Written by Jonathan Wojcik

NIGHTMARE MENAGERIE 2017: PART FOUR

WITH GUEST ART BY DISEMBODIEDBUTTS

THE BATHTUB

I absolutely "get" this dream. Even without the blood, the void and the ominous soundtrack, a piece of a bathroom floating towards you would be completely terrifying in real life, and in a dream, you often believe wholeheartedly that everything you're experiencing is real.

But throw in the blood, the void, and the ominous music and this is an exceptionally terrifying floating piece of a bathroom.

THE SWAMP MONSTER

While not especially weird or scary, I somehow know exactly what is meant by "moving its arm like a power rangers villain." It's also entertaining that the monster is "real" in the dream but also a movie promotion; I'm pretty sure I've had the same thing happen in dreams of my own.

THE FROGFACE MONSTER

The repetitive actions and logic that go into playing a video game sure do drill deep into our brains; almost anyone who plays them seems to dream about them, and I can't count how many of my own dreams become some sort of video game setup, oftentimes a highly frustrating and nearly unwinnable one to boot.

Frogface really does sound like the kind of boss design you might have run across in the SNES and Genesis era, especially in Metroid, Castlevania or especially Contra. Horror games in particular loved putting unexpected human faces on monsters.

THE EASTER BUNNY

This is one of the most classically frightening dream monsters we've possibly ever seen, something I could see in an actual horror movie if actual horror movies had ever once been willing to get this imaginative. There's a certain sort of quasi-sense to the details of a dream monster that stick out without feeling like the kind of thing anyone would consciously, deliberately come up with.

I'm glad Ditto won, but I'm disappointed those GHASTLY Rugrats got away once again.

PABLO

Here's another dream with a flawless kind of story progression that would very easily translate into a short horror story. I love the idea of a grungy music fan monster who probably invariably causes a violent riot over a noise disturbance, possibly wandering from town to town, city to city, the incident always forgotten like it never happened...except to those very few who ran away.

...Who maybe only remember the whole thing as a funny dream they had?

MR. FIDDLY

Short and sweet, calling to mind the horrible likes of Pob and Noseybonk from real-world British television. Long, extending noses seem to be another theme that comes back again and again in people's nightmares, as if we were all collectively disturbed as hell by entirely the wrong parts of Pinocchio.

Being totally ignored by adults, regardless of how dire the situation, was also pretty prevalent throughout my own childhood nightmares. I guess that's just always going to be a major thing in the mind of a child, since adults never seem to care about the same things you care about, and will just tune you out when they aren't interested in what you have to say. We all know, on some level, that this could go horribly awry some day, when a monster comes out of the TV to get us with its nose or something, and boy would they be sorry then!