5:00 AM

A heavy fog rolled in over the beach, trickling out of the surrounding forests and hugging low against the foundations of the house. Somewhere in the distance a bell was tolling the hour. The roar of the surf flooded in over the hollow thrum and washed the clamor into something soothing.

Salvador slept ... and he dreamed.

Everything was black. He was aware of existing, somewhere, in a dark and dismal nothingness. He was robbed of sight, and of sound, and he didn't like it at all. The dark was cold and terrible, smothering him, weighing him down on all sides.

To his left, he heard the rustle of robes, and he turned sharply with an indrawn hiss of startled breath, but he could see nothing. Behind him, he heard the clack and rattle of beads. He turned an about face just as swiftly, searching for some vision of nothing that he could see. To his right, he heard the chinking of chain links, and that too made him pivot on his heel.

The cold and smothering dark, the phantom noises, made him start to shiver. He lifted his arms and crossed them, hugging himself with shaking hands so tight. If he could have seen it, he was sure his breath would have been misting in the air.

There was a sudden pulse of flashing red, then only the inky black again. The sound of naughty childrens' laughter surrounded him on all sides, then switched off into silence. After a beat, another rush of noise flooded toward him, thousands of hundreds of scraps of rustling paper.

He felt them. One after another after another, sheaves of paper slapped and stuck to him from all sides. They bound his arms and his legs, swallowed up his face and stole his breath away until he was completely mummified by the lot of them. He toppled over into the dark, trying to scream, but the only sound he made was a muffled groan against the pages.

Rock lay beneath him, a solid and painfully hard substance. In a single swirling moment, all the pages tore themselves away from him and replaced the darkness with a dull red glow of light. "Salvador," he heard a voice moan at him to his left. He twisted to his side with a gasp, pushed an elbow to the stone floor and sat up just in time to hear another whisper behind him, again whimpering his name. "Salvador."

"How could you?" asked another voice to the right.

"Why, Salvador?" begged another to his left.

One after another and another, the voices called out to him. Disfigured faces pushed out from the surrounding walls, floor and ceiling. The faces bled and contorted in agony befitting the torment of Purgatory, and every mouth cried out his name, accusing him of some vague atrocity or another.

"You did this."

"It was all your fault."

"I thought you loved me."

"I thought you were my friend."

"You're a monster."

"Why, Salvador?"

"Help me, Salvador."

Twisting and turning, hyperventilating in a panic, Salvador rose unsteadily to his feet and spun circles as he tried to catch a glimpse of every speaker's face. He turned one way and then another, stepped forward, stepped back. "No," he moaned, lamenting himself. "I didn't. Who are you? What'd I do? I didn't! Stop! Stop asking me! I don't know," he cried, shoving his hands against his ears and closing his eyes tight.

A wicked child's cackling laughter filtered in amongst the voices surrounding him. Somewhere in the distance a bell was tolling the hour. The roar of the surf flooded in over the hollow thrum and washed the clamor into something soothing.

Salvador woke up gasping in a fright. For the first time in too long, he sat bolt upright in bed and awoke to the sound of his own startled shout. "No!"

For the first time in a long time, he awoke shivering in a sweat. A tremble had taken claim of all his limbs and he bent forward with one arm locked against the sheets. His other hand immediately touched against his sternum where wounds from the night before were still fresh, where the bone beneath was scratched with deep gouges from the point of a blade. Beneath that, his heart was pounding furiously while his breath panted out in short spurts.

While the dim gray light of a rising dawn trickled into the room and came slowly into focus around him, he swore he heard an ominously maniacal chortle whisper in his ear, and that too made him shiver.

Elsewhere. An interlude.

"He does not sleep. Why does he not sleep?"

"Half of Her resides in him; in the blood both thick and thin."

The Keeper was not pleased with this answer. A gaping maw of shadowy substance peeled back in a silent snarl. Teeth as black as pitch and sharp as night dripped venom upon the stars of the sky. "A thousand dreams he has to dream and not a night to dream them. I forgot how troublesome this child could be."

A roiling landscape of multiple colors whirled and ebbed beneath the paws of the shadow beast as he prowled in pacing strides to and fro across the expanse of his domain. Riding on the crown of his head sat a spider. "Never have I seen you lacking patience," said She of the Golden Threads. "He'll dream again when comes her absence."

A hundred thousand screams burbled under the Keeper's intangible hide. None of them were his own, and he shuddered with fattened glee to hear them. "Winter is too long in coming," the horror beast grumbled. "And I have waited too long to be stalled by the length of a season."

"Time is nothing to the likes of we," the spider said soothingly. "When it passes, what shall be, will be."

The shifting shadow shook its massive frame and dislodged the spider from the crown of his head with a disgruntled snort. When she landed, he put a massive paw atop her abdomen and blotted out the golden gleam of the two crescent moons that marked her belly. He hunkered down to snarl in her reflective black eyes. "He will be mine," the Keeper growled hungrily. "As he should have been mine from the beginning."

"It was not your essence which made him so," remarked the spider. She was not moved to shudder nor shriek under the weight of her captor. For as the north pole can never be kept by the south, neither could the Keeper trap her where she did not belong. "This is truth as you well know."

"Know it," roared the Keeper. "Yes, I know it! As for the long eons which shape mortality into being, have I ever known how continuously She has spurned me. Do not mock me, sister." The weight of his paw lifted off the spider, and he began to pace again.

She of the Golden Threads spun a weave and scrambled up his tail. She skittered across the expanse of his back to rest again upon the crown of his head. "Mock you, no. This be not what I do. Those with power to summon me there are but few."

"Yes," grumbled the horror beast, in a thousand different voices that growled and quaked. "I did summon you indeed."

"What counsel then might I bestow? What wisdom would you like to know?"

The Keeper paused and looked out upon his domain. Windows into the living world there were in numerous multitude. Each one showed him the dreadful fears and agonizing nightmares of all that lived and breathed. He reached out to caress them with the core of his essence, and he swelled from the feast of them. "If I cannot shape his dreams, I am left with only one recourse."

"None but you and he know better what he fears, kin brother," said the spider. "What is it to me that you entreat to proffer?"

"You had him trapped within your web for eight long days, sister," purred the Keeper. "There are secrets yet that you keep." Settling back upon his shadowy haunches, the horror beast reached up and plucked the spider from the crown of his head. He brought her, nestled in his roiling palm, before his wicked face to look deep into her glossy black eyes. "Show me the dreams I tasted once that were not his, yet haunted him as his own do."

"What little good it will do for you to know what he knows not," said the spider. "What use to you is all that he has forgot?"

"I am lord and master of all that mortals fear, Revari," rumbled the Keeper. "Known and unknown." He pressed his muzzle to the heel of his paw so that his red eyes could illuminate her shell. Menace reflected back at him from the depths of her eyes. "Show me."

She of the Golden Threads blinked once in speculative silence, and then she weaved a web to show him.

The shapes and shadows persisted here, above, in the heart of the Inn. He stumbled into a suffocating swell of uncertainties. Blocks and ribbons of colors, of dimly flickering auras swayed to and fro, flickered in and out of his vision. The whispers crowded in around him and seemed more tangible than the floor beneath his feet, more solid than the walls that caged the heart of the building.

The common room itself was different. He wasn't sure where he was at first. Mushroom shaped rocks were splayed about. A low wall hugged itself around undefined creatures of varying arrays of color. Skittering shadow shapes slithered up the walls, dashed across the ceiling, and from the place the door should be one called out to him. "Salvador."

He looked and saw a glint of red in the dark gloom of mist. He heard a doggish cackle, a child's giggle, and watched as the shadow-goblin ducked out into the night. Salvador plunged through the thick red fog and followed after it, feeling that it was of vital importance he catch up.

Halfway there one of the buzzing whispers snapped out of the gloom. "Mi alma," he heard, just barely, and he stopped. He turned his head and squinted through the dark. There he saw the reflection of himself flicker in and out of seeing. His demented reflection cackled at him before it was gone. He turned back to the door and continued onward, not wanting to deal with himself at all. There was something more important just beyond the door. Something...

An insect buzzed by his ear and murmured Spanish at him. "?Qu? te pasa?" He stopped again, just short of the door. The whispers ebbed and flowed in constantly maddening lack of clarity. What were they saying? He turned his head to try to see the bug, but it too was gone. There was nothing there. Only the shadow shapes and the mirage-heated, swaying room cloaked in mist. He turned again and stepped out the door.

"Mi amor!" He heard the cry behind him, just barely. Like a shout down a long tunnel, it curled around his ears. Making it to just at the top of the stairs, he stopped again. Turned his head to search for the source. Somewhere. Something a little louder than everything else and he just couldn't place it and... Since he couldn't locate it, he descended.

The street outside the Inn was not as he remembered it. The outside world was wildly alive with licking curls of black smoke, tendril-like appendages that boiled up from the ground and snapped back down again into the dirt. The sky was a dark and dingy white that was not at all bright. Like the moon glow caught in a fog, nearly gray.

A howling creature tore down out of the sky at him, all black and dripping its shadowy mass upon the ground. He turned aside quickly, lifting his arms to defend his face. As it swooped by it made him twirl in place, and when he dropped his arms again to see it, the thing was gone, whatever it had been.

The Inn was gone too. He couldn't see it anymore, the fog was so thick. All the buildings around him were gone. There was nothing but shade and shadow and the mist that coiled and clung to his knees. Then, something grabbed him.

His reflexes were quick as they ever were. Whatever it was, though he could not see it clearly, had taken him by his right arm. The black was thickest before him, and the throwing knife he kept concealed up his sleeve was quick to slide into his left hand. He thrust out quickly and plunged the blade into the shadow's mass.

"Salvador!" Beyond the gripping darkness, he heard the mists cry out his name. A small group of leaping shadow-goblins cackled and tittered as they bounced somersaults into the air. Jumping beans about two feet large, until the mists again swallowed them and there was nothing.

"Salvador Delahada Azar-Gonzales!" A fissure of light broke out of the dark. He saw, for a fleeting instant, Fionna step out of the fog. Then, in a blink, she was gone again. He stumbled back a step, feeling the weight of air crushing him, groaned, then something leaped out of the dark beside him and knocked him harshly to the cold, hard ground.

Vines and creepers tittered as they broke from the earth. Great and shadowy masses of tentacle vegetation sought to hold him down. He saw the limbs slap by his face. He slashed out at them wildly, struggling and writhing to break free of their hungry grasp. One flailed down and connected hard, like a meaty fist, with the side of his head. He was knocked aside, onto his back, and with the knife in hand still he cut in as if to plunge the blade into the thick heart of a living thing.

Then, without warning, for no good reason, all the thick creepers abandoned him. He felt the weight of them peel away. He scurried back on his feet and elbows, twisted and turned until he was on his hands and knees and could crawl away faster. Just in case they were still lurking there, waiting for him to think he was safe.

Crouching a fair distance, or so he thought, away from that strange battle, he looked to the knife in his hand. He still held it, clutched the balanced handle tight. Something warm and wet was sliding down the blade. It smelled like blood. It had to be blood. He didn't know that shadows could bleed.

Taunting whispers giggled in the mist, echoing old laments from the days he dreamed. So long ago, but he remembered them. The words were barely audible, but he knew them true enough. Blood on his hands. Blood on his knife. Blood and blood and more blood. The faces of those he knew and loved. Their voices moaning and crying in the dark. He dropped the knife hastily and turned away.

Scrambling and clawing to get purchase under his feet again, he ran. Somewhere, someone was bleeding. It was his fault. He killed someone. He must have. It was like prophecy, his nightmares. They were true, and all he could do was run from them. Cry and hope and beg and plead that he hadn't done what the darkness told him he did. The maddening whispers that cackled and crowed and delighted in his misery.

A few quick steps reminded him that his coat was heavy with dozens more weapons the likes of which he had killed with this night. He struggled hastily out of the sleeves and let it drop discarded in the dirt behind him. Leaving it abandoned in his wake, he ran. He ran...

Somewhere in the far off reaches of the deepest, darkest Dreaming, there sits a throne made of shadow. The throne is built of the thickest and blackest of shadows, so strongly imbued with terror that it is a seat made solid. Upon its sturdy station sits a Fae Lord.

Like all ethereal true fae, the Nightmare Keeper is in truth without form. He, if gender were a factor, is a spirit made fat by all that fears are made of. The fears and nightmares and terrors of all that lives and breathes, all that is sentient and instilled with enough basic instinct to survive. He is the embodiment of a necessary evil, and takes the forms of all those things that go bump in the night, of all that makes a mortal tremble from fright.

Though amongst his kith and kin, and sometimes to the mortal eye as well, the Keeper sometimes takes a different form. He appears as a flawlessly androgynous young creature of human shape, with skin as pale and white as freshly manufactured paper. Hair as red as a fresh cut rose, sometimes long and straight, other times short and wildly spiked in untamed disarray. Always are his lips pained red. Always, in this form, are his eyes a vibrant purple that glint like fresh cut precious stones.

It is in this form that he sits upon his shadow throne. With hands whose nails are all painted a different color, and fingers bejeweled with rings, he sifts through the windows of mortal minds and places the Nightmares where they belong.

A touch to this panel sends Gina Blum the dream of her great uncle Bertrand before he brushes it aside. A caress to the next panel fills Willie Tumpleton dreams with rabid monkeys before he brushes it aside. A tap to the next panel reminds Marla Humphries of how terrified she is of drowning before he brushes it aside. On and on through the lists of hundreds of thousands of millions of dreamers.

Tirelessly and efficiently the Keeper works. This is his domain. This is his purpose. Always and ever to unleash the fearful dread from their cages and place them where they belong. Always and ever to put them back into their cells when the dreamers wake again. Only fear and terror interest him. Only on this does he survive. For it is on fear and terror, on Nightmares, that he does feed. And so long as there are those to feel it, to know fear, he will forever remain fat and full and thriving.

Though something drops a ripple into his domain. Something beats a pulse that rolls through the roiling landscape at the feet of his throne. Something distracts him from his purpose long enough to look up and momentarily cast aside the lists of dreamers waiting for their dreams. They can wait until he determines the source of this anomaly, for time has no meaning to the fae.

"What is this?" he asks the empty screams that swell in his domain. The shifting shadows shudder and cower into the backdrop of his sanctuary. A long idle window lights up on the far side of the chamber, if a chamber it can be called.

The Keeper lifts this thin, white hand, decorated in its many rings and colored nails. With only a beckoning gesture, he pulls that dusty window to him from the distance, until it hovers like a neglected looking glass before him and his throne.

In this window he sees the face of a sleeping boy. A young man, by all accounts. A boy with hair as brown as mud and eyes the color rust. One of his favorite subjects of study. An opportunity he has been longing for. "Oooooh," the Keeper rumbles with delight. The echo of his shadowy form, the beast of many forms, shakes through him as he caresses the edges of the window.

Swelling with glee, the Keeper grasps this window and pulls it to his robe-draped lap. He drags his nails around the perimeter of the glass and watches the ripples spread across the surface. It is with a delighted, menacing, trilling cackle that he says, "He sleeps." And like a lover he pulls his hand across this one boy's window, purring as he sends to him his dreams.

November 14, 2009

Everything was dark. His eyes had not yet fully adjusted to being awake. It was enough of a panic to realize that he had been sleeping, and even that was slow to settle as fact in his brain. Salvador's heart was pounding furiously in his chest. The entire room was ringing around his ears as he struggled to breathe, gasping desperately for air.

As the ringing and buzzing slowly subsided, a voice infiltrated his ears. A very calm and familiar voice that he hadn't expected to hear. "Who's Dan?" Skid asked.

Groaning, Salvador drew his knees up and pressed his forearms to his thighs. He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered. The spikes under his shirt twitched and crackled along their joints, making the fabric bend outward briefly along his spine. "Dan," he muttered. "Dan. They call him Dris. He likes that name better. Oh God..."

The dream was still so vivid that he had yet to believe it had been a dream at all. He remembered very clearly attacking the man. The wild, monstrous other side of him had overwhelmed his senses with bloodlust and rage the moment Dris had slapped him. He just as vividly remembered wrapping his hands around his throat. What he didn't remember was ending up here. Where was here?

Skid's voice remained low and indistinct, perhaps to keep Salvador calm or unriled. Perhaps, though, simply because of his irritable and tired mood. "Why are you calling for him?"

"He was there," he whispered, shivering. "Oh God, oh God. He's dead. I killed him. Oh Dan." The nightmare was still fresh in his mind, if only Skid knew. It had been so real. So vivid. "What've I done?"

"You haven't killed him." An eyeridge twisted upwards. "You haven't done anything." Skid sounded more irritated even than when he'd given Dris the eye on his way out, if only for a moment or two. "I kicked you in the head while you were choking him, and you've been unconscious for the last five hours."

"I didn't?" Hopeful and disbelieving, Salvador lifted his face out of his hands. He squinted fiercely at the low light of the office, as his eyes adjusted to the change. Oh, there was the headache. "Nngh." He swayed, pressing the heel of one hand against his temple. "Where... Skid?" Hello, he finally recognized the voice.

In the old, almost dessicated-looking and rather darkened office overlooking the HEAT production facilities, Skid had set Salvador upon a long and beaten leather couch. He'd pulled him out of his jacket and set it upon the couch's arm, while the Spaniard himself was lain along its length in the enveloping squish of the cushions. Skid, once again, found himself lounging in a tired, irritable fashion behind the desk. He'd brought in warm water and cold, tended the point of impact as best he could, but there was only so much one could do for such a heavy blow.

Salvador was a heavy sleeper when he was knocked the f*ck out unconscious. And even when he did sleep on normal occasions, he slept like the dead. He didn't groan nor grumble, toss nor turn. The only evidence that he was alive was the fact that he was still breathing. Wherever Skid had set him down, however he was laid out, that's where Salvador had stayed, in that position. Until he woke up moments ago.

"Don't look around too much," Skid said, as he pushed the chair around, rolling on silent, greased wheels towards the couch. "I kick hard." Once he reached the couch, he leaned around to look at him. "You're in my office, underground. Dris slapped you and you attacked him, then I stopped you and brought you here while you were unconscious." He took a moment to let it sink in, not sure whether or not Sal remembered the order of events. "You've been rather antisocial lately, too."

No, he really didn't remember the order of events. He didn't remember Skid kicking him in the head, but as powerful as the half-Daemon's kicks were, he wouldn't have. That moment was very much appreciated, to let the facts sink in. "Nnngh," he said first, dropping his forehead against his knee. One arm dangling off the other. "Thank you."

Of all the things to thank a person for. Most people would be upset, pissed off, that someone they called friend had kicked them in the head, but not Salvador. He was grateful that the half-Daemon had been there, had pulled him off, had kept him from doing what his most recent dream told him he had done. As to the being antisocial thing? He didn't at all respond to that.

Under most circumstances, it would've been a rather comedic choice in 'response'. Under those current ones, though, it was simply more irritation and confusion for Skid. "You're welcome." He scowled openly, and then narrowed his eye. "Look at me. I need to check the swelling."

"I'm fine," Salvador muttered, but lifted his head anyway. There was one hell of a bruise, that's for sure, but no severe swelling. There was also one hell of a scowl on his face to match Skid's. He looked at him briefly with narrowed eyes that were more yellow than orange. His blood was working its magic inside.

"Why are you upset with me?" He took Salvador's chin and turned his head slightly, to catch the dim light across the bruise in a better position. "You should be fine soon. I don't know how long the disorientation will last."

"Nnn." His teeth bared slighly, and he looked beyond Skid's face while the half-Daemon tilted his head. He was used to being doctored, at least by people he trusted. So despite misgivings he took it in stride. Never mind the sneer. "You stink of them," he grumbled.

"Them?" His nose twitched, nostrils pulled up in his distaste of the term in context. "Teagan, and Jaycy. You've reacted rather radically to their stupid stunt." He lifted a finger. "Follow this." Side to side, up and down. "Is it hard to move aside from the dizziness?"

"Stunt," Salvador scoffed. He was frowning, but didn't say much more than that on account of following Skid's finger with his eyes as instructed. Though he blinked a bit, trying to keep his focus. "No."

"Humans act stupidly throughout the majority of their lives. Far more than most other beings can dare to claim as a whole." Droll, before Skid lowered his finger and handed him a warm, slightly damp towel from the little table beside the couch. "Put this on your head and lean back again. Don't move too much."

Salvador accepted the towel with a slightly disgusted curl of his lip. It was wet. He wasn't a big fan of wet, but at least it was warm. As instructed, he eased back onto his back, using the armrest as a pillow, and stretched out his legs, slapping the towel on his head. "There's something wrong with you," he muttered at the ceiling.

"And what would that be?" Skid resisted the urge to fold his legs and pull out a clipboard quite admirably.

The light, however dim, was too much, so he shut his eyes. "I don't know. Under them--" Jaycy and Teagan. "--there's something else." In Skid's scent. "You smell like Her."

He noted the inflection, and his brow creased in enough thought to cause him to begin itching again. "Like.." He still hadn't come to such intimate terms as to know what Faye called herself, nor had he bothered to ask anyone else what they called her. "Your Mother?"

"Yes." There was the sneer. The hiss in a single word. Distaste. He was likely to be in a grumpy mood for a while longer yet, waking up with a headache and all.

"You can smell Hethen, when it surfaces." He leaned back in his chair and took a long breath. "Hethen is what echoed within Teagan and forced life through her after death. Your Mother brought Hethen out of dormancy through me on Halloween, when I stumbled too far into the forest. Kept me alive."

"Tch." At least he refrained from tacking on the 'idiot' that usually accompanies that noise. Though he was still frowning, a little more fiercely than before. "Teagan died?" That was news.

"As I said. Humans do increasingly stupid things throughout their lives. Teagan couldn't handle what had happened, and the scope of her actions, so she tried to kill herself. I believe her death was technically my fault, but the whole.. Process, was turned back upon itself with the forced reversion of Hethen. It was only for a little while."

Salvador only continued to frown. He had nothing to say, but that silence spoke volumes. Did Skid realize that by telling him this, Salvador's opinion of Teagan just dropped further than it already was?

Probably. But he wouldn't really care, either way. "Regardless, the fact that she'd gone to such lengths to commit such a stupid," perhaps Salvador would hear the hatred and feel all warm and fuzzy proportionately and contextually, "unthinking act spurred me to discover the cause and extinguish it. I'm uncertain as to whether or not I've accomplished this yet, but I'm beginning to place less and less of my attention on it." He may have been snarling under his breath after reciting all of that and painting the picture before himself for the first time in its entirety.

Oh, he did. Salvador heard the hatred loud and clear. He also struggled valiantly not to let it show how pleased he was to hear it, but likely he failed. The frown eased off and one corner of his lips twitched toward something like a crooked smile. It didn't last long, though, as there was still that one part that made him sick to his stomach. "You slept with her," he accused distastefully.

"And I still do." He looked at him with a truly indecipherable mask. "I liked her before. I want to dig out what I like again. Don't be such a child. Things changed for the worse, and they can change for the better just as well. Don't judge me." The last three words rang on, because that's where he went silent.

Salvador may have thrown up in his mouth a little. The look on his face suggested as much. The way his lips peeled back and he scowled. The words 'dirty whore' rang in his head, words he snarled in his nightmares. So fresh still. Echoes of it lingered. He shouldn't be feeling this, this... disgusted jealousy. But it was an opinion he couldn't shake. Skid was tainted now, by her. The thought of touching him again, like he used to, anymore, made him ill. He couldn't help being a child in this instance.

"You should be careful about that digging," he muttered, shuffling and twisting on the leather sofa to face the back of it, to put his back to Skid. "Don't forget what happened with Fio." Ouch.

Skid couldn't even speak. He stared, jaw hung barely limp, mind reeling, chest heavy and pained, at the back of Salvador's head. He twitched distractedly, and finally his voice emerged in a low-slung, hateful rumble. "Whenever you talk so calmly about something like that, don't you dare toss it out and turn away. You watch what it does to me." He curled his fingers into the chair's arms. "And when you pain me like that, when you know you're trying to bring me that kind of pain, never look away."

At that moment, Skid got up, and threw his chair across the room to smash into the bookshelf. "I'll be back to check on you in an hour. Don't go anywhere." He headed for the door, opened it, and very nearly splintered the wood around the hinges when he closed it behind him.

Did Skid get the satisfaction of seeing him flinch? He did, when the chair smashed into the bookshelf. He did again when the door slammed. The noise made his ears ring and his head pound harder, but he deserved that. Gritting his teeth and hunkering down into the leather cushions, he knew he deserved that.

Arms crossed, his head slid off the armrest and burrowed down flat with the rest of him, still facing the back of the sofa, with his eyes closed. A part of him wanted to defy that order, to not wait, to get up and leave, find his way out of wherever the hell he was. But that required far too much effort. And either way, being left alone to think was punishment enough, no matter where he was.

Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and looked at each other over crests of flesh and bone, though they weren't of equal height. She stood elevated, on a pedestal just high enough to meet him at eye level. He took long, slow steps around her, forward and to the right so that they were back to back, then right again and back so that their opposing shoulders could meet and again they could look each other in the eyes. It was a Dance.


Then she was gone. She of the glowing skin and eyes, the dark hair all a head shorter than himself. She who smelled of wildflowers preserved in frost . . . and something more.


A baby was wailing. That irritating and constant siren yowl of demand made those small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He grit his teeth and followed the noise with only one intent, to silence the beast.


There was a room full of baby bassinets, dozens of them all pristine and white. The whole lot of them were rocking back and forth as their contents screamed and screamed. He whirled one way and the other only to discover that he was surrounded by them. He was stuck in a sea of swaying, braying newborn insanity. The stink of them all was nearly as maddening as the racket these fragile little monsters produced.

"Shut up," he hissed at them. They didn't listen. Every single newborn child only cried louder and louder, shrieking incessantly. He put his hands over his ears and grit his teeth. There was nothing to do but to shut his eyes and hope he had the power to wish them away, but when he looked again the sea of bassinets remained.

"What do you want from me?" he begged of them, but they only continued to cry. Daring to look into one of the baskets, he was appalled to discover some explanation that he didn't much like at all.

The baby in the bassinet was misshapen and inhuman in a variety of ways. Though it had four arms and legs, ten fingers and toes, and a head like any other human infant he had ever seen, this one was different. The legs were crooked and the arms weren't quite on right. The head was too angular and the skin was spotted. Little horns cropped up along the scalp all over the place, so minuscule but there, like sharp bits of Braille in place of hair. The baby was only freshly born but already its mouth was full of sharp little teeth, and its tiny fingers ended in claws.

This was no human baby. No. Whirling around and checking all the nearby bassinets, running through the sea of them, he realized that every last one of the babies was the same. Some sort of hideous monster of a creature. They weren't wailing because they were hungry. They were wailing because they were in pain.

"You shouldn't be," he screamed at them. "None of you should be!" In response they all only began to cry louder and louder, drowning out the sound of his own voice. Again he pressed his hands to his ears, but he couldn't completely shut the noise out.

A buzzing and whirring sound instantly infiltrated the raucous of screaming newborns. He watched, then, as one by one they lifted themselves out of their bassinets and into the air on fragile insect wings that thrummed as rapidly as hummingbirds' wings. "No," he moaned. "You shouldn't be."

Dozens upon dozens of monstrous winged babies spiraled through the air, clawing and biting at each other and filling the air with red rain. He could only watch in helpless horror as they fought for dominance amongst themselves. Only one of them was going to live through this, he knew.

Still too young to fully hold their heads up, to have much of any coordination at all, yet the demonic newborns persisted in their mindless task. They swooped and rolled and barreled into each other, one after the other. They slammed into the walls, the ceiling and the floor; none of which he could see existing as any real and certain boundary. He watched as they tore each other to shreds, tossed deformed limbs aside, and fumbled onto the next target. They suckled on the blood of life, these monsters, instead of a mother's teat.

On his knees, he waited, rocking back and forth with the heels of his hands pressed as firmly against his ears as he could hold them. The noise eventually receded until no one was left to be crying. But there was one.

The last remaining infant buzzed and weaved its way through the air over newly painted red bassinets until it was hovering before him. He wept at the sight of the creature, looking so satisfied as the blood dripped from its body. "You shouldn't be," he whispered shakily, and reached up his hands to catch the baby from the air. The newborn alighted into his hands with a happy little squeal.

And then he snapped its neck.



Salvador woke up with a shout, shivering and in tears.