BOO-GLEECH

Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Nightmare Beings III

We're long overdue for five more of your horrible dream entities, though for this round, we have the first of at least a couple possible guest artists. Regular site reader Daisydice showed up itching to draw some of their own favorites, and I just had to feature art this good. It sure makes mine look like a pile of crap! Of course, so will the next super top secret mystery illustrator. (It's my wife, because she can make monsters look sincerely terrifying instead of the goofy-creepy I'm limited to.)

ORGAN GUY

This is the best one out of this bunch to start off with, because while the monster itself is hauntingly weird, it sounds like it's not such a bad guy. At least, the dream-world version of me didn't think so, despite the fact that its eyeballs are apparently stolen from human beings. I guess it's the fun kind of having your eyeballs stolen. Maybe you get to see some really wild stuff through them before he gives them back, good as new or possibly better.

ANTLER KID

Everything about this being is uniquely frightening. The glowing eyes in a tangle of horns and moss would be bad enough, but then it had to go and have an inoccuous human child body, skip after its victims in slow motion and silently play a flute with no mouth. This is one I could see almost more than any other of these monsters as the star of a successful horror franchise. How do you guys keep coming up with better things than Hollywood literally in your sleep?

TONGUE GOBLIN

The description of this guy is grotesque enough, but I didn't think he would be that distressing until Daisydice's drawing. All he does is talk to you and show you his gross tongues, but it's enough. If you're as awkward as I am you already don't really want a stranger chatting you up, and this fiend feels like an exaggerated manifestation of that very flavor of discomfort. A creature that manages to be obnoxious and nerve-wracking without doing anything necessarily threatening, other than getting all up in your face with its leering eyes and slobbering maw.

THE POOL WOMAN

I myself actually share a fairly common fear of deep, open water, and the very notion of anything adrift beneath me. It doesn't even have to be anything dangerous; I think I'd absolutely panic in the ocean with so much as a sweet, gentle bonnet shark or mola-mola floating beside me, maybe even a large and ominous enough clump of algae, so you can imagine the satisfying levels of dread I experience just thinking about the sight of this apparition gazing up from the bottom of a pool, and those round, staring, misplaced eyeballs easily double the chills.

BIRD FACE

Lasagnaface has had several of the most messed up dreams I've ever heard, but I think this might be my new favorite. Even without the hellish fate he inflicts upon his victims, this entity's surreal face alone would be memorably dreadful...and then there's the compelling nature of his immortality, that his status as a "legend" literally keeps him from dying, perhaps even creating and sustaining his form to begin with. We've seen that before in a few works, including the Candyman films and the anime Paranoia Agent, but this guy's a lot weirder than your usual myth-made-flesh.

Thank our guest illustrator again for bringing these five to life, and be amazed by the fact that they draw with only their fingers on an ipad's touch screen. Really. Seriously. It took me fifteen years of using a wacom tablet to get where I am and my drawings look like ARMPIT.

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