The stuff of nightmares

[Warning—gore.]

I am surrounded by grass plains. The same ones that span around Willow Creek. I can't see the town itself, but I know it's just behind me.

In front of me, several dozen feet away, stands a church. It's small, but well-cared for. Wooden, but painted with the purest white. Glass windows catch sunlight like drops of morning dew. It's beckoning me.

Still, I turn around, unsure. Willow Creek is just there, but the town differs from what I remember. Younger, and smaller. There are no power lines, and no cars. Several horses graze in the field.

Am I in the past? In a dream about the past. There is fog around my ability for critical thinking, but it dissipates now. Yet the church keeps beckoning.

"I'd prefer to be in a dream about flying," I mutter, but imagining wings doesn't seem to work.

Curiosity is stronger than me—and there's nothing to be afraid of in a dream. I march forward, eager to see what's so special about this church that I dream of it.

The inside of the building perfectly matches the outsides. Simple, but beautiful. A priest stands at the altar, his back towards me. All I can see are the black robes flowing to the floor, and the long, black hair that falls down to the man's neck in uneven, snake-like curls.

That's not typical, but this is a dream, after all. Still, the man's silhouette feels somewhat familiar...

"Hello?" I ask, approaching the priest. "Hm, how are you supposed to greet people in a dream?"

The man finally turns towards me, and I take a step back with a gasp. He's no priest. What I thought was a robe is a long cloak of pure darkness, and in it wrapped the man whose face is hard to mistake with any other.

The ink-black eyes without whites and iris are a dead giveaway.

"What a good question. This really depends on the custom and on the person." The man's thin lips curve into a smile that makes my heart lurch. I can't tell if it's because he's scary, stunning, or both. "Most locals greet me with screams."

Before I can say anything, the dream shifts. Ages pass in a moment. The church around me crumbles to ruin, abandoned, dilapidated, with marks of fire on its bare wooden ribs. Most pews are missing, or have crumbled, and the altar is broken in two.

Only the man in front of me is unchanged. I swallow and make a step back, but then force my way through the fear. This is just a dream. Lucid dreams are a rare thing, but they happen.

"First, I had hallucinated you, now I dream you up." I tsk. "If I began to come up with hot hunks out of loneliness, why did I have to think up someone so creepy?"

"Oh, my innocent Lock." The dark man slightly shakes his head. "I am very much real. Just come to me and see."

"See what? You?"

Instead of answering, the man laughs, as if I said a good joke. His cloak, which already swept the floors, grows longer. It spills to the floor like a liquid shadow, so deep I could fall into it, and spreads to all sides.

I scramble away from it, and my eyes widen in terror as the darkness climbs the walls. It blots out the light, reaches forward with thick tentacles, all the while laughter echoes through the building.

It swallows the strange man whole and reaches for me. I do the only thing there's left—I run.

The next part is blurry. I remember running, but I don't remember where. All I know is the hungry darkness behind me, the hungry darkness that for a while looked and sounded like a man. Looked and sounded.

When it's finally not here, I find myself standing in the open doors of the town's hall. The modern version of it. The day outside turned into a night, and one glance at it reminds me of the writhing darkness. Contrary to it, the town hall is well lit.

I step inside, and the doors close behind me with a bang that makes me jump and turn around. When I look into the hall again, it's filled with townspeople. There is everyone I know, and some people I don't. They look absolutely normal, all dressed in the same clothes I remember them being—except the way they stand in a half circle in front of me sends shivers down my spine.

But not as many as what's between me and them. It looks... like a giant plate. A giant meat plate, with raw cuts tastefully arranged on it and decorated with all the things that didn't make it: two palms with glittering-pink nails, two carefully washed feet... A head.

Rose's head. Her glassed-over eyes are opened in a silent stare that's pointed right at me. The apple-painted lips are open in a vacant expression, her jaws not held closed by muscle anymore. Her one day luxurious blond hair is now a limp mockery of itself.

I clump my hands over my mouth, feeling a sudden urge to throw up. I have to look at something, anything but Rose's head, but can't make my eyes look—until I feel a hand moving a strand of my hair behind my ear.

I swivel to see the dark man again. Like the very first time I've met him, he silently smiles and points away, just as the lights in the room dim. Behind me, where the man points at, I hear noises.

Crunching. Wet slaps. Something dripping and sloshing. Something tearing. Smells, too disgusting and unfamiliar for me to describe, start filling my nose and I have to breathe with my mouth. There's still not enough air, but I grasp for it with desperation.

I am hyperventilating. I don't need—*don't want*—to look back to see what must happen there. All I want is to wake up, so much that I'm ready to cry.

My pleas are answered.