A Head Full of Nightmares

The boy ventured into the castle walls, the sky as grey as the skin of a whale. It looked like a beached whale at that, with various "scars" in the sky, bleeding red into the atmosphere. The cliffs spiraled around the castle, extending like spikes around it. It looked like it could collapse any moment with the insane wind speeds brushing against it, but the boy was not deterred.

He entered through the archway, made up of bricks holding themselves up in the standard brick archway pattern. They were held in with coagulated blood. It breathed slowly, the ground below him beating like a stolen heart. It felt sickly, the air. The inside of the castle was no better. The air was full of the dead.

He was aware he was dreaming, yet he had his doubts. How did he get here? He wondered and that's how he knew. But suppose he just forgot... these doubts were becoming more and more of a possibility for him. The forest that was his mind... it was no longer a steel trap he knew. The empty room he was in had only one lone object on the floor, a jacket with several pockets, black mist spewing out of them.

He walked towards the coat, curious. Suddenly he jumped as a face... well, a mouth onto something that could be a head, emerged, smiling towards him. Three arachnid legs spewed out from the jacket, joined by black tentacles. The castle breathed intensely, the ground beating up and down. Finally it stopped as a man-like thing stood up, wearing the jacket and possibly nothing more.

It smiled intensely. A look into it's teeth made the boy's head throb as if it was a bell. It extended a spiny hand, it's fingers like long spokes. The boy refused to touch it. The thing knew he was not getting a handshake, even as he urged the young boy to shake it. "Who are you?" uneasily asked the boy, knowing this could get very ugly at any minute, although by the looks of the coat, it already had.

"Oober Nightmarecoat." excitedly answered the man-creature. Oober sat a table that wasn't there when the boy came in. He pointed at an empty seat across from him. The boy decided to sit, against his better judgement. He should really be turning back, but who knows what this Oober Nightmarecoat guy would do...

"I'm not scared of you," said the boy, looking him straight into the mouth. He had a particular talent to hide his real emotions, looking more stoic than he really was, even if it tore him up inside. Oober didn't press further with it, instead sliding a plate of rats into view. "What is- what is that?" he asked, looking disgusted.

"I have no meaning to scare you, you filth pig-skinned human," saying "human" as if it were the most disgusting thing that he had ever seen or heard, having to heavily distort his voice just to say it. "I mean to share a meal, a favorite of mine. They call the rat-stack in the grotesque nation I'm from... they stab five rats on a kebab and boil them into the grease pit. The pit is absolute nightmarish, filled with ghosts of the cookers of the past..."

"Why would I want to eat something so disgusting, so inhumane?" he asked, seriously, genuinely wanting to know. He had to know why. It was eating him up inside.

"It's not for you." Oober stated simply. He dug a fork in, popping a deep-fried boil that oozed a black liquid down the rat-stack. He tossed the rat into his jaws, chewing with his mouth open, entrails spilling out into the floor, table and his coat.

The boy was relieved at least, but disgustedly looked on at the sloppy and gory eating. He couldn't look away, nothing was letting him. He wasn't in control and that scared him. He looked behind Oober to see a elk's hand on a stick, it's eyes being eaten by little white maggots. Attached by a string, a white mask hung off the top of it's head.

"Stop this nonsense." the boy said, the castle's walls silently creeping towards the two. He looked at the elk effigy, growing more and more disgusted, more uncomfortable. The ground opened up, crimson bubbles bursting out. He fell inside. All he saw was a blinding, neon red.

He attempted to swim out, assuming this was some kind of liquid. He was down below, he couldn't tell up or down as he was drowning. His eyes closed and opened into a garden. The sky was a blue night, the white stars glowing heavily next to the moon. Oober was drowning too, in the fountain in the middle of the garden. He didn't want to save Oober, but it didn't look like he had to. Oober stepped out of the fountain.

"My brother drowned in the sewers of Polyibus, you know? Ironic considering the rats that were pushing him below didn't... funny how their little lungs didn't while his infinite lungs did. They must have chained him up, tore him to pieces with little midget sharkies. The funny thing with the Polyibus... the Silverburg Peanut Factory dumps a SHIT-TON of radiation in there." Oober said, attempting to ease into a conversation that didn't exist.

"What do you want?" asked the boy, stepping back from the dripping Oober.

"To scrape your mind." said Oober, a sharp, twisted knife exploding from his spider-like arm. He stabbed the ground, scraping the brick garden floor as if it were wet paper. Something emerged from the ground with glowing blue eyes on dark blue stalks. It's mouth was nightmarish large, it's arms small but it's large legs easily strode towards the boy. It's jaw resembled chromosomes. "Ah... Morphine. You have the fear too, hmm?"

"N-NO!" cried the boy, throwing up his right arm. It was no use. It spewed a light blue liquid onto him, his body becoming numb. He felt something emerge from his chest, a pair of breasts that grew larger with every giving moment. His legs transformed into the hind legs of a zebra, with the black and white stripes becoming a dizzying array as Morphine continue to transform him. His arms became giant, insect-like wing in texture, but remaining the shape of a human's. He laid on the ground in complete and utter numb agony. He was no longer himself as he screamed with his new grass teeth.

"And now...-" Oober's voice trai-

The boy awoke in a cold sweat, glancing at his normal body. He was fine, it wasn't real. It wasn't real. He refused to swallow the hook, but subconsciously he already had.

A HEAD FULL OF NIGHTMARES

The End