Irritated, I pushed aside the illusion of omnipotence and focused on the paper. After reading the names again, I began to think about what to do next. To be honest, I had no particular desire to go and cut people's throats. It is banal, boring, and mediocre. In general, the idea of learning how to control the Dream world was interesting, but I considered it beneath my dignity to become a mad butcher for the sake of it. So first I decided to focus on learning of my abilities, and perform the task with taste and extraordinary imagination.
My first victim was a girl named Tina Gray. Actually, she was first on the list, which determined her fate. In first night, I simply entered her dream and watched her, testing my ability to change her dreams. Overall, it worked, bit in process I spent some kind of energy. Apparently, to cumulate it, I needed to scare someone. But I didn't want to just chase idiots through the stinking catacombs. So, while Tina was awake, I began to prepare a place in the Dream world where I would make my debut as 'the invisible horror'.
Next night, Tina found herself in a long hallway. The only light came from the open door in front, to which she went. When she reached the door, she saw a bright room filled with lots of cute plush toys. With a laugh, she walked to the center of the room and began to examine and squeeze them. This place was literally filled with children's joy and sweetness. The only one different thing was a portrait of Freddy Krueger hanging on one of the walls. From this portrait I watched what was happening.
Taking the biggest toy - a Teddy bear, Tina noticed that its mouth was closed with a 'zipper'. After examining the toy again, she opened its mouth and found another toy inside. Pulling it back, she pulled out a large rabbit with funny ears. Laughing and hugging him, she again found that the rabbit's mouth was zipped shut. When she opened it, she was startled for a moment because a toothy mouth had popped out, but then it became clear that it was another stuffed toy-a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
This toy's mouth was already open, but in its depth hid another 'doll'. It was the squirrel inside which Tina found the cat. The last toy was especially cute, so she hugged it to her chest and started humming a song she remembered from her childhood. Stroking the cat, she again opened the zipper that was in place of the cat's mouth. But this time, an Alien larva crawled out of the toy, snapped its toothy mouth, darted forward, and bit into Tina's throat, chewing it all the way to the spine. The girl screamed in horror and woke up.
Well, the first experience can be considered successful. When I watched the girl's happy emotions, I literally turned inside out with disgust. But when she went wild with horror at the sensation of her throat being chewed out, I felt a surge of strength and cheerfulness. However, only a simple demon of dreams could have benefit from this. I was the center of Order in this formless world, and therefore I did not need the energy of fear.
Having completed this simple quest, I again went to the exit from the boiler room. In general, the dream world was quite plastic. The corridors of my boiler room could lead to different places, and through them I could get into the dream of any person. But the front door to the boiler room was special. It was surrounded by a sense of a certain 'law' and always led only to one place - to the same desolate, misty world where Baku lived.
Approaching the door, I put my hand on the handle and imagined the moment when the entire team of maniacs would be ready to show results of task. As I have already seen, time in the dream world did not flow in the same way as in the real world. It could be stretched and compressed on an unlimited scale. You could even put it in the loop. However, the cause-and-effect relationship in dreams did not work, so that when the sequence of events was disrupted, the image of such dependence simply collapsed or changed unrecognizably. In general, focusing on the moment which I needed, I could be sure that I would get desired time.
Behind the door was a world I already knew. There was no one in sight, but I wasn't worried about that. Once I could only wish how only a dozen steps moved me a huge distance directly to the gathering of maniacs. As I looked around the entire circus, I noticed that the images of the dream demons had changed. Jason Voorhees's mask was scratched as if it had been sawed off with a motor saw, and Dexter Morgan's right hand was now attached to his body with thick threads, making it look like a blank Frankenstein.
"Hey, Kruger!” - Jack the Ripper shouted noticing my approach. - "Come here at once."
“Are you fucking crazy, you horned face?” - I answered to him. - "If you continue to be impudent, I'll break off your horns and shove them into your ass."
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
"What did you say? Get him!”
Judging by the reaction of the others to this command, the alpha male has already been determined. Only Dexter hasn't budged, apparently not yet resigned to who's in charge. Alas, I didn’t have time to explain to these maggots of demons the depth of their delusion by the appearance of Baku.
“Enough. Line up.” - He said shortly, coming out of the fog.
Surprisingly, the crowd of maniacs had enough of this, and they began to try to imitate the formation. I took a side seat again, but this time my neighbor was Jack the Ripper, who was still staring at me with a promising look. I sneered, looking at him, and then focused on the 'teacher'.
"Well, I see everyone has completed their first task. Although for someone, even this simple task was not easy.” - A mocking smile played on the monk's face I looked to the side, but I couldn't tell who it was 'alternatively gifted'. - "You have learned that fear gives you strength. Now, you need to figure out what will happen if you torment a person with nightmares for several days without letting them sleep. Your task is to appear to the same person from the list three nights in a row, so that on the fourth night he lost any desire to lie down to sleep at least for a minute”
After that Baku looked at us with attentive eyes and dissolved again in the fog. And a moment later, Jack the Ripper rushed in my direction, waving a knife. Alas, to his disappointment, I turned into a fog, materialized behind him and gave him good acceleration with kick, from which he rode 'on the face' at least a couple of meters, and at the end of his head buried in a hefty cactus, which was not there a second ago. In order not to spoil the image of this world, the cactus was dirty gray with long black needles, and around it swirled a light mist, not allowing to accurately estimate the length and location of needles.
Jack the Ripper screamed, tried to pry off his head from the cactus, but couldn't. After that, he recklessly decided to push away from the cactus with his hands, but the needles of this terrible plant pierced his palms, causing another scream. Despite all Jack's attempts to break free, with each movement a new part of his body was captured by the cactus, so that in a minute he was crucified on this miracle plant upside down, continuing to yell.
"Don't yell, you are not at home. And don't yell at home.” - I gave him a 'valuable instruction', then looked at the approaching five maniacs and dissolved in the fog. I think there will be a second vote on the election of the most important clown in this circus.
Coming back to the boiler room, I began to create a platform for the next episode of poor Tina Gray's dreams. Since the boiler room was located in the basement, above it I 'created' a large cinema and entertainment center with a bunch of rooms, halls and, of course, confusing corridors
In the next night, Tina found herself standing just behind the front doors leading to the cinema. Turning around, she made sure that the front doors were boarded up cross-cross, and went inside the room, trying to figure out where she was and how she got here. As she wandered down the hall toward the ticket offices, she looked at the posters hanging on the walls. The cinema looked abandoned, so the posters were shabby and faded in places, but in general the images and inscriptions on them were quite simple to distinguish. So she got acquainted with the commercials of the films 'Aliens on Elm Street', 'Freddy Krueger vs. Alien', 'Alien and Freddie vs. Chip and Dale' and so on.
When she got to the ticket office, she found that it was closed, but on the shelf next to the ticket office was laying a ticket to the movie 'Freddy Krueger vs Alien'. She picked it up and walked toward the movie halls, following the internal logic of the dream that required the viewer to get to the session.
A little after, Tina went into the hall, where the screen was already playing a black-and-white movie in the style of the thirties of the twentieth century. Sometimes there were streaks and scratches on the film, but the film had no sound, and instead it played cheerful music that completely not corresponding to the gloom of the contents of the film.
Sitting in a chair in the front row, Tina grabbed a glass of popcorn that had just appeared and began to closely observe the events of the film. there was a detailed picture of the breeding chain of Aliens: egg-laying infection with face-hugger, 'hatching' of Chestburster and development of the adult Alien. And all this action was accompanied by piles of corpses and rivers of blood. At the end of the film, I personally appeared in film and in a few seconds chopped all aliens into a salad with just a few strokes of my glove, thus saving all of humanity. The plot, of course, was so-so, but the main thing here was the transfer of knowledge about the physiology of Aliens.
After the screen went dark, Tina found a plush rabbit on the seat next to her. Taking it with some hesitation, she opened its mouth, from which a real live kitten emerged. The girl began to stroke it and play with it. In a moment, the kitten yawned sweetly... and from its mouth came out chestburster. Tina managed to react to the appearance of the threat and threw the kitten and the larva of Alien aside, and she ran away from this place.
For the rest of the night, the girl ran away from the Alien, which gradually developed to an adult form. And at the very end, the alien was able to catch its victim, tear her to pieces and eat her alive. Moreover, the last couple of minutes of agony Tina desperately wanted to wake up, but could not do it.