morton wasn’t that short!
Morton had disliked dogs ever since he was a young boy, runty and weak. Therefore, when the dog stood up and trotted over to him, Morton yelped and nearly had a heart attack.
“Look, Dog, I don’t like you,” Morton informed it, his voice shaking. “So maybe you could go away and leave me alone?” In response, the dog put its head in Morton’s lap and promptly fell asleep. Morton shrieked again.
“Whatsa matter?” a laughing voice asked. “Aren’t ya used t’ this?” Morton turned to look at his companion, who had not been there before! The man was tall, muscular, and Morton supposed women would find the man attractive.
“Who are you?” Morton demanded, feeling upset and confused. “What do you want? Where am I?”
“Sad, the new one is,” said a sing-song voice.
“Agreed, agree, a greed agreed,” responded another, equally insane voice. A moment later, two strange jesters leapt into view. Each wore a black and white bodysuit, hat, gloves, and boots. Around one’s eyes was a clean onyx bandage, and around the other’s was a stark white bandage from which blood dripped in a steady stream. Their skin was a pearly grey, making Morton wonder how the white-bandaged one could have red blood. It didn’t make sense.
“Unity, Severance, stop it!” the man admonished. “You’re scarin’ the newbie! I’m Vanna Thuy, by the way,” he added, turning to Morton. “I don’t want anything in particular, except maybe to be away from these two bozos, and I can’t really say where we are. What’s yer name?”
“I am Morton McCallum, Bank Manager,” Morton responded stiffly, dislodging himself with great difficulty from the oversized dog. “Is this yours?” he added, pointing to the canine.
“Nah. It’s yours.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Thuy, but I have never owned a dog.”
“Never owned a puppy-dog?” the black-bandaged jester asked.
“A dog to bite, to rip, to rend,” whispered the other.
“He knows not of this World of Fog.”
“A friend to rend, a rending friend.”
“I said shut up!” Vanna Thuy yelled. The two jesters merely chanted,
“Be quiet, shut up, no noise he said.”
“Shut your mouths, he cries.”
“Knowledge is not in this new one’s head.”
“I’ll kill. I’ll cry. I’ll cry and die.”
Morton decided he liked the non-bleeding one better. It wasn’t talking about death.
“Uh… Yeah. So, Mort- d’ya mind if I call ya Mort?”
“Yes,” Morton responded icily.
“…Right. So anyway, uh… What’s the last thing you remember? Before you woke up here?”
“Um…” Morton thought back…
“I have no idea,” Morton admitted. “Why?”
“If it helps, yer in a coma.”
“WHAT?!”
“Yer in a coma. That’s what this place is. Everyone here’s in a coma. Well, everyone that’s real. These two bozos are nightmares.”
“What?” Morton was rather confused, to say the least. Vanna Thuy sighed.
“This could take a while. Sit down.” Morton obeyed. “Now, listen up, and I’m gonna do my best to explain.
“So, you know what a nightmare is, right? ‘Course ya do. A bad dream. Now, there’s gotta be a place for these bad dreams to originate. That’s this place. An’ people like you ‘n me, people in comas, we come to this place. So these two bozos, they’re creepy clowns, ‘cause I was afraid of creepy clowns, back when I wasn’t all comatose an’ all. An’ I’m bettin’ yer afraid o’ dogs, since this dog here showed up with you.”
“I see… No, I don’t. This is ridiculous! What is this nonsense?” Morton stood up. “Who put you up to this? Was it Kaitlin Newport? She never liked me. She’s always going on about how I take life to seriously. Where am I?” Vanna Thuy smiled slightly as he stood up.
“You’ll believe me eventually. Everybody does. An’ we got all the time in the world. If there is a world. It’s hard to tell, ‘round here. No time, no space, just… here. This plain. Kinda crazy, really; I mean, one moment yer just sittin’ there, thinkin’, next moment yer being attacked by Night Mares or Fears or somethin’.”
“Mr. Thuy, you ought to seek professional help; you are clearly not in your right mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to.” Pulling out his schedule, Morton walked off, leaving Vanna Thuy and the two jesters behind. The dog followed, but Morton decided to ignore it, as the creature would no doubt grow bored and leave him alone.
Morton walked for a while, carefully making arrangement for the next few days, but finally he had to stop, for two reasons. One, he had been walking for a very long time and the end was not in sight, and two, as a banker, he was not in very good physical condition, but he was not tired; something was clearly wrong there. Looking around, Morton again surveyed the rust-coloured plain. The only things he could see were himself and the stupid dog, which had not left. At least that psychotic man and his equally senseless companions were gone.
“Hmm… Dog, go away,” Morton ordered. The dog ignored him. Glancing down at his watch, Morton was annoyed to discover it had stopped working at 5:47. About the time he’d been walking across the parking lot… Dismissing it as coincidence, Morton tried tapping it, to see if perhaps something had merely gotten jammed.
“It won’t work. I told ya, time doesn’t exist here.” Morton jumped. It was that blasted Vanna Thuy, his two jester friends in tow.
“What on Earth? You, Mr. Thuy, were not there a moment ago.”
“Well, yeah,” Vanna Thuy replied, as if it were obvious. “There’s not such thing as space here, either, remember?”
“Space and time, time for space.”
“The room to live and lie.”
“Two things not in this placeless place.”
“The time is now; lie down and die.”
“For the last time, SHUT YER FRICKIN’ MOUTHS!” Vanna Thuy roared. Turning to Morton, he added, “Sorry ‘bout that. Morons. The nice one is Unity, by the way, and the one that’s obsessed with death is severance.” The two clowns bowed mockingly.
“A pleasure to meet, a pleasure to greet.”
“I greet you with feelings same.”
“To know us is no easy feat.”
“To know the same, the same to maim.”
“A pleasure to meet you?” Morton said hesitantly. Foolish jesters. “So, uh… Mr. Thuy-”
“Vanna. Just Vanna,” interrupted the man.
“Right. Vanna, where am I?”
“I already told ya, didn’t I? But no, ya didn’t believe me. We’re in the place where nightmares form.” Morton opened his mouth to say more, but a loud wailing sound suddenly filled the area.
“What on Earth?”
“Dammit! It would appear Grief has decided to join us.”
“Who?” Vanna pointed to a man who had suddenly appeared nearby.
The man was wearing a Victorian suit, complete with ruffled down the front of his shirt. He was deathly pale, and would probably be about six feet tall, if his head was attached. The fact that it wasn’t, and that it was dripping copious amounts of blood was bad enough, but to make matters worse, the head was wailing, and the man was walking.
“What on Earth?” Morton repeated. Vanna sighed.
“Grief. He’s one of the frequent nightmares. So frequent, he gets to live here when people aren’t dreaming of him. A lovely chap, I’m sure, if he’d ever stop wailin’.” Sighing again, Vanna grabbed Morton’s arm. “Come on. You really don’t want t’ be sprayed by his blood. Not pleasant. I think it’s acidic.”
“So… How long have you been here?” Morton asked.
“Forever. No time at all. There’s no such thing as time, remember?”
“Right. And, uh, you say you’re in a coma?”
“Yep.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?” Vanna stretched out on the ground before replying.
“I’ve never really done anything with myself, ya know? Dropped out of school, working in a fast food joint for most of my life, never married or had kids and the whole bit… I’m a people-person, but not the brainy type. I guess yer the brainy type. So anyway, I had last shift at work, an’ was sweepin’, since no one was around, and a group of guys that looked a lot like me walked in. They were laughin’ an’ jokin’, and then one said somethin’ another didn’t like, and next moment, they were fightin’. I asked them to step outside or I’d call the cops, an’ they didn’t, so I walked towards the phone, an’ one of ‘em tackled me, and knocked me against the counter. An’ then I was wakin’ up with blood drippin’ in my eye, and Severance’s face above mine.”
“That’s… awful,” Morton said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say nothin’,” Vanna advised. “I’ve gotten over it by now. I imagine it’s bin a while since I went into th’ coma. What year was it, when you went in?”
“2005.”
“Yeah… It happened in 1998. Figures. At least I’m just in a coma. I could be dead. We could both be dead. I imagine Severance’d be happy.”
“Indeed. So… What do we do all day… night… whatever it is?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing? But what do you do?”
“Nothin’. Wander around, try not to get killed.”
“But… How can ya get killed by a nightmare? And why do you know so much about this place?”
“When I first arrived there was this guy, Mat, an’ he told me a couple things. Kept sayin’, “Don’t die”. I didn’t really believe ‘im. Then one day these Fears come, and they get him, and he up and vanishes. Dead, ya know? So I figure we can die here.”
“Oh.”
“’Course, we can also get out. Mat said somethin’ ‘bout some place somewhere where we get there, and touch some sort of crazy old artefact, and we get to return to our bodies and aren’t in a coma anymore. Crazy though, eh? I’m sorta hopin’ to run into it one day. I’d like to get outta here. Maybe finish school, go to university, get a real job… ‘Course, I’m probably way to old for all that.” Shrugging, Vanna got up. “So, d’you wanna wander a bit? Unless you can think of something better to do.”
“Nothing at all.” Glancing over at the dog- his dog-, Morton asked, “Does it have a name?”
“Not that I know, but knowin’ this place, it’s probably somethin’ like ‘Dog’.”
“Alright… Come, Dog,” Morton ordered. Regrettably, Dog obeyed.
The two walked for a while, followed closely by Dog, Unity and Severance. Unity and Severance had lapsed into silence, and Dog hadn’t let out so much as a woof, but Morton did not feel inclined to speak. Vanna evidently didn’t fee like speaking, either. So the two walked in silence, until-
“Hello, Vanna Thuy, Morton McCallum,” a beautiful woman said, appearing so suddenly Morton jumped. “I hadn’t thought to see you two here.”
“Who are you?” Morton asked. The woman was stunning. Long, flowing black hair cascaded over creamy skin and a silky crimson dress. Her eyes were a brilliant blue that Morton could easily get lost in, and she smiled alluringly at Morton, causing him to blush.
“I am Seduce, Morton McCallum,” she replied.
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything, Morton McCallum.”
“Oh, be quiet, Temptress,” Vanna ordered. She raised an eye imperiously at him.
“And who are you to direct my actions, Vanna Thuy?”
“Order, direct, state and yell.”
“He threatens, yet never shall win.”
“Vanna should learn, yet still will he tell.”
“Begin, with sin, to kill my kin.”
“Shut up!” Vanna roared. Severance and Unity merely grinned. Turning furiously to Seduce, he added, “I can order anyone I damn well please, harpy!”
“Harpy? I?” She laughed, and Morton felt his knees grow week. “No, no, no, Vanna Thuy; I am no harpy. Harpies are not nearly as determined as I.” Smiling seductively at Morton, she added, “I shall leave for a time, to appease your companion, but if you ever leave him and are in need of company, remember me.” Then, with a toss of her raven’s wing hair, she was gone.
“Bloody harpy,” Vanna muttered.
“Hmm?” Morton was in shock. No one had looked at him like Seduce had since eighth grade, when…
“She’s after me, not you. She wants me to be jealous. She’s been after me ever since I got here. Bloody harpy.”
“Harpy, sharpy, must she harp thee?”
“She longs for you, desires.”
“Seduce she must, seduce must she.”
“She knows of what transpires.”
“Now that was very contrived,” Vanna informed Severance irritably. “You just wanted that to rhyme!”
“A time to rhyme, a rhyme of time-”
“SHUT UP!”
They walked. And walked. And walked some more. Morton thought he should be gasping for breath by now, but realized, upon reflection, that he wasn’t breathing at all. Apparently breathing was another thing that did not exist in this place.
The next person they saw was someone not unlike themselves. She was sitting there, accompanied by a small, blonde-haired child. Suddenly, a horrible screeching filled the air, like a thousand birds were attacking. A moment later, what looked like a thousand birds did attack. They picked the woman up, and carried her, screaming, a hundred feet above the surface. Then they dropped her. She screamed for several long moments, then hit the ground and vanished. A moment later, all was quiet, as the large birds had also disappeared.
“Those would be Fears,” Vanna told Morton. “Avoid them. They’re, well, scary.” Looking over at the girl, who had not disappeared, he asked, “D’ya wanna go see if the kid’s ok?” Morton nodded, although he really didn’t like children.
The girl looked to be about five or six. She was dressed in a pink frilly dress, and her blonde ringlets were done up in pigtails. She looked up at them with her huge blue eyes and asked innocently,
“Where do babies come from?”
Morton and Vanna both stumbled, surprised. Looking worriedly at each other, they carefully approached her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Vanna told the girl. “Was that your mother?”
“I don’t know,” the girl responded. “She might be. I didn’t exist before she came here. Does that make her my mother?”
“Uh…”
“I’m Discomfort,” the girl said suddenly, sticking out her hand. Vanna groaned. “I like you. Can I travel with you?”
“Maybe ya ought to travel with someone else…”
“Ok. I’ll travel with him.” Discomfort grabbed Morton’s hand. “Hello. I’m Discomfort. Who are you?”
“I am Morton McCallum, Bank Manager, and I dislike children,” Morton told her. She just shrugged and asked,
“Do you know where babies come from?”
“Uh… Discomfort, do you want to see Dog?” Morton asked her. Her name was making perfect sense to him.
“Dog? Who’s Dog? Is that Dog?” Without waiting for a reply, the child raced over to Dog, and busied herself with introductions.
“Hey, Morton,” Vanna said slowly.
“Yes?”
“If someone has a word-name, like Discomfort or Seduce, it means they’re a nightmare.” A long silence followed his words. Then-
“Shoot.”
And to top matters off-
“A laughing girl, discomfort and fear.”
“She laughs while they both cry.”
“Uncomfortable, though she looks like a dear.”
“She laughs while they both die, oh my!”
Day's Wordcount: 3053
Total Wordcount: 3053
