Short Stories

Nightmare

It's terrifying, I'm not sure why I still do it. It scares the living shit out of me every time. My job that is, sorry, forgot not everyone knows what I do. It's not like I'm famous or anything, but my job has so few people who do it you get known pretty quickly, plus the job is usually passed through family's so that makes it easier to. I'm a Dreamcatcher Emptier. I do exactly what my title says, I empty dreamcatchers. Not many people know that dreamcatchers need to be emptied. If they're not emptied they overflow and that's very dangerous for everyone, humans, animals, us, everyone.

If you're not one of us you probably don't know who "us" is. We're a small group of non-human beings, we exist in some space between the fabric of reality and fiction. We're kind of like the angels and devils some humans believe in. We're not exactly that. Most of us aren't good enough to be considered angels, and very few of us are evil enough to be considered demons. We live amongst humans and go about our daily lives doing almost exactly what they would. We eat, drink, breath air, do all the essential things humans do to survive. We're not human, we're such a small group that doesn't have a name.

But, back to my job. We've been around forever. We only started getting involved with human affairs when dreamcatchers started being made. They were made wonderfully and for a while people knew when to empty them, but, as they became more popular, less and less people knew how to empty them and when. The overflow from the dreamcatchers is the biggest reason we're such a small group. We live off the bad dreams and nightmares of humans. That's why your folk started making dreamcatchers, you used to care for us. We were respected and didn't have to hide our true forms, but times have changed and here we are. Humans no longer know much about us, if you know anything at all it's through folklore and "myths". According to most humans, we're completely fake, we don't exist and never have.

Back to our life force/how we survive. You may think that we're all evil because we live off the bad dreams. Hardly any of us fit that stereotype, most of us are more on the good side of the scale. The thing is, we have to be around the person having a bad dream. People used to trust us and knew that we meant them no harm. Now, if we were to enter your room, how would you feel? How would you feel if we showed you our true forms? Frightened? Angry that we're in your home? We used to be assigned to people, one family for one family. When humans started hunting us dreamcatchers were made so that we could stay alive even though we were to small a group to be around you.

There's only one problem. When we're with you we can take the bad dream and eat it right as it starts, but with dreamcatchers that rule isn't in place for some reason. None of us know why, no humans that know of us know why. With dreamcatchers we have to watch the nightmare before we're allowed to eat it, that's why so few people do this job. We watch them, eat what we need, and bottle the rest to take home for supper. Families usually pass down the job so that kids can start learning early. Yes, if you're raised in a Catcher family you're allowed to pursue other jobs. A lot of us like some type of art so those people go on to get those jobs. Yes, people who didn't grow up in a Catcher family are allowed to enter the job. It's much less rare than those who are born into the families leaving the job. No, under no circumstances are humans allowed to have this job! Humans are not equipped, mentally and physically, to do this job. We are shape shifters, you are not. We know about you, most of you don't know about us. If you try to do this without being trained you will lose track of reality and never recover. Do. Not. Try. It.