Written by Jonathan Wojcik
NIGHTMARE MENAGERIE 2021: PART IV
Guest Art by Duckyworth!
Monster Party
Posted by Cheese Wizard
"On top of a cliff, a generic hero and villain are fighting while a big group of civilians watch. The hero knocks the villain off the cliff, but he climbs or flies or something back up and says something about someone being bitten by something.
The civilians all panic. Some kind of psychosomatic placebo effect causes them to transform into monsters, because they all think they're the one who got bit. The "bite" also causes them to start tripping balls. From there, it stops focusing on the hero and villain and switches to a surreal trippy musical number of sorts, focusing on one or two monsters at a time, giving them a few seconds of screen time, just enough for each of them to sing a little bit of the song Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the song besides like two words and I only remember a few monsters.
The first monster looked like an upside down teardrop, covered in shaggy gray hair, with long, thin, spindly black limbs. The second one was a big blue puddle of goo with huge eyes. Due to the whole tripping balls thing, the pupils were extremely dilated. There was a harpy-ish looking thing with long black hair, who was huddled up next to a pure black humanoid shape, who I think might have been wearing a suit and bowler hat. They were scared of being bit by the other monsters, which would turn them into monsters themselves, even though they'd already transformed.
The last one was a yellow corpse lying on the ground, in an almost adventure-time-esque art style. It was very similar to the art style of Evgeny Viitman, honestly. Anyway, you could only see him from the waist down. He was wearing shorts and a black pair of sneakers. Another monster whose appearance I dont quite remember (but it might have been reddish pink and round, almost like Mike Wazowski) was standing over him holding a scalpel. The red monster sang something about iron, presumably because of said scalpel.
Again, there were a lot more monsters, but I only remember these few. It's a little sad that so many cool creatures were lost. Hopefully I manage to have this dream again."
"On top of a cliff, a generic hero and villain are fighting while a big group of civilians watch. The hero knocks the villain off the cliff, but he climbs or flies or something back up and says something about someone being bitten by something.
The civilians all panic. Some kind of psychosomatic placebo effect causes them to transform into monsters, because they all think they're the one who got bit. The "bite" also causes them to start tripping balls. From there, it stops focusing on the hero and villain and switches to a surreal trippy musical number of sorts, focusing on one or two monsters at a time, giving them a few seconds of screen time, just enough for each of them to sing a little bit of the song Unfortunately, I don't remember any of the song besides like two words and I only remember a few monsters.
The first monster looked like an upside down teardrop, covered in shaggy gray hair, with long, thin, spindly black limbs. The second one was a big blue puddle of goo with huge eyes. Due to the whole tripping balls thing, the pupils were extremely dilated. There was a harpy-ish looking thing with long black hair, who was huddled up next to a pure black humanoid shape, who I think might have been wearing a suit and bowler hat. They were scared of being bit by the other monsters, which would turn them into monsters themselves, even though they'd already transformed.
The last one was a yellow corpse lying on the ground, in an almost adventure-time-esque art style. It was very similar to the art style of Evgeny Viitman, honestly. Anyway, you could only see him from the waist down. He was wearing shorts and a black pair of sneakers. Another monster whose appearance I dont quite remember (but it might have been reddish pink and round, almost like Mike Wazowski) was standing over him holding a scalpel. The red monster sang something about iron, presumably because of said scalpel.
Again, there were a lot more monsters, but I only remember these few. It's a little sad that so many cool creatures were lost. Hopefully I manage to have this dream again."
A dream packed full of creature designs! I've had some of those myself, but I never do remember more than a couple of the entities by the time I wake up. I've also had a lot of dreams with songs in them, which feel really "epic" and utterly amazing at the time, but once I'm awake I either don't remember them or I realize they were just an actual pop song. I'm not sure what my favorite is of the things described, maybe just the big eyed blob, but they all have something going for them.
Maybe the psychotropic bite means that none of these people really turned into monsters, but that would be boring. It's more interesting that it seemingly caused some of them to forget they were already monsters.
Lobster Whale
Posted by Tombot
"I almost forgot. Last night I dreamed about something called a "Lobster whale" it had the front half of a whale and the back half of a lobster (more or less). It could psychically project images of people into your mind to trick you into going near the water (possibly so it could eat you). I traveled to some kind of castley manory place on a mountainous plain to warn the people there of it. Also for some reason instead of it being inside a lake or in the ocean, it moved around in these large underground waterways."
"I almost forgot. Last night I dreamed about something called a "Lobster whale" it had the front half of a whale and the back half of a lobster (more or less). It could psychically project images of people into your mind to trick you into going near the water (possibly so it could eat you). I traveled to some kind of castley manory place on a mountainous plain to warn the people there of it. Also for some reason instead of it being inside a lake or in the ocean, it moved around in these large underground waterways."
It's an interesting thing for a lobster whale to do. I also think it makes sense that a lobster whale eats people, because a whale is a lage mammal that won't eat people but it will eat tiny live crustaceans, while a lobster is a small crustacean that will scavenge large dead mammals. This explanation made more sense in my head. I just feel like eating people is the exact middle ground between those two things.
The Apeirogon
Posted by Huskies Plays
"It was a sort of 3D apeirogon, its surface looking smooth but up close being irregular and extraordinarily sharp. It rested at the 'bottom' of reality so to speak, and every single person would inevitably end up impaled on its surface. It was ascending slowly, rasping away at reality, its edges wearing away the world. Something about its math was wrong too?? I don't know, this is where it gets weird: at some point I woke up, having a panic attack, pacing around because I was convinced the apeiroga was going to kill all of reality and I couldn't do anything to stop it. That's why it sticks out so much in my mind: I spent three hours of my young, then single digit yeared life, weeping in abject fear of a shape."
"It was a sort of 3D apeirogon, its surface looking smooth but up close being irregular and extraordinarily sharp. It rested at the 'bottom' of reality so to speak, and every single person would inevitably end up impaled on its surface. It was ascending slowly, rasping away at reality, its edges wearing away the world. Something about its math was wrong too?? I don't know, this is where it gets weird: at some point I woke up, having a panic attack, pacing around because I was convinced the apeiroga was going to kill all of reality and I couldn't do anything to stop it. That's why it sticks out so much in my mind: I spent three hours of my young, then single digit yeared life, weeping in abject fear of a shape."
This is actually amazing. A big shape that's just "below" everything in existence and "rising" and destroying everything in its path. Is that a monster? Is it a being at all? Does it matter? Maybe something can be a monster without being alive or having ever been alive. I think maybe I've discussed that concept before, that maybe there can be "monstrous" materials and phenomenon.
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