Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Nightmare Beings: Part One

A week ago, I asked people to share stories of their own nightmares with the promise that I may illustrate around a dozen of my favorites by the end of the month. With the page now approaching three hundred nightmare tales and counting, it's proving far too difficult to narrow down my favorites, so it looks like what we'll actually be doing is a series of these, five horrors at a time.

These are, of course, only my own approximations of these beings from their descriptions. They probably don't look a thing like what their original dreamers saw, but that's also a part of the fun, in a way. You told me the features that stuck out to you, the creepy things you remembered the most, and I filled in the rest.

Corky

I wasn't entirely sure what the "long, blubbery body" would look like, so unfortunately corky is looking a lot like a giant grubworm here. I'm glad that he turned out to be friendly, though. From the sound of it, Corky had everything in place to be a harrowing experience. Sometimes, a nightmare character is even friendly and still terrifying, but apparently not Corky. For some reason I feel like he would be voiced by Tom Kenny.

The Red Frog

It's interesting how many nightmares, including some of my own most memorable, actually involve watching television. Before the internet, it was all many of us had to do all day. It was more real than the real world. The Ring and Videodrome are among the few horror movies I can think of where surreal television imagery is focal to the story, and neither is as cool as a giant meaty red frog dragging itself out of the screen.

The Dancing Fish

Yes, I'm also doing dreams posted on last year's Halloween articles. My friend here has shared this story more than once over the past few years, and the dancing fish always felt like a counterpart to my Hit-me-hit-me-hit-me monster. Saturn has also illustrated it once before, and I still have that somewhere, so I can't say my take on it isn't just directly influenced by the official version.

This dream has a wonderfully Lovecraftian feel, in the proper sense of the term, though the freaky, dancing, veiled fish is frankly scarier than anything he ever came up with, barring maybe the albino penguins.

"Kill the Cook"

I'm sure what I gleaned from this description is nowhere near as grotesque as it must have actually been. I didn't even have room for both the apron and putting the oven in its actual chest. I'm presuming in the dream its torso was ludicrously long. That apron is my favorite detail, though. Why would the cook itself wear "kill the cook?" Maybe it's tired of being a cook. Maybe it's been a cook far, far, far, far too long. It's so tired.

Nightmare Bram

I watched "The Elephant Show" as a child. I know who Bram is. He was just a middle aged, bald man. The description of this dream has haunted me since it was posted during 2013's Halloween season. This is by far one of the most chilling and upsetting scenarios I have ever heard and there's no possible way for a cartoon drawing to live up to what it makes me see and hear in my head. Jesus.

I'll end our first round on this note, so you can really dwell on the visual of a grown man tickling children with his diseased facial growths, but feel free to post nightmares of your own in the original topic, or here if you're so inclined. Any entity that catches my imagination - or just freaks me the hell out - stands a chance of getting featured and drawn!

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