Written by Jonathan Wojcik
NIGHTMARE BEINGS 2016: Part IV
With Artwork by Biomechanicalmush!
Monsters and villains from your creepiest dreams!THE FLY MAN
I realize I just said that any answers to the nature of The Fly Man would kill the mystery, but if I had to speculate, he's probably something sustained by flies rather than some sort of fly or insect creature himself. I want to say it's not as simple as him "eating" flies, though. Maybe he needs the particular sound of a particular kind of fly's buzzing. Maybe that's what nourishes his precious neck giblets.
THE SOOT MAN
The soot-puffing bogeyman is just a fascinating, incredibly original concept, though what strikes me first about this dream is a very familiar setup. As an incredibly fearful child with an overactive imagination at the height of the "stranger danger" craze, I often truly believed I had just narrowly evaded kidnapping or murder in the middle of so much as a department store while my mother casually chatted with a cashier or an old friend. Night after night, my dreams would become exaggerations of these already imagined scenarios, my parents laughing with each other or calmly discussing errands while a savage monster chased me around the very same room.
That the Soot Man simply sickens his victims with his own sooty breath, apparently for life, is a level of horror few of these dreams ever approached.
THE RED WORLD
You can probably see why this is one of my favorite artists I'm acquainted with; I've always loved this kind of cartoon anatomy, and it looks especially great juxtaposed with just-detailed-enough horror.
Short as it is, this is also one of my instant favorite nightmare tales. It doesn't really need a "monster" to be terrifying, or even an immediate threat to the narrator; the world itself is something monstrous by its very existence.
MR. OOGLE
I thought the Brown Flyer was the most popular monster this year, but several people have already drawn or want to draw Mr. Oogle. He could almost constitute a gallery of his own! Every interpretation I've been sent is horrific in its own distinct fashion, and it's easy to see why he's such a hit. This is one of the most frightening beings we've heard of in this feature, from the girl who seems to be a part of Mr. Oogle's whole "trap" to the way he lies on a concrete floor mumbling and "cooing."
MORE HALLOWEEN FEATURES:
