Birth of a Nightmare Man

Chapter Sixteen

One would imagine a dark lord's home to be a foreboding place. A place with many towers and great, large dungeon of course. There would be dangerous creatures guarding the grounds and an awful amount of screaming and naturally, lots of blood and guts.

Instead there was a garden filled with twisted trees, and a rather small, cramped house, and the only one providing the screaming at that very moment was the Nightmare Lord himself.

When he woke himself up, covered in cold sweat, it was still early. He lit a fire with a wave of his hand but what he really wanted to do was smash something up. Instead he dug his nails into the palms of his hands until the pain spiked up through his arms.

The lord didn't know who the man in his dreams was, but it was a huge one and no matter how strong he felt during the day, he was a mere child in his dreams, unable to fight back. This man had a demonic presence, and a loud voice.

This man used words such as 'freak' and 'monster' to describe the lord when the lord dreamt, and if there was something the Nightmare Lord hated it was those words. From others, they were boring... from this one man, with meaty fists and pale, blue eyes, they were an insult. They were the man's names for the Nightmare Lord and he hated it.

"I'm fine," he told the Dementor who had come into his room. "It's the same dream... always the same dream."

Six months ago something had happened. The Nightmare Lord wasn't sure what it was, but it ended up with the Dementors trying to explain something he had no idea about.

They had mentioned names, George Weasley, and Harry Potter but when the Nightmare Lord had tried to think about those names, and what he had forgotten, it hurt. So he locked it away. He didn't bother searching. If something hurt just to think about, why would he try to remember it at all?

The lord got up from bed and started heating water for some tea. He wouldn't be getting anymore sleep; he never did after those dreams. He hadn't gotten a lot of sleeping done in six months either due to the frequent dreams, and he was getting angry about it.

Also, he was afraid. Sometimes, when he went some place where there were people, he could hear the man. He could hear the voice, or the laughter. He could hear the insults, but found only shadows when he turned around to find this mysterious man.

It was growing annoying. He hated being afraid. What use was fear? Fear made him nervous, made him flee. Fear was useless to him, yet he experienced it every day. For every day he hated it more, and hated himself for not being able to push it away.

He pulled the hot water from the fire and sighed, sitting down on the bed again. Something had felt off ever since whatever happened six months ago. He found himself not knowing his name, never remembering if he had one, and holes in his memory. It was like he hadn't existed for long but that was stupid, right? He had to have been born and grown up, right?

Only thing was, he saw children sometimes and never remembered being one. Only in the dreams, and those couldn't possible be real... right? Perhaps the truth lay in those things that hurt to think about, but the one time he tried the hardest he ended up passing out from the pain. He didn't want to remember. Whatever he had lost, apparently he didn't want to remember ever having it in the first place.

Then there were these... objects. Things that he didn't remember getting. A container filled with ashes. Something stopped him from throwing the ashes away though, and something kept him from having the container away from him for too long.