Written by Jonathan Wojcik
NIGHTMARE MENAGERIE 2019, PART III:
GUEST ARTIST FALLINGFEATHER!
The Sloth Man
Posted by Boneless Skeleton:
" This was a nightmare I had a couple months ago. I remember I was just traversing this gas choked swamp of some sort and I had this feeling that something was behind me. So I turn and I see what I could best describe as a sloth. It looked more like a human that evolved to be a sloth but it was a human that never saw a sloth and only went off of description alone. It's fur was matted and seemingly crusty with filth and it's face was pretty creepy too. Two wide eyes with pin-prick sized pupils and a wide toothless smile. It didn't pursue me or anything, but it had this rusty bucket. In that bucket was a lot of rancid looking meat. It then started to shovel this meat into its still grinning mouth, not breaking its line of sight with me. That's all this thing did and that was the worst part. It didn't rip me apart or eat me, it just sat there and sort of....existed. "
" This was a nightmare I had a couple months ago. I remember I was just traversing this gas choked swamp of some sort and I had this feeling that something was behind me. So I turn and I see what I could best describe as a sloth. It looked more like a human that evolved to be a sloth but it was a human that never saw a sloth and only went off of description alone. It's fur was matted and seemingly crusty with filth and it's face was pretty creepy too. Two wide eyes with pin-prick sized pupils and a wide toothless smile. It didn't pursue me or anything, but it had this rusty bucket. In that bucket was a lot of rancid looking meat. It then started to shovel this meat into its still grinning mouth, not breaking its line of sight with me. That's all this thing did and that was the worst part. It didn't rip me apart or eat me, it just sat there and sort of....existed. "
The sloth man's back! I think of this one as a classic from recent years, and I like this take where the proportions are even more like those of a real sloth.
The Giraffe
Posted by Rusti:
" I've had this recurring nightmare for nearly 8 years, happening at least once a month but usually two or three times a week. The giraffe dream, as I have taken to calling it, begins as I walk on our local college's campus, across the quad, on a bright day. I go to what is supposed to be the music and arts building to find the sign replaced with the neatly engraved words "TEETH MUSEUM 1988." I walk in and it's a dimly lit museum featuring a mix of displays of human and animal teeth, large aquariums filled with ancient sea life, and classrooms. I always stop and look at a display featuring something labeled "George Washington TEETH STATUE," which is actually an orb of teeth embedded in flesh, about the size of a beach ball, floating listlessly in a glass case. It keeps bumping into the glass and making an awful scraping noise. I keep moving after a long while. As I keep going I go up to the second floor and start feeling watched and hear heavy, labored breathing. I feel like I'm late for something so I walk into a darkened classroom and past the desks to a couch near the back and I sit down. This is always a mistake, as when I do I am made aware of the source of the breathing and staring. A giraffe lays slumped and contorted in the corner, shuddering as it breathes, and I know it is in immense pain. After a moment it's neck snakes out and reveals a stretched out human head where the giraffe's should be, like if someone grabbed a clay person by the mouth and pulled, but flesh. It always lets out this horrible, pained screaming that forces me to clasp my hands over my ears and shut my eyes, waking me up in the process. "
" I've had this recurring nightmare for nearly 8 years, happening at least once a month but usually two or three times a week. The giraffe dream, as I have taken to calling it, begins as I walk on our local college's campus, across the quad, on a bright day. I go to what is supposed to be the music and arts building to find the sign replaced with the neatly engraved words "TEETH MUSEUM 1988." I walk in and it's a dimly lit museum featuring a mix of displays of human and animal teeth, large aquariums filled with ancient sea life, and classrooms. I always stop and look at a display featuring something labeled "George Washington TEETH STATUE," which is actually an orb of teeth embedded in flesh, about the size of a beach ball, floating listlessly in a glass case. It keeps bumping into the glass and making an awful scraping noise. I keep moving after a long while. As I keep going I go up to the second floor and start feeling watched and hear heavy, labored breathing. I feel like I'm late for something so I walk into a darkened classroom and past the desks to a couch near the back and I sit down. This is always a mistake, as when I do I am made aware of the source of the breathing and staring. A giraffe lays slumped and contorted in the corner, shuddering as it breathes, and I know it is in immense pain. After a moment it's neck snakes out and reveals a stretched out human head where the giraffe's should be, like if someone grabbed a clay person by the mouth and pulled, but flesh. It always lets out this horrible, pained screaming that forces me to clasp my hands over my ears and shut my eyes, waking me up in the process. "
Another alternate look at an established being, I find this interpretation of a "human face" on a giraffe head to be especially unsettling, like there's still part of a giraffe's skull under there...
DISCO YETI
Posted by Somnambulist:
"Off the top of my head, I can remember some of my weirder sleep paralysis demons. They certainly count as nightmare creatures. Usually I see dark snakelike hands slithering up to smother me or pluck my toes off one by one, but sometimes things get weird. One night, I couldn't sleep. I kept adjusting myself on my bed to try to get comfortable. After an hour or so of doing this I curled into a ball and closed my eyes as tight as possible. I breathed deep, counting each breath to try and trick my brain into dozing off. My breath stopped on the eighth count. My limbs froze in place, a weight pressed my body into the mattress.
A voice somewhere in my head said "Don't open your eyes, you know he's there."
I resisted the urge, but I did.
Directly in front of me was a neon pink strobing face floating through black space. It had vague gorilla-like features, with a heavy brow and a a wide fanged mouth, but wobbled and pixelated. It was 2d, but its concentric lines shifted like something seen through 3d glasses. Its hollow mouth and eyes were set in an anguished and infuriated expression. Hot pink neon lines radiated out from it, strobing against the dark in concentric circles. The Face was followed by an ungodly chiptune screech, like a thousand Gameboy Colors screaming out in agony. My whole body went pins and needles, tingling like an electric current under my skin. It was painful and frightening, but I remembered moving fingers can help dispel sleep paralysis. I wiggled my toes and the face disappeared. I didn't sleep well afterwards.
And that is the chronicle of the disco yeti. "
"Off the top of my head, I can remember some of my weirder sleep paralysis demons. They certainly count as nightmare creatures. Usually I see dark snakelike hands slithering up to smother me or pluck my toes off one by one, but sometimes things get weird. One night, I couldn't sleep. I kept adjusting myself on my bed to try to get comfortable. After an hour or so of doing this I curled into a ball and closed my eyes as tight as possible. I breathed deep, counting each breath to try and trick my brain into dozing off. My breath stopped on the eighth count. My limbs froze in place, a weight pressed my body into the mattress.
A voice somewhere in my head said "Don't open your eyes, you know he's there."
I resisted the urge, but I did.
Directly in front of me was a neon pink strobing face floating through black space. It had vague gorilla-like features, with a heavy brow and a a wide fanged mouth, but wobbled and pixelated. It was 2d, but its concentric lines shifted like something seen through 3d glasses. Its hollow mouth and eyes were set in an anguished and infuriated expression. Hot pink neon lines radiated out from it, strobing against the dark in concentric circles. The Face was followed by an ungodly chiptune screech, like a thousand Gameboy Colors screaming out in agony. My whole body went pins and needles, tingling like an electric current under my skin. It was painful and frightening, but I remembered moving fingers can help dispel sleep paralysis. I wiggled my toes and the face disappeared. I didn't sleep well afterwards.
And that is the chronicle of the disco yeti. "
This is one of the more absurd dream antagonists we've seen, and always reminds me of the dreams I have after playing video games for too long, where game-like logic takes over and I feel like I have to press "buttons" to "navigate" my own dream.
Posted by Ghost Apocalyptic:
" I had a dream on New Year's that I was middle aged, and had a son who was in the 20-somethings range. I apparently was convicted of murder a couple years ago, and had recently broke out of prison. I found my son was a crablike monster with a weird, stretched out and fleshy human face on his back, with eyestalks coming out of where his human face's eyes were supposed to be. He had hundreds of mismatched human arms instead of the normal set of crab legs... Apparently he had transmorgified himself into this form through deep-sea merfolk necromancy because he was disappointed in me. He stated that, like that was the normal thing to do when your parent was a murderer, then sent an army of crustaceans after me. I fought off maybe 100 giant isopods and other deep sea critters with knives or other sharp objects taped to them. When he realized I was more capable of fighting crabs than he realized, he put me in a box and threw me in the ocean. "
" I had a dream on New Year's that I was middle aged, and had a son who was in the 20-somethings range. I apparently was convicted of murder a couple years ago, and had recently broke out of prison. I found my son was a crablike monster with a weird, stretched out and fleshy human face on his back, with eyestalks coming out of where his human face's eyes were supposed to be. He had hundreds of mismatched human arms instead of the normal set of crab legs... Apparently he had transmorgified himself into this form through deep-sea merfolk necromancy because he was disappointed in me. He stated that, like that was the normal thing to do when your parent was a murderer, then sent an army of crustaceans after me. I fought off maybe 100 giant isopods and other deep sea critters with knives or other sharp objects taped to them. When he realized I was more capable of fighting crabs than he realized, he put me in a box and threw me in the ocean. "
A brand new one and among the most traditionally grotesque, monstrous beings shared in this feature, particularly the framing device of it being the dreamer's adult child.
The Motivator
Posted by Layla:
" This dream is one that I had back when I was just a little girl. I have a heart condition that I would later learn was pretty much inoperable, and I was going in for surgery to attempt to correct it the day after I had this dream. Obviously, I was fixated on it, and my anxiety was pretty much sky-high. I guess my fixation on the surgery is what caused me to come up with the Motivator, the creature in the dream. I remember that I named him only after I woke up, having called him “the man” in my dream, after a song that I had heard once- can’t remember which one.
In my dream, I was walking back home from school, like I normally did at the time, except a few things were off about my route. First off, it was nighttime. Second, everything had these weird black outlines around them- I couldn’t have told you what I thought these were like at the time, but, now that I’m older, I can tell you that everything was rendered somewhat like a Telltale game. Thirdly, there was some sort of weird, arhythmic tapping sound in the distance. Dream logic told me that this was the signature noise of a “weird man” following me. Oddly enough, I refrained from looking at him until the tail end of the dream. I was walking along so slowly it was like going through molasses, and, a couple of times, I ran into a hyperactive dog that didn’t have any eyes and wanted to bite me. It was only in the final quarter that I actually turned and looked at the Motivator. He was a huge, elongated, emaciated figure that looked like an unused design for some sort of evil Muppet, yes, but, compared to the rest of the dream, he was also in 2D, albeit in a weird, pointy style that was reminiscent of something by Tim Burton. I don’t quite remember what his bottom half was like, but I’m pretty sure he had more legs than is normal for a person. His arms didn’t look like they had any bones in them, and they were so long they touched the ground- he looked like a gibbon. There was this huge bulging thing covered in green lines on his chest. (I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be some sort of tumour.) He was wearing a hat, I’m 99% sure, because he had long, stringy black hair that came out from beneath SOMEthing, and his only visible facial feature was his mouth, which literally stretched from ear to absent ear. The tapping continued, getting faster and faster, as he started charging me like a bull. He reached out to grab me by the head- something I knew would “get” me. Then I woke up. "
" This dream is one that I had back when I was just a little girl. I have a heart condition that I would later learn was pretty much inoperable, and I was going in for surgery to attempt to correct it the day after I had this dream. Obviously, I was fixated on it, and my anxiety was pretty much sky-high. I guess my fixation on the surgery is what caused me to come up with the Motivator, the creature in the dream. I remember that I named him only after I woke up, having called him “the man” in my dream, after a song that I had heard once- can’t remember which one.
In my dream, I was walking back home from school, like I normally did at the time, except a few things were off about my route. First off, it was nighttime. Second, everything had these weird black outlines around them- I couldn’t have told you what I thought these were like at the time, but, now that I’m older, I can tell you that everything was rendered somewhat like a Telltale game. Thirdly, there was some sort of weird, arhythmic tapping sound in the distance. Dream logic told me that this was the signature noise of a “weird man” following me. Oddly enough, I refrained from looking at him until the tail end of the dream. I was walking along so slowly it was like going through molasses, and, a couple of times, I ran into a hyperactive dog that didn’t have any eyes and wanted to bite me. It was only in the final quarter that I actually turned and looked at the Motivator. He was a huge, elongated, emaciated figure that looked like an unused design for some sort of evil Muppet, yes, but, compared to the rest of the dream, he was also in 2D, albeit in a weird, pointy style that was reminiscent of something by Tim Burton. I don’t quite remember what his bottom half was like, but I’m pretty sure he had more legs than is normal for a person. His arms didn’t look like they had any bones in them, and they were so long they touched the ground- he looked like a gibbon. There was this huge bulging thing covered in green lines on his chest. (I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be some sort of tumour.) He was wearing a hat, I’m 99% sure, because he had long, stringy black hair that came out from beneath SOMEthing, and his only visible facial feature was his mouth, which literally stretched from ear to absent ear. The tapping continued, getting faster and faster, as he started charging me like a bull. He reached out to grab me by the head- something I knew would “get” me. Then I woke up. "
I was wondering if anyone would draw this guy! He's such spot-on Creepypasta Villain material, and had he been, I could see him becoming incredibly popular. For whatever reason, I'm always a big fan of characters with hats and hair but no visible eyes.
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