All I Have To Do Is Dream (A DHMIS Fanfic)

Part 2: The Dream World

Red Guy looked around, hoping to see if anyone else could see the yellow menacing guy in front of him. The yellow man was not red, and he didn't have a red mop over his mouth and nose, he definitely stood out and people should be bound to see him, right? But all of the other red guys continued with their lives as if there was no one different around.

Red Guy looked back to the yellow man, who said nothing. He had seen him before- in a dream.

"Am I dreaming right now?" Red Guy asked, and the Yellow man slightly shook his head.

"I saw you in a dream. The last dream I had since..." he stopped to look sadly at the puppets of his oneiric family. "Who are you?" he tried, but the Yellow man didn't answer. Instead, he stared at Red Guy so intensely he started shaking a little bit, and suddenly Red Guy felt as if someone had entered to his mind.

My name is Roy, Red Guy thought, and he stared at Roy, surprised.

"What the-?" Red Guy started

I am making you think what I'm trying to say to you. It's easier for me that way. You hear your inner voice, but it's me who's talking.

"Alright" Red Guy sighed "So, am I dreaming or not?"

Roy didn't answer, but he turned away and started walking. Red Guy reluctantly followed.

They walked to the bottom of the bar (was it always so ominously large?) through a corridor with black and white tiles on the floor, and suddenly the music and the chatting stopped, and there was just darkness and mist surrounding them.

Red Guy had been there before; the last time he dreamt about his family.

Because he had been dreaming.

Right?

You might have been dreaming, but my silly boy is real. And your little duck too. Roy said, or at least Red thought so.

They kept walking in silence, until they heard a weird noise, like a very distant radio.

So, what used to happen in your dreams?

Red looked at Roy, who stared at him with a curious and menacing expression.

"Well, we're in our house. Things are alright: we are a family, sorta. Then June 19th comes around and objects start singing to us, and then I stop seeing the difference between reality and my dreams, and my family gets hurt and then someone I really like dies but appears in the real world –at least my dream version of the real world- and we go back to the dream world, or was it the real world? Or I was dreaming about being in the real...? Or...?" Roy put his hand over Red's shoulder and Red gasped; it was the longest and more confusing sentence he had said in his whole life.

Stop talking. We're here. Roy said in Red's mind

"Here" was a strange machine in the middle of nowhere, what happens when you put a computer, an arcade and a piano inside a mixer. Red gasped, he had been there before.

"Déjà vu" Red thought, walking towards the machine. Inside the screen there was just static

You can't call it a "déjà vu" if you're not sure you were even dreaming the first time Roy retorted, and Red didn't even think that the yellow man was reading his mind. He just stared at the static.

"Where are they?" Red asked

Roy sighed, or maybe he just panted.

There's an unbalance in this new loop. One of the students is not there. He has disappeared before, and when he does that, the teachers stop obeying my rules. They become insane. And it repeats over and over and over again. Roy said inside Red's mind, and he sat down, staring at the screen in an almost worried way.

My son is one of the students trapped in that infinite loop.

"You trapped him" Red remembered "You were mean to him and he started living with Robi... Duck and I, because you were a terrible father and teacher"

All teachers are terrible in some degree. They just started wrecking when they stopped obeying my orders.

"But they were always wrecked" Red remembered "Since Sketchbook they were all evil, just like you"

I don't consider myself to be an evil person, I'm just an average parent trying to educate his...

"You traumatized him! He had to sleep in my bed some nights because he was scared that even the bedside lamp would start singing to us!" Red exclaimed, getting increasingly angry

And it did, eventually. Such a terrible singer...

"It's your fault" Red said, and Roy stood up, and he was way taller than before. His legs grew taller than Red, then taller than a house and then taller than some mountains. Red looked up, but he could only see darkness, and a very long arm that went all the way down to point at Red's chest

NO! It is YOUR fault! You always wake up before I finish teaching you and that derails the teachers! It confuses them! They start disobeying and hurting my son! And you always, ALWAYS wake up! And every time I have to kill your stupid Duck so you can learn your lesson and never, NEVER disobey me again, but you never listen! And the cycle continues because you Just. Don't. Listen. Roy shouted inside Red's mind, hitting Red with his finger, making him walk backwards with every poke of his finger.

"So we are sleeping" Red said

That's not what I meant...

"And they are dreaming, but they dream about a real world made of felt" Red continued

No. Stop thinking now!

"So if I enter again and wake them up, we might wake up in the real-real world! That's it!" Red exclaimed

But that's not gonna happen. Roy stated dryly

"Why not?"

Because you can't save your friends if you are dead, Roy said and tried to step over the red mop.