basement with me; I’m her pet.” He proudly shows off his collar. “Here,” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something bright purple with shiny metal stars on it. “I bought you this collar when we were at the pet store.”
Lane’s confused, she doesn’t remember that collar. “That was NOT at the pet store.”
“It was,” Night counters, “One of the dogs was remembering it; it was his back when he was a puppy. I just sort of, kind of, took it out of his thoughts; sort of like plucking a flower out of the ground; sort of.” He shrugs and gives Lane a toothy grin.
“…Twins right?” Lane points to them in turn.
They nod at the same time and at the same pace. It’s a little eerie how identical they are; Lane’s a little creeped out.
“Are you human?” She whispers.
No human she’s ever seen has those strange colored eyes.
“No.” Corbin says flatly. “Never; not even close.”
“But then…” Lane whispers; afraid.
Night clamps his hand over her mouth. “It doesn’t matter. Now come on, this dream is about to shift. We have to hurry, if we’re not careful, we’ll be…”
BAM! BOM! BOP!
Explosion to the right, an explosion to the left and a pop in front as the fluffy walls come tumbling down; the ground ripping in half. A large chasm opens up underneath them. Lane screams, trying desperately to grab onto the side of the hole but the frosting is too slippery and she can’t hold on.
Night dives for her, holding out his hand. Not in time; she drops, falling backwards, landing on a large pillow with scary winged beasts swarming around underneath. There’s pressure beside her as something else drops to the pillow; the wave throwing her off balance. She lands on her face.
He giggles hysterically, floundering around on the fabric, poking at the monsters swirling around his fingertip; chomping. But they can’t get through; they keep on eating pillow feathers. Lane rolls over to face the ceiling. A huge snake with five hundred eyes glances back.
Corbin stifles her scream by sitting on her chest, holding both of his hands hard across her face. “Shhhhh.”
“It’s going to be ok.” Crawling over slowly, Night is careful not to bother the monsters that Corbin was just tormenting. “The dreamer was just thinking about her birthday but then the Dream Monster that roams the Dream World, took a bite out of her cake; crumbling her nice friendly dream.”
“Now,” Corbin whispers; his voice equally hushed, “The Dream Monster – pet of the Lord of Memories – forced the dreamer into a nightmare. We must be very careful not to run into the Dream Monster; it will try to eat us for misbehaving. You,” He pokes Lane in the nose, “Aren’t supposed to be here. Night broke like five thousand laws bringing you here; letting you into our world. When our family learns about this, we’ll both be grounded for like EVER!”
“Just don’t wake the dream.” Night whispers. “Be silent and pretend you’re a monster too; become part of the nightmare. I think I’m going to be a vampire.”
Night grabs his nose and shoves it back into his face a tiny bit; it reforms into a cute little dainty thing. Next, he shoves his hand in his mouth and pulls hard on an incisor. It elongates. He takes the end and smashes it together to create a fang. He repeats the process for the other side. Corbin is busy pulling and squishing ALL of his teeth.
He looks like a shark with razor fangs. Night grabs Corbin’s back and pulls at the skin, stretching it out and sculpting it into a bat wing with scary talons at the tips. Corbin gives Night tiny little butterfly wings.
Reaching deep into his pocket, he pulls out a glass jar of clear liquid. Unscrewing the cap, he spits in it. The thick gook swirls around like a twister on sugar, turning pink. Dipping his finger in the goop, Corbin paints a few dots on Night’s wings.
Blowing on the pink, the liquid changes to blue; Corbin paints with this too.
Five more color changes and Night’s wings have been perfected. Corbin takes a step back to survey his masterpiece. Lane cocks an eyebrow and smiles wide. The wings really are pretty awesome.
The problem is, how to make Lane a monster; she is just SO human to start with. Night tries pulling at her hair; it comes off in a mousy brown clump. She kicks him in the shin. Her hair being ripped out by the roots really hurt!
Corbin tries stretching her face but her skin won’t budge; reddening in the spots he pinched. He tries the same thing with her nose; not a success. When he tries to grab her tongue, she bites him; drawing blue blood. Some of it gets in her mouth. She sneezes; blood shoots out of her nose, all over the pillow.
Lane is going to have to stay like a human.
Reaching into his back pocket, Corbin takes out a big fat rope made from a super-sized Twizzler. Grabbing her by the belt, he pulls Lane over to Night and hands Night one end of the Twizzler. Together they wrap her up like a prisoner. She can’t move; she can’t escape. Now she’s a sitting duck.
Corbin points to the ground, shoving Lane onto the pillow. Taking the free end of the Twizzler, he starts walking, pulling her along behind him. Night giggles; strolling along beside her.
Lane watches as a rather large blob with tentacles flicks open an eye; its eyelashes made up of spiders piled together and slide down its face on a single tear drop that stays tethered to the eyelid. The jellyfish monster takes one good look at Night, Lane and Corbin meandering by and lazily blinks its eye back shut. Yawing wide, it goes back to sleep; snoring loudly. So loud that the bed spread starts to shake and the snake monsters with clawed arms and legs start tearing through the rips in the cotton sheet; climbing the strings like rope ladders, worming their way towards Lane.
She tries not to freak, though she REALLY wants to; biting her lips instead. She tastes copper. She tastes blood.
“Shhhh,” Corbin snarls under his breath. “Lane, quit it! You’re going to get us caught! And I am NOT getting in trouble over someone who THINKS Night is HER PET!”
“Both of you are wearing collars!” She pouts; wiggling around in her restraints. She doesn’t like being tied up. Angling her head down, she tries to take a bite out of the Twizzler but she misses it; tasting t-shirt instead.
“Fashion statement… DUH..!” Corbin giggles. “I like this thing; like a necklace; be nicer if it had a bell or something. Then that’d be really fantastic!”
“Mine has spikes!” Night whispers carefully, eying up a monster playing dead sprawled out in front of them, blocking their passage through the blanket ruffles.
Instead of attempting to climb over, Night steers the tiny caravan to the left and slides down the comforter to the next wrinkle in the fabric. This time it’s a monstrous chasm, the size of the mall and as tall as a twenty story building.
Windows have been cut out of the fabric. A slime monster dumps putrid goo out of its window, glopping the mess on the feather haired fur ball beneath it, walking down the fabric. Snarling, the fur ball unfurls like a hedgehog and beats its chest like a baboon before extending its razor sharp claws.
With those dangerous claws, the creature scrapes at the fabric building, ripping it to shreds. The slime monster tumbles off its perch, landing a foot away from Lane with a splat. She tries super hard not to screech as she watches the blob wiggles around, trying to put its nose back right next to its eyes and the tail behind him. One of his legs is still in the wrong place but it manages to crawl away, heading back towards the feathered creature to talk some sense into it.
Night and Corbin slowly, carefully, drag Lane along through the monster riddled white fabric street, stopping many times to avoid being smelled by the smelling creature or be eaten by the beasts made up of twenty mouths.
The bed spread rumbles and waves; Night and Corbin pitch forward, face planting hard. Lane is bucked upward, flying over the side of the bed, rolling downward to a floor made of red sticky goo. Landing hard, she continues to roll until a large mo
nster foot stops her.
The silly furry thirty foot tall beast is a mess of matted purple and green fur with candy canes and bubble gum and twine stuck to it. Lane can’t see a face; it’s completely covered with hair. She’s left where she stopped as the silly furry monstrosity sluggishly strolls away, leaving her trapped in a tiny little spring of red hot tacky liquid.
The muck bubbles and pops and fizzes. Tiny little hands and arms – thousands of them – reach out and tickle her face and her feet and her hands and her belly. Why, she can’t help but snicker and giggle and laugh; snorting red hot tacky liquid painfully out of her nose.
As the hands continue to tickle, tiny mouths with super sharp teeth float to the surface of the tiny pond; gnawing at the Twizzler. Bite by bite, the gummy rope is eaten away; the mouths growing bigger and wider with each bite until they’re the size of her head.
But Lane doesn’t scream or whimper; she’s too numb, too terrified.
“GRRRRRRR!” A familiar voice swoops down to dispel the evil mouths; they lurk away slowly, snarling rabidly under their breath. Night just stole their prey.
“She’s more trouble than she’s worth!” Corbin sighs, kneeling down beside her, grabbing her ankles; pulling her out of the red hot liquid. “We should leave her and come back later.”
“By then the dream will have consumed her and you know that!” Night snaps, growling like
Wake the Dream - Book One Page 6
