dreaming awake

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Warning: The following contains coarse language, violence, and extreme amounts of awesomeness. Please prepare your mind for blowing.

Chapter One

Johnny taps his foot to the Mozart piece playing over his headphones. He looks up and watches as the elevator slowly makes its way to the bottom floor. It was all the way on the fortieth floor so this will take a while.
He barely notices the door open behind him. He barely notices the large group walk up to him. He does however notice the slight, metallic click.
He looks behind him at the group of ten men. Most of them are black, a couple of them are white. They’re all wearing unnecessarily baggy clothes and are packing heat. Just stereotypical gang members.
The one in the front of the pack is pointing a gun into Johnny’s back. They either want the elevator for themselves or are trying to mug him.
He doesn’t bother asking.
He sighs tiresomely and looks around the small room to make sure there are no cameras or witnesses. None. They’re completely alone.
The gang member says something, most likely a threat. Johnny ignores him as he reaches into his coat. In a flash of black and silver, he whips around and drives his knife into the man’s stomach.
Less than two minutes later, the gun slides through a puddle of blood and bumps against the wall. Johnny wipes the blood off his knife onto a gang member’s shirt. He then sticks it into his jacket, along with his soiled gloves. As soon as he pulls on a new pair, the elevator finally arrives. He steps through the doors, hits the button for the twenty-fifth floor, and leaves the gory scene behind, to be discovered but a horror-struck civilian.
It’s been over a year since Johnny left his house. He’s spent the year traveling around North America, sightseeing, staying in cheap hotels, and eating all kinds of foods.
The elevator stops on his floor and he steps into the hall. He grabs his key card as he reaches his room and opens the door. His room is small with one tacky bed, a cheap TV, and a small bathroom. Still, he enjoys it.
More than anything, Johnny’s reason for travelling was to teach himself to lose his basic human emotions and urges. He’s had a much harder time than he'd like to admit. But he did accomplish a little bit. He managed to lose his useless human emotions, such as love, jealousy, sadness, and even happiness. Granted he still laughs at things that he finds funny, cries at things he finds sad, and his temper hasn’t gotten any better. But that he can live with that.
As for his urges, well those were much harder to lose than his emotions. But he managed to do it. He doesn’t feel attracted to anyone- though he rarely did before- he only eats when he wants to, not when his stomach tells him to- but he barely ate enough before- and he doesn’t feel lonely anymore- but he does enjoy talking to nice people.
Johnny yawns as he lies down on his bed and stares blankly at the ceiling. The biggest change would probably be his sleeping pattern. A year ago, before he gained any real headway in his travels, he realized that his body is human, and no matter what he does, it’ll always be human. So he decided that if he doesn’t want his body to expire before he’s ready, he should try to take care of it. At least a little bit.
So he returned to the city for a few weeks and met with a sleep therapist. She taught him that sleep is one of the most essential aspects to keeping a body alive. She also taught him that the best way to gain sleep is to keep a constant sleep schedule; that means to go to sleep and to wake up the same time every day.
Since Johnny never liked sleeping, he decided to take baby steps. First he slept once every two months. Then once every month, once every two weeks, now he’s down to once a week.
He learned that it’s not the sleeping he doesn’t like; he actually enjoys disappearing from the world for a few hours. What he really hates are the dreams. He can never tell if his dream was real or not, even after he woke up. It always takes him a couple minutes, and those few terrifying moments is what he really hates.
Johnny sits up and rubs his eyes, deciding he should probably shower. As he walks to the bathroom, he catches his reflection in the television screen. He examines his face, checking to see if there’s any blood. He starts to continue to the bathroom, when out of the corner of his eye, he sees something that stops him in his tracks: a small, Styrofoam cut-out with swirls in his eyes and ‘FUCK’ printed across his shirt.
Johnny spins around and looks around the room, but sees nothing. He looks back at the TV and sees nothing but his reflection.
He runs his hand through his hair and grunts. He does one last check around the room, and when he decides he’s really alone, he walks into the bathroom and turns the shower on.
Johnny steps into the tub and lets the warm water drip down his naked body. He grabs one of the little bottles of cheap shampoo and dumps it into his hair, massaging it into his roots. As he washes, he continuously pictures that reflection in his mind. No matter how much he tries to ignore it, it burns through his skull like stomach acid, until the frustration gets to him and he slams his fist into the wall.
“What the fuck was that?” he shouts just for the sake of shouting.
He glances at the wall and realizes he cracked the porcelain. He lowers his fist and takes a deep breath. Well, he hasn’t slept or eaten in a couple days. Maybe his brain is losing it a bit.
But then why would he hallucinate Psycho-Doughboy, of all people?
Johnny takes another deep breath at a failed attempt to calm his nerves. He turns off the water and steps out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his wet waist.
He looks up and glances at the mirror in front of him. His face fills with fear and surprise as he sees, standing behind him on the edge of the tub, another Styrofoam cut-out with white eyes and ‘Z?’ on his shirt.
“Mr. Fuck,” Johnny murmurs and spins around. Again, he sees nothing in the room or anything but his reflection in the mirror.
Johnny hugs his bare shoulders and quickly leaves the bathroom. After drying himself off with the towel, he pulls on a loose pair of pyjama pants and an old t-shirt, as well as his leather gloves. He sits on his bed and turns on the TV to some cartoon. But no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t focus. He constantly looks around, his paranoia getting the better of him.
He groans and buries his face into his hands, falling back onto the bed. He closes his eyes and whimpers quietly, “what the fuck was that?”

Johnny sucks on his BrainFreezy and sits back on the park bench. He looks up at the afternoon sky and tunes out all the noise of the surrounding masses.
The Nightmare. That’s what he decided to call that thing, the thing that lived behind his wall. One year ago that thing escaped when Johnny stopped feeding it blood. Then he died and the universe tore apart or something…
Anyway, after he came back to life- ?- he checked to see if that thing was still there. It wasn’t, all that was left was a dark hole that he eventually covered up.
Johnny’s not sure why he decided to call that thing the Nightmare. It’s just that one night he had a dream about that thing. There was something about that dream that made him want to call it the Nightmare. Maybe that it was a nightmare?
It wasn’t long after he left the city for the second time that he started making sense of all the things that happened to him that year. He soon realized that the Doughboys were connected to the Nightmare. He wasn’t sure how, but something just told him so.
After that he surmised that as long as the Nightmare was in his wall, it was protecting him. It was because of the Nightmare that he was able to kill without consequences. So when it disappeared, his protection went with it.
Still societal humans are quite blind. Johnny was able to adapt quickly and remain invisible to the ignorant masses whenever he wanted to. To do so he always wears leather gloves so as not to leave fingerprints on anything. If he does soil his gloves, he replaces them with one of the many he keeps in his trench coat, which he also always wears. He does his best to stay out of the large crowds, and when he does feel the urge to kill someone he always checks to make sure there are no witnesses or cameras. If there are, he deals with them.
Johnny has not thought about the Nightmare in so long. He didn’t think it was a threat anymore. That was until last night, when he saw the Doughboys in his reflection.
No matter how much he tries to convince himself that it was just his imagination, he just can’t shake this uneasy feeling. Granted he’s had like five blue raspberry BrainFreezys- they’re limited edition.  Still it feels like something is clawing at the back of his skull.
Johnny sighs and looks away from the sky. He slowly looks around the park with minimal interest. Everyone is in some kind group. Whether it’s couples, families, or friends, everybody is with somebody. Funny how humans feel a need to travel in packs.
Johnny glances to his left and notices a woman walking with her little daughter. She points at a nearby food stand and tells the little girl to stay here. The girl and waves happily to her mom as she walks to the stand. She then notices Johnny sitting on the bench and sits beside him.
“Hello. I’m Melissa,” she say happily, “what’s your name?”
“Johnny,” he replies.
“Hello, Johnny. You look sad. Are you sad?” she asks.
“Well, not really sad. More… confused.”
“What are you confused about?”
“Um…” He’s not sure if he should bare his soul to a little girl. But he can’t handle keeping it bottled up anymore.
“Well a year ago I was tormented by these… monsters. They disappeared but now I think they might be back again. And I don’t know what to do,” he sighs.
“You are scared of monsters?” Melissa asks.
“Yeah.”
“You know, whenever I get scared of the monsters hiding under my bed or in my closet, my mommy is always there to help me get rid of them,” she smiles, “do you have a mommy to help you with your monsters?”
“No, not exactly,” he chuckles, “though you might be onto something, Melissa. I don’t really wanna die again. Dying is so troublesome. But maybe there’s someone who can help me figure out another way to deal with this.”
Melissa doesn’t quite understand what Johnny is talking about, but smiles all the same.
“Speaking of mommies, I think yours is looking for you,” Johnny says as he points to Melissa’s mom. She giggles and hops off the bench, running up to her. As they walk by, carrying ice cream in their hands, she waves at Johnny. He smiles and waves back.
“Ah, the innocence of children,” he sighs. But she really did have a point. Maybe there is someone who can help.
As he stands up and leaves the park, he suddenly remembers another innocent child, one who used to be his neighbor. He recalls the boy had a teddy bear who protected him from evil things. And the boy was always followed by evil things.
He smirks and rubs his chin. “I guess it’s about time I return home.”

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