Sundew

Chapter 10

The dream was dark, but unlike most dreams, it was quite clear. In fact, Sunny thought he could feel the tense feeling in the air—a hot moisture—clinging to his skin. Back in his bedroom. Growling coming from within it.

"Come on in, Sunny," the thing beckoned, "I know what you need. All those pictures you've looked at? Child's play. As you can see, we are supermodels—and we have more should your... appetites command it. We can make you feel so good. You haven't felt good in ages, have you? Not since your father discovered the affair with Cory and sent you to catholic school, where they thought you lusting for him was a disease—where they treated the non-white students like cockroaches. We don't want that for you, Jonathan. We want you to feel loved. Come now, Swanson. If you like what you see, why not touch?~"

Out of the closet came what could only be compared to Instagram influencers—the kind of people who are too rich to look ugly. There wasn't a speck of make up or oil or any crap on the faces of the models. The boy and the girl were more chiseled than 80's Schwarzenegger.

"Come on in, Sunny," they said in unison, it may be cramped, but there's room for one more~"

Though terrified, Sunny did not resist, the fear quickly evaporating, replaced with blackened-pink carnal lust. When SUnny got close enough, he closed his eyes, allowing their silky smooth hands to caress his face.

"Good boy~" One of them whispered. Sunny opened his eyes, eager to feel more of their flesh against his. That, however, was when he saw it. Their sultry, lusty bodies had been coated from head to toe in black sludge. Moccasin plants grew from their skin, oozing this ichor and trickling it down their heads the way water will run off the crown of your head in the shower. More of the black sludge wept from their hollowed-out eye sockets and the cracks in between their teeth. They stared at him with those empty eyes, but said-eyes didn't remain empty for long. Dozens of tiny rubies opened from within the creatures' sockets—certainly more eyes than the human body could've ever evolved to grow in that one region. At this, Sunny had screamed, mortified. Thor heads split open like watermelons getting cleaved in half, revealing their heads to actually be mouths.

"Come home, Jonathan~"

Sunny woke up,sweating bullets, feeling revolted on a metaphysical level. He didn't know why, but a feeling of terror had now gripped him. Just what kind of nightmare did he have that he'd awaken so violently?

The moonlight had long since faded, and in its place was a deep, navy blue in the sky, one that was dark, but fading in the hours of O'dark thirty. Sunny brought a fire extinguisher with him to the vending machine, but was uncertain of what he would do with the extinguisher, assuming his suspicions were confirmed. This thing was no more a snack machine than Stephen King's Buick Roadmaster was an actual car. It looked like a duck, but neither quacked nor shed water like a duck. Sunny got as close as he dared.

"What's the matter, Sunny?" Gary chimed in from behind him. "I thought you were gonna smash that sucker open so we could salvage any additional food. The other three, four if you count Olivia, have gone to the kitchen area, but we chose to go here, so why are you just staring at it? Something the matter?"

How was Sunny to answer that? "Sorry, Gary," Sunny imagined himself saying, "but I can't break open the vending machine 'cuz it's haunted nyuk nyuk nyuk!" Sunny looked at the vending machine in the early morning light. Upon closer inspection, the glass display had something wrong with it. On the glass was some kind of black pattern. Like the black patterns you see in white marble countertops.