Written by Jonathan Wojcik
NIGHTMARE MENAGERIE 2019, PART II
Meat Dancer
Posted by Shakara:
"The dream started up in a secondary school, with a wide drama hall filled to the brim with expectant audience members. All of them parents, and, weirdly, all in pitch black suits and white shirts. Even the women wore suits. Music began to play, and I snapped to attention to find myself on the stage, dressed in a feathery powder-blue ballerina dress, shoes, ribbons- the whole shebang.
Every other girl was dressed in pale red, and they began to dance as music emanated from an unseen source. I followed suit, and soon realised I wasn't dancing in the correct order. I kept spinning for too long, I almost lost balance, and I simply couldn't get en pointe. Throughout it all, the audience just sat in silence, staring. Yet, they weren't the object of fear here.
Quietly, too quiet for me to hear correctly, the girls began discussing they should bring out another girl. 'That girl'. I thought they meant another classmate or even a music teacher. ... The other girl came on stage, not by walking nor pirouetting, but they simply blinked into existence.
They were... not a girl. The dancer was a sculpture made of hunks of meat, made to look like a girl. Massive slabs of beef were sewn together to resemble arms, legs, and a giant, carved sirloin joint for the head. Strips of flayed bacon rashers were stapled to the bottom of the torso to resemble a skirt. Slowly, it moved around as if it were being carried on an invisible Roomba, rocking back and forth as if to try and 'dance', it only knowing the basic concept of the act. I couldn't do anything. I was looking at the girls and audience, trying to find out if they were seeing the same things I was. I just kept on dancing... Finally, the dance came to an end, and I lost balance completely, falling onto the 'girl', breaking apart the meat sculpture. I sat up quickly, only to find my dress was slowly turning red and leathery. It had become meat.
"Looks like you're the new girl, then." A voice at the back of my head said. Either the other girls or the dress, I know not. The dream ended with my dress slowly unfurling into lengths of raw meat, twitching languidly. "
"The dream started up in a secondary school, with a wide drama hall filled to the brim with expectant audience members. All of them parents, and, weirdly, all in pitch black suits and white shirts. Even the women wore suits. Music began to play, and I snapped to attention to find myself on the stage, dressed in a feathery powder-blue ballerina dress, shoes, ribbons- the whole shebang.
Every other girl was dressed in pale red, and they began to dance as music emanated from an unseen source. I followed suit, and soon realised I wasn't dancing in the correct order. I kept spinning for too long, I almost lost balance, and I simply couldn't get en pointe. Throughout it all, the audience just sat in silence, staring. Yet, they weren't the object of fear here.
Quietly, too quiet for me to hear correctly, the girls began discussing they should bring out another girl. 'That girl'. I thought they meant another classmate or even a music teacher. ... The other girl came on stage, not by walking nor pirouetting, but they simply blinked into existence.
They were... not a girl. The dancer was a sculpture made of hunks of meat, made to look like a girl. Massive slabs of beef were sewn together to resemble arms, legs, and a giant, carved sirloin joint for the head. Strips of flayed bacon rashers were stapled to the bottom of the torso to resemble a skirt. Slowly, it moved around as if it were being carried on an invisible Roomba, rocking back and forth as if to try and 'dance', it only knowing the basic concept of the act. I couldn't do anything. I was looking at the girls and audience, trying to find out if they were seeing the same things I was. I just kept on dancing... Finally, the dance came to an end, and I lost balance completely, falling onto the 'girl', breaking apart the meat sculpture. I sat up quickly, only to find my dress was slowly turning red and leathery. It had become meat.
"Looks like you're the new girl, then." A voice at the back of my head said. Either the other girls or the dress, I know not. The dream ended with my dress slowly unfurling into lengths of raw meat, twitching languidly. "
I'm probably being fairly liberal with this one's description, and I know it said nothing about frog leg fingers but I couldn't resist throwing some different kinds of meat in there. The most fascinating and alarming part of this being is how, if destroyed, someone else almost immediately seems to take its place.
The Slug from the Boiler Room
Posted by Thomas Worden:
" on the spot i just remembered i had a dream ages ago where i was wandering through my old high school except wrong. sea-green-tile hallways stretching far too long, maintenance closet doors four six above the floor, redundant mazes of barren offices and empty classrooms, haphazard pile of identical vending machines. suddenly i was being hunted by a large "slug from the boiler room" which was essentially an over-stuffed greasy trash bag covered in cartoon-frankenstein sutures and stitches. it slithered around, kind of amorphous blob-like but still basically "slug"-like, ripping open in spots under its own bulk. looking back i saw that it was filled with mutilated Muppet-parts - just clumps of stuffing and felt scraps, colorful arms, ball-noses, ping pong eyeballs, triangle flap-mouths, etc. of stock Sesame Street characters and the like. lights were off except in isolated spots so i couldn't see it coming usually, but i could hear it. it made a vaugely electrical "humming" sound, a monotonous sort of lightbulb/generator whirr which i knew to be it's attempts to "smell" me like a bloodhound. as i'm trying to evade this "slug", i also notice what i labeled the "tv static men" huddled in the corners trying to say in my peripheral vision. they were like the fuzzy snowfall signals you get condensed into man-shape, dressed in shabby business casual, loud and kitschy ties w/ wrinkled dress polos and khakis. they clung to the dark corners of the ceiling and walls like frightened squirrels. they seemed just as terrified of the slug as i was.
The dream dissolved into nonsense involving parachuting into Switzerland but the slug was flying the plane. "
" on the spot i just remembered i had a dream ages ago where i was wandering through my old high school except wrong. sea-green-tile hallways stretching far too long, maintenance closet doors four six above the floor, redundant mazes of barren offices and empty classrooms, haphazard pile of identical vending machines. suddenly i was being hunted by a large "slug from the boiler room" which was essentially an over-stuffed greasy trash bag covered in cartoon-frankenstein sutures and stitches. it slithered around, kind of amorphous blob-like but still basically "slug"-like, ripping open in spots under its own bulk. looking back i saw that it was filled with mutilated Muppet-parts - just clumps of stuffing and felt scraps, colorful arms, ball-noses, ping pong eyeballs, triangle flap-mouths, etc. of stock Sesame Street characters and the like. lights were off except in isolated spots so i couldn't see it coming usually, but i could hear it. it made a vaugely electrical "humming" sound, a monotonous sort of lightbulb/generator whirr which i knew to be it's attempts to "smell" me like a bloodhound. as i'm trying to evade this "slug", i also notice what i labeled the "tv static men" huddled in the corners trying to say in my peripheral vision. they were like the fuzzy snowfall signals you get condensed into man-shape, dressed in shabby business casual, loud and kitschy ties w/ wrinkled dress polos and khakis. they clung to the dark corners of the ceiling and walls like frightened squirrels. they seemed just as terrified of the slug as i was.
The dream dissolved into nonsense involving parachuting into Switzerland but the slug was flying the plane. "
The stitched-together trash bag slug sounds cool enough, but being stuffed full of puppet kibble is just the inexplicable twist that really sells it as a dream-creature. What happens to someone caught and eaten by the slug, anyway? Dissolved into more puppet fluff? The TV Static men also sound lovable, and I'm left wondering what sort of connection the two could possibly have.
Angel's Idol
Posted by Calaveracarnival:
"My friends and I were visiting a town on the coast, because there was some festival we wanted to go to. The whole place was decked out in decorations, with rows of colorful little flags hung over all of the streets. I noticed a candy shop that was selling special treats for the festival, and I went to check out what they had. I thought my friends were going too, but when I turned to see what they thought about this ‘festival candy’ (it was a bit odd looking, like taffy pulled into the shape of sea urchins). I realized they’d wandered off without me while I was distracted by the candy shop. I figured I had to go find them before they got too far, especially since one of them actually knew this town and was excited for this festival. I asked a person wearing a huge striped hat whether they’d seen my friends, but they just asked “are you ready? are you ready ready??” over and over so I left. I could hear music a few streets over, so I started heading that way, figuring that’s where the festivities were.
But when I crossed the street, an old man draped in white robes and neon feather boas tapped me on the shoulder and told me, in a very polite tone of voice. “The angel’s idol wants to see you”. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked if he’d seen my friends, and he just pointed upwards, behind me. So I turned to look, and I could see something up in the air, between two tall buildings. I couldn’t make it out very well, but it looked like it was ‘swimming’ through the air instead of flying, with some long appendages moving like the arms of a swimming feather star. It was coming rapidly towards me, and the old man started saying the same thing as hat guy “are you ready? are you ready ready??”, which at this point unsettled me so I walked away quickly.
I kept looking behind me, and the thing slowly ‘swam’ closer and closer. It seemed like anything near it would get almost washed-out looking, with dark colors muting and light colors becoming even paler. A few times there would be buildings between it and me, and that would cause the buildings to become sort of transparent, so it was still visible. The transparency went away when it wasn’t behind them anymore, but the washing-out effect didn’t. The old guy, who I guess had also started following me, turned to it when it was closer to the ground, and when it touched down the old guy and the crowd around him got washed-out too. I noticed that they were all smiling when it did that, and kept smiling even though they stopped moving after it got near them.
Now that it was closer, it was clearer what I was looking at. The thing was like a person made of polished driftwood, with no arms or legs, just little rounded nubs at its shoulders and hips. Its face was totally blank, just a whorl of polished wood. It had more than a dozen long feathery appendages, similar to the arms of a feather star (thus the similar movement I thought) emerging from an almost-but-not-quite symmetrical series of holes in its back, with a couple coming out near the nubs at its shoulders. At the end of each of these feathery wing-tentacles was a dextrous, almost delicate-looking hand. At its ‘waist’ were tied three lilac ribbons, with scrawly writing on them. It came towards me, washing out more of the crowd on the street (who seemed to actively want this to happen to them), and I rounded a corner to try to put more distance between us, which of course meant it was still visible through the buildings.
I found a person on this next street who I thought was one of my friends, but turned out to be just a similar-looking stranger wearing bright red mittens. I told him I was being followed by the angel’s idol, and he smiled and gave a similar speech to the other townspeople “are you ready? the way through is here! are you ready??” and when I turned around the angel’s idol was like ten feet away, ‘swimming’ towards me. The space of washed-out light was already around me, and the guy with the mittens was smiling like a crazy person as the dark colors drained out of him and he stopped moving. At this point I decided that being ‘caught’ was a good thing, and I leaned into it when the angel’s idol hugged me to it with four of its feathery arms. I had the overwhelming sensation of being made of fuzzy warmth, with a terrifying cold pressure on top of me. It was honestly not dissimilar to the early feelings of sleep paralysis, but somehow by ‘giving in’ to it, it was almost pleasant in a weird way? As the angel’s idol carried me away from the city, towards the sea, the dream faded into the light of the late morning. "
"My friends and I were visiting a town on the coast, because there was some festival we wanted to go to. The whole place was decked out in decorations, with rows of colorful little flags hung over all of the streets. I noticed a candy shop that was selling special treats for the festival, and I went to check out what they had. I thought my friends were going too, but when I turned to see what they thought about this ‘festival candy’ (it was a bit odd looking, like taffy pulled into the shape of sea urchins). I realized they’d wandered off without me while I was distracted by the candy shop. I figured I had to go find them before they got too far, especially since one of them actually knew this town and was excited for this festival. I asked a person wearing a huge striped hat whether they’d seen my friends, but they just asked “are you ready? are you ready ready??” over and over so I left. I could hear music a few streets over, so I started heading that way, figuring that’s where the festivities were.
But when I crossed the street, an old man draped in white robes and neon feather boas tapped me on the shoulder and told me, in a very polite tone of voice. “The angel’s idol wants to see you”. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked if he’d seen my friends, and he just pointed upwards, behind me. So I turned to look, and I could see something up in the air, between two tall buildings. I couldn’t make it out very well, but it looked like it was ‘swimming’ through the air instead of flying, with some long appendages moving like the arms of a swimming feather star. It was coming rapidly towards me, and the old man started saying the same thing as hat guy “are you ready? are you ready ready??”, which at this point unsettled me so I walked away quickly.
I kept looking behind me, and the thing slowly ‘swam’ closer and closer. It seemed like anything near it would get almost washed-out looking, with dark colors muting and light colors becoming even paler. A few times there would be buildings between it and me, and that would cause the buildings to become sort of transparent, so it was still visible. The transparency went away when it wasn’t behind them anymore, but the washing-out effect didn’t. The old guy, who I guess had also started following me, turned to it when it was closer to the ground, and when it touched down the old guy and the crowd around him got washed-out too. I noticed that they were all smiling when it did that, and kept smiling even though they stopped moving after it got near them.
Now that it was closer, it was clearer what I was looking at. The thing was like a person made of polished driftwood, with no arms or legs, just little rounded nubs at its shoulders and hips. Its face was totally blank, just a whorl of polished wood. It had more than a dozen long feathery appendages, similar to the arms of a feather star (thus the similar movement I thought) emerging from an almost-but-not-quite symmetrical series of holes in its back, with a couple coming out near the nubs at its shoulders. At the end of each of these feathery wing-tentacles was a dextrous, almost delicate-looking hand. At its ‘waist’ were tied three lilac ribbons, with scrawly writing on them. It came towards me, washing out more of the crowd on the street (who seemed to actively want this to happen to them), and I rounded a corner to try to put more distance between us, which of course meant it was still visible through the buildings.
I found a person on this next street who I thought was one of my friends, but turned out to be just a similar-looking stranger wearing bright red mittens. I told him I was being followed by the angel’s idol, and he smiled and gave a similar speech to the other townspeople “are you ready? the way through is here! are you ready??” and when I turned around the angel’s idol was like ten feet away, ‘swimming’ towards me. The space of washed-out light was already around me, and the guy with the mittens was smiling like a crazy person as the dark colors drained out of him and he stopped moving. At this point I decided that being ‘caught’ was a good thing, and I leaned into it when the angel’s idol hugged me to it with four of its feathery arms. I had the overwhelming sensation of being made of fuzzy warmth, with a terrifying cold pressure on top of me. It was honestly not dissimilar to the early feelings of sleep paralysis, but somehow by ‘giving in’ to it, it was almost pleasant in a weird way? As the angel’s idol carried me away from the city, towards the sea, the dream faded into the light of the late morning. "
This is a pretty amazing one; it has a darkly magical, apocalyptic feel to it, the entity has a memorable design and the effect it has is especially striking. Not knowing why, or what it all really means, only adds to the sense of something greater and more cosmic at work than humans can ever begin to understand.
Francine
Posted by Madhighlander:
"This is just a single image, a sort of 'snapshot' or 'flash' dream. It took place in a dimly lit, empty basement. In the corner sat a large man (I hesitate to say 'muscular' because he wasn't as defined as you'd see in a bodybuilder - more of a functional muscle like you see in a lot of wrestlers) with greyish skin, wearing a dirty white muscle shirt and faded brown corduroy pants. He was sitting in the fetal position facing into the corner.
The exception to all of the above descriptors was the helium-filled shiny silver mylar balloon that sprouted on a string from the space where his head should have been. On the side of this balloon facing me was an image of the head of either Francine from American Dad or Beth from Rick and Morty, albeit drawn in a classic Disney/Fleischer style (Their appearances are close enough that in the different style I honestly couldn't tell which one it was, though I err on the side of Francine). Exactly the style that inspired Bendy and the Ink Machine, with the black-and-white and the pac-man eyes. Her expression was a broad grin, similar to the :D emoticon.
That's all that dream was; I went to sleep, saw that image, and immediately woke up. "
"This is just a single image, a sort of 'snapshot' or 'flash' dream. It took place in a dimly lit, empty basement. In the corner sat a large man (I hesitate to say 'muscular' because he wasn't as defined as you'd see in a bodybuilder - more of a functional muscle like you see in a lot of wrestlers) with greyish skin, wearing a dirty white muscle shirt and faded brown corduroy pants. He was sitting in the fetal position facing into the corner.
The exception to all of the above descriptors was the helium-filled shiny silver mylar balloon that sprouted on a string from the space where his head should have been. On the side of this balloon facing me was an image of the head of either Francine from American Dad or Beth from Rick and Morty, albeit drawn in a classic Disney/Fleischer style (Their appearances are close enough that in the different style I honestly couldn't tell which one it was, though I err on the side of Francine). Exactly the style that inspired Bendy and the Ink Machine, with the black-and-white and the pac-man eyes. Her expression was a broad grin, similar to the :D emoticon.
That's all that dream was; I went to sleep, saw that image, and immediately woke up. "
Oh jeez...buddy...come on...it's okay....it's not that bad......there's....there's worse heads to have...honest. I'm sure.
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