Lucid Nightmares

Chapter 2

Christian quickly learned why this Nightmare was "getting out of hand."

The Nightmare looked like an abandoned city, fog obscuring everything. Christian kept taking a few steps forward and then blanking out, like his memory reset every few seconds. A few explosions would randomly blow up a building next to them as they advanced cautiously, forcing them to dive out of the way. The explosions would emit shouting sounds, like a group of men were yelling at each other. The sky was black as coal, and the ground was a giant checkerboard.

Gwendolyn's corset ribbon kept a firm grip on Christian's arm. "So we don't get separated," she explained as they advanced. "Nightmares will try to isolate their prey so they can be picked off one by one."

After a few more steps, Christian asked, "So why can't we just start smashing everything if the whole Nightmare needs to be destroyed?

"Because then the Nightmare's Core will know we're here. It doesn't yet; otherwise it would've tried to kill us by now. Plus, we could accidentally destroy a memory," she gestured to a building to their left; inside it, a man and his wife and two daughters were watching a movie together. The whole scene radiated happy light, and seemed out of place in this Nightmare world. One of the memory daughters went up to the window and gave them an encouraging smile. "Nightmares can also disguise themselves so we could accidentally destroy brain cells or something, we could accidentally wake up the person whose mind we're inside, and trust me, that's WAY worse than being in their head with a Nightmare..." Christian noticed the Gwendolyn kept using "we," and was somewhat glad to know the Gwendolyn wasn't one of those people who thought they never ever made mistakes.

"What's the Nightmare's Core?" Christian asked.

"The most concentrated part of fear in the Nightmare," Gwendolyn explained patiently. "It's fear so concentrated that it makes an actual entity. You see, Nightmares are just the place where the Nightmare Core resides. It's the house. If we destroy the house, the Nightmare Core could bury itself deeper in the mind and infect other parts of it with fear. Memories of happy family time will turn into memories of you and your family being in the army with a constant danger of dying."

They advanced a few more steps. Air raid sirens went off. Jets zoomed past, but it looked like they were more patrolling than zooming; they kept circling back and making lines through the streets. Gwendolyn grabbed Christian and pulled him into an alleyway as a plane flew down the street they were walking through. As it passed, Christian saw that it had a beady black eye surveying everything on the bottom of it.

After a moment, Gwendolyn leaned out from the alleyway. "All clear." She turned to Christian. "Let's--" she stopped when she turned back and found that instead of Christian's arm, she was gripping a metal pipe that ran down the building. Christian was gone. She looked left, right, at the pipe, then said, "Fffuuuuuuuck..."

***

Gwendolyn had pulled Christian into the alley and pressed their backs against the wall, as if hiding from someone walking down the street. He had been looking up at the passing eye-jet thing. He had only blinked and looked back down at Gwendolyn; he was suddenly in a different alleyway, and the thing gripping his arm in the place of Gwendolyn's hand was a trash bag, for some reason tied around his arm.

He shook off the trash bag and looked around. Gwendolyn was nowhere to be seen. He forced himself to be calm as he peeked out from the alleyway and stealthily made his way across the street.

He contemplated calling out for her, but then he figured that would definitely let the Nightmare Core know they were there.

He just had to find her by himself.