The gargantuan demon, over twenty stories tall, strode across the hellish landscape. His sword, longer than he was tall, dragged behind him, leaving a wound in the rock deep enough for a man to stand in with room to spare. Though, the odds were that no man would want to stand in said rift, for lava began pouring from the rock like blood from a wounded animal.
The demon, all two hundred feet of coiled muscle, black fur, and twisted horns, sat down on the edge of a cliff and set his flaming blade down by his side. He looked out upon the world and conjured a jar and a brush from thin air. In the jar resided the mashed up remains of countless humans, recognizable only by the occasional unmolested organ or bone that floated through the paste. He dipped his massive paintbrush into the viscera, leaned back, and raised his arm to paint a mural on the ash filled sky itself.
He could do that sort of thing, if he wanted. He could do anything he wanted. After all, his demonic persona, Morpheus, was the god of this world. And why wouldn’t he be? He was a lucid dreamer; this was his mind.
He loved his dreams. They were the purest form of expression he had left in his life, and the only outlet for the stress he felt in the waking world. Out there, he was weak, broken, and defective. He knew that well, as it had been the defining facet of his life for almost as long as he could remember. In here, though, he was god, and he was free.
It wasn’t as if he could actually tell people about his dreams. If he could, well, he wouldn’t even have a problem in the first place, nor would he be having these dreams. Neither would he say, if he could. What would his sister think of her cheerful, happy-go-lucky brother secretly harboring a desire to brutally murder and torture everyone? No, he’d be a monster here in his dreams where it would not matter. Thus, he would save his cheer for her.
Summoned by the demon-shaped-human’s musing, a dream version of his sister, scaled up to match his size, strolled up behind him and wrapped her arms around him. In a flicker faster than the mind could follow, they were no longer on the edge of a cliff in hell, but in his art studio, and he was himself once more. His sister, unconcerned by the sudden change in scenery or his appearance, leaned over and whispered a single word into his now human ear, “Love.”
Tears welled up in his eyes. Suddenly shifting back to his demonic body, he drew his sword and sliced her in two, all with the same motion. He collapsed into the expanding puddle of viscera and cried.
He hated this part of the night, despising it above all others. That thing… that was not her, and it would never be her. The sister he knew and loved had thousands of words, millions of words. Given ten minutes, she could create a masterful poem of any style, an enthralling speech, or melodious lyrics to a song.
But like every single person in his dreams, himself included, the words escaped her. He could not stand it, not one bit. To see her skill sullied by his mind was worse than any hellish landscape his Morpheus persona could conjure. For, as projections of his own mind, they had the same limits as he.
Some form of aphasia, the doctors called it. Was it expressive, was that the type? It had been decades since that diagnosis had been made, so he wasn’t sure. Regardless, he called his condition prison, no, hell. A little bump on the head as a small kid had stolen the ability to express all but the simplest ideas, be it spoken, written, or signed, from right out of his mind. Though he could understand others if they spoke slow enough, he himself could never have any talent with words.
At the corpse of the mockery of his sister, he spat, “Hate. Love.”
He paused half-way through his cathartic rampage through Generic City. His hand slowly lowered from his muzzle after having just eaten a dozen faceless, generic humans from destroyed building number two-fifty-one. Normally, the act of counting helped keep him asleep in a dream, but this was ridiculous. He’d had this dream many times before, and he’d never gotten above one hundred before waking up after a full night’s sleep.
Morpheus blinked, suddenly aware another oddity of his dream: the details. Specifically, his bland city suddenly looked much less generic and much more like downtown Manhattan. The people in his other hand also looked much less generic too, taking on a degree of detail he’d never dreamed before, including actual, terrified faces.
Suddenly panicking, his monstrous head whipped around, desperately searching the city. Morpheus’s eyes froze when they landed upon a sign protruding from one of the buildings. It was a simple sign that read ‘Starbucks’. Above it was a clock that read ‘2:35’.
He staggered backwards as if struck in the chest and dropped the people in his clutches. His panic rose higher still as he gazed upon the impossible sight of the sign and clock. Those were his tells; if he could read anything, he was awake, if not, it was a dream. So how the hell was he a monster if he was awake? Worse, had he actually killed those people?
He spun on his clawed feet and bolted away from the accursed sign and clock. In the back of the giant’s mind, drowned under the sea of panic swirling in his mind, he knew the shock should have woken him, especially since he wanted to wake.
So plagued by fear, Morpheus failed to notice the world disintegrating behind his every step. Had he seen it, he would have stopped panicking, realizing that his fears were truly irrational and unfounded. But he did not look back, and he did not realize that he was not actually a mass murdering demon.
As he charged forward, a ring of fire, based on what his mind assumed the gates to hell would look like, appeared before him. Deciding that it was his best bet, Morpheus charged through it at full speed, consequences be damned. He crossed the threshold and was greeted by a surge of energy far more invigorating than even twelve hours of sleep and the best coffee in the world. Unfortunately for him, the reality of that sensation was in fact the worst possible thing that could have happened to him at that very moment, though he wouldn’t know the truth until much later.
Morpheus, though calmer now, was still terrified. His thoughts raced back and forth, as his pacing body did the same. Ever since he had received that jolt of energy and appeared in that star-filled area beyond the portal, his dream had become high definition. Instead of, say, a red blob that his mind unconsciously recognized as an apple, he held in his claws an apple accurate to every last blemish and bruise, with all five of his senses taking in detail equivalent to the waking world.
He tried every trick he could to wake up. After a moment of grasping for the words he needed, Morpheus bellowed with all his might, “DREAMING! AWAKE!” Nothing happened. He conjured a mirror. It showed his horrifying reflection, against everything he had experienced in his dream adventures. Morpheus pinched himself, wincing as his claws painfully drew blood. Desperate, he jumped off of the starry path he stood upon, intent on plummeting to his doom and the waking world, he merely, if painfully, bounced off of a lower path.
With every test, every attempt to rouse himself, Morpheus’s sense of dread grew. Was he in a dream that he could not awaken from? Or was this all real, and he had senselessly devoured countless humans? Logic told him it was likely the former, but he could not shake the doubt.
He growled in frustration, though the feeling of sound rumbling in his chest only disturbed him more. The giant flopped down in a chair that had appeared for him. Placing his persona’s claws against his forehead, he tried to remember if anything odd had happened before he went to sleep. His claws tightened, pulling at the bloodstained, coal black fur that covered his persona’s body as his mind failed to produce recent memories. Scratch that, he was having trouble remembering anything about his identity as well. He couldn’t remember his waking name, what his flesh face looked like, the location of his home, and so much more. There was his sister, and she had a talent with words. Morpheus at least remembered that much. His memory for semantic details had always been fuzzy, though never this bad before.
Giving up, he stood, slung his blade over his shoulders, and started walking down a road of stars.
In time, though he wasn’t sure how long, the path in front of him ended. With little regard for his safety, the dream demon jumped off the edge. As he fell, the stars raced faster and faster, blurring into a blue, then silver, then white haze. Bursting from the clouds, he descended towards the peak of a green snow covered mountain. That is, the snow was green, spotted with the occasional brown patch. As his snowboard-bound feet landed on the side of the mountain, Morpheus’s nose was assaulted by the scent of mint. He rolled his eyes; of course it was a mountain of mint ice-cream.
Having never stood on a snowboard before to the best of his knowledge, Morpheus shredded down the slope with the skill of an Olympic athlete, for that was what he imagined. Caught up in the sudden excitement, Morpheus started laughing as the sweet wind rushed past his furry body. Deciding that he wanted to go even faster, Morpheus took his flaming sword, aimed it behind his back, and let off a torrent of flames to propel himself like a rocket. Off he shot, and though the flames scorched the mountain, the ice-cream didn’t melt simply because those details were too troublesome to bother with imagining. As he flew down the slope, he noticed that the lower he got, the sharper the details became.
In a matter of seconds, he was at the bottom of the mountain of mint ice-cream. It was as he was walking through the valley that he noticed something odd. Darting back and forth across the other ice-cream mountains in the region was a wedge shaped area of clarity, in which everything looked sharper and more detailed. Noting that the point of the wedge seemed to be in one stationary location, Morpheus decided that that was where he should go.
It took less than a hundred of his massive strides to pass through the forest of crystal trees that filled the valley, and none of said trees even came up to his shoulders in height. Each of his massive footfalls shook the earth, causing the trees to tinker like the sound of falling glass.
The human-turned-dream-demon stepped into a clearing, the source of the wedge of clarity. There on the ground stood a wingless, lance-wielding dragon dressed in a cape, pants, and a few sparse pieces of armor. Cowering behind him was a tiny white unicorn with a purple mane, dressed in a stereotypical princess’s dress. “Do not fret, Lady Rarity,” the dragon proclaimed in the voice of a child mimicking an adult’s, “I shall protect you from this behemoth even at the cost of my life.”
Those words shocked Morpheus, for his damaged mind literally could not imagine a sentence that complex. He scowled. His frustration made him defensive, which resulted in him growing even taller.
The dragon’s eyes narrowed as it focused on Morpheus. At the same time, the wedge of clarity narrowed. Morpheus noticed that it was pointed towards the dragon’s eyes. An idea popped into Morpheus’s head, that somehow this was not his dream, but the dragon’s. Unfortunately, the only thing that came out of Morpheus’s mouth was, “MINE.” He then rolled his eyes, realizing how stupid and aggressive that sounded, and waited for the dragon to, as usual for anyone who listened to Morpheus talk, completely misunderstand him.
“I shall never surrender Lady Rarity to the likes of you, Behemoth! Have at thee!” The dragon charged, aiming to strike Morpheus’s ankle with his lance. Morpheus, believing he had nothing to fear from his relatively minuscule opponent, let the dragon come. When the lance struck, however, Morpheus bellowed out in pain and released a shock wave of energy that dislodged the dragon, but left the lance embedded in his joint.
As the dragon regained his balance, he watched as his lance was pulled further into the demon’s leg with a sickening squelch. Though the wound bled profusely and the demon bellowed in agony, the disarmed drake could see that there was a certain amount of glee in its eyes.
The demon’s roar of agony slowly morphed into mad laughter. His grimace morphed into a wicked grin. Even as he reached for the sword on his back, Morpheus started to shrink down until he was the same size as the dragon. “Name?” he asked.
“It is the honorable thing to name yourself before asking the name of others, beast. I will tell you anyway.” The dragon nodded at his own statement. “I am Sir Spike, the Wise and Noble Dragon. Tell me your name, beast, so that I may remember you after I slay you.”
Morpheus nodded in agreement. The idea of an opponent who could fight him and cause him pain thrilled the demon rather than disturbing him. The demonic persona pointed to himself and declared, “Morpheus. Good fight.” He then imagined a lance in Spike’s claws.
The dragon blinked when he noticed that he was armed again. Then, grinning smugly, Spike charged again, ready to strike down his opponent. Almost faster than he could follow, the flaming great sword Morpheus wielded deflected Spike’s lance. Spike scowled and struck again, to once more be deflected.
As the fight continued, the two combatants found themselves found themselves to be equally matched. Blow after blow they traded, each continuously imagining themselves to be the better fighter. Spike saw himself as a perfect warrior, meaning that he could not lose this battle. Morpheus saw himself as an unbeatable god of battle and dreams, and was therefore invincible. And since this was a dream, they were both correct, and thus evenly matched.
Morpheus brought his sword down against Spike’s lance, knocking both back with a loud clang. His animalistic growl rumbled through his chest. Spike commented, “Not the smartest of beasts, are you, Morpheus?”
Morpheus just rolled his eyes. He had a high IQ, he was sure of it. Then he frowned, second guessing his opinion. Was he smart? He couldn’t remember. What he did remember was every painting he had ever done, both physical and dream, but that didn’t help him here.
As they continued to fight, each warrior’s flames scarred the landscape, burning the crystal trees. Morpheus, during every pause in the battle, helped the scenery’s transformation along. Ice-cream mountains became active volcanoes, fudge rivers flowed with lava, and black crystal trees bore the corpses of fallen humans, dragons, and unicorns.
Spike took stock of the twisted landscape around him and realized that this really was a fight to the death. His resolve hardened, his determination to protect Rarity grew.
Morpheus grinned as he altered the dream once more. A scream ripped through the momentary silence between the two combatants. Recognizing the dreaded sound, Spike’s head whipped around and he spotted a stone obelisk, on top of which was strapped Rarity, bloodied and naked. “LADY RARITY!” Spike screamed, “I’LL SAVE YOU!”
Before he could rush to her aid, there was a rush of wind against his skin. A sinister voice, breath hot against Spike’s scales, whispered into his ear, “No.” Spike suddenly found himself hoisted hundreds of feet into the air by demonic, black chains. Said chains then gagged him and wrapped around his snout.
Spike could only watch helplessly as a form materialized, clinging to the stone obelisk next to where Rarity was suspended. It was himself.
Morpheus, in the form of Spike, climbed next to the unicorn that the dragon had fought to protect. “Rarity,” he said in an imitation of the Dragon’s voice.
“Spike,” the dreamed unicorn replied.
The false Dragon grinned. In an unbelievably swift movement, he shot out his head and ripped the unicorn’s throat out. He looked upon the real dragon writhing in agony, grinned, and said, “Awake!” Then, faster than before, Morpheus shot his head out and swallowed the replica mare’s head.
A scream of anguish escaped from the gagged dragon. At the very same moment, the world imploded.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” the baby dragon screamed as he sat bolt upright in his little basket. He gasped for breath and looked around the darkened library. “Oh…”
“Mmm… Spike? Is everything alright?” Twilight, having been roused from her sleep, rubbed her eyes and flipped on the bedside lamp.
“She’s not dead. She’s not dead,” Spike mumbled to himself.
Twilight, hearing this, asked, “Who’s not dead?”
“Rarity’s fine,” Spike half answered, half muttered to reassure himself.
“Well of course Rarity is fine. We just saw her yesterday, remember?”
The little dragon sighed. “I know. I just had a nightmare… Morpheus… He killed her… There was so much blood…”
Twilight gasped. In a split-second, she scooped up her adopted little brother and embraced him with the lost loving hug she could muster. “I’m here, Spike. I’m always here. You’re ok.”
Morpheus righted himself after the forceful ejection from the dragon’s dream. He brushed the ash off from his coat. Chaos caused, he felt satisfied, but mentally spent. Back in the starry world, he sat down once more to relax.
He realized that some way, somehow, he had gained the power to travel to other people’s dreams at the cost of not being able to wake himself up. But that was fine with him for now. He was confident that his body would be cared for if he didn’t wake soon. By whom, Morpheus didn’t know. He just assumed it would be. Perhaps they, whoever “they” were, would drive his unconscious body to the hospital.
Drive. There was something about that word that was important to him. He just couldn’t figure out what.
But for now, he had his power, a power that he could now show to others! He laughed at the thought of their reactions to his bloody, gore filled canvases. He could have all the fun he wanted now without repercussions; after all, it was all just a dream! He’d put the ‘laughter’ in ‘slaughter’ for sure. No more ‘Mr. Nice Guy’, no more rules. He was the god of dreams and he would do what he pleased!
