Written by Jonathan Wojcik

NIGHTMARE MENAGERIE 2017: PART FIVE

WITH GUEST ART BY Biomechanicalmush!

THE CLOUD

We talked about the cloud and the sheer narrative excellence of this dream earlier, but I think our artist did a vastly better job than I did, and has the vintage cartoon style down about as well as anyone possibly can, which suits The Cloud perfect!

BLINKY BLUNK

We learned weeks ago what was "writing" all known dreams - and possibly our waking reality, too - so it's nice to meet the cheeky little weirdo who announces them, and I like how harmless he turns out to be even if he's got a fairly ominous job to do. Hiding from an increasingly loud throbbing and only knowing that it's "THE BLINKY BLUNK!" sounds just nerve-wracking, but doesn't feel as bad once you know it's just some sort of weird, escaped animal...I guess.

EDDY

Another with a "chase" that sounds pretty heart-pounding. Eddy's aesthetics combined with his voice are marvelously fun for a dream villain, and I know all too well these dreams with a vague, uncertain threat you somehow know is truly horrible.

WHEEZY

I. LOVE. WHEEZY. I would read an entire series of horror tales in which this bizarre, coughing lightbulb gremlin invades classic cartoons and changes their course for the darker and more surreal. There's something almost indescribably scary to me about the thought of Bugs Bunny making his typical jokes as he suffers something beyond any obvious rhyme or reason, and Wheezy himself is such an adorable sounding thing just bizarre enough that I could almost believe it as a retro cartoon character. It feels almost like he's an anthropomorphised version of something we just don't actually have in our timeline.

RICHARD

Finally, we have an entity from one of Biomechanicalmush's own dreams, which was explained thusly:

"Richard.APK was a dream I had a while ago (I included the actual documentation from my dream journal which has the exact date. It wasn’t a nightmare per-se, but it was a little spooky and involved a really interesting character.

It was during a point where I was recording a new dream almost every night, and I was very into documenting the things I saw, so much that my first priority once I entered dreamland was to try to remember as much as possible. In this dream I actually had my dream journal handy, and was waiting for something cool to happen. To pass the time I decided to play on my phone while I waited (my dream journal is on my phone.) It went on like this for a little bit, but while I was browsing tumblr a page opened on its own. It was all in spanish, so I had no idea what it said, so I closed out. However, it must have installed a virus onto my phone, because now everything on my phone was in spanish!

I was worried now. A common theme in my dreams is “haunted” computer viruses, I guess it stems from a fear I had as a young kid on the internet of strangers finding my location through hacking and then coming to get me.

I tried to get rid of the virus, but it was only getting worse. I noticed now that all image files were replaced with a file called "Richard.APK" (android file extention) which was a picture of a silly moon with a face. It was getting worse. It seemed that every time I opened a Richard.APK file it would infect more uninfected files.

Then the final payload kicked in. The Moon shown in Richard.APK manifested from my phone. He snatched it from my hands, and with a wink he ate the damn thing! He laughed a goofy laugh, and then turned into a guy and ran away. I remember distinctly shouting “son of a BITCH!” as he ate my phone and ran off. I tried chasing him but he was too fast. He had my phone now.

I later made the assumption that he had stolen my phone because of my dream journal, and that it was to directly sabotage with my efforts of recording what I saw in dreamland. Too bad when I woke up my phone was still there, you stupid idiot! Although I do remember having a lot more entries in my journal. Huh." ....So now, the only question is how THIS asshole fits into the hierarchy of the interconnected nightmare universe.