Okay, enough happy from me. Time for some nightmares. I like to write stuff like this, but I don't think I'm too good at it, so please tell me what you think and how I could improve. I'll begin with someone I think it will be agreed is richly deserving of a nightmare:
Power is a marvelous thing. It motivates, corrupts, exalts, and ruins. Power had infested Dong Zhuo's being, even coiling through his dreams. Powerful men should not sleep easily for fear of enemies, but Dong Zhuo, expert at making enemies as he was, slept deeply and well most nights. For his power had provided him means to mercilessly be sure his sleep was not disturbed. Through his hunger for power his conscience had long ago withered and gave no trouble at any time of the day or night. So Dong Zhuo was convinced when he settled into slumber and dreams:
His palace was perfection. It displayed power in every way: grandly and marvelously built, glittering with gold and precious jade. Everything was the result of his work, perfectly suited for his desires. Magnificently displayed was an ornate cage in which rested a huge golden-scaled serpent. The snake's unwinking white eyes followed Dong Zhuo's movements through the palace. When he approached the cage the snake's long forked tongue, colorless as the deadly hypnotic eyes, flicked out between the bars of the cage. Dong Zhuo moved back and glared at the serpent, bending it to his power. But the snake simply withdrew its tongue and stared, insolent and cold. Displeased, Dong Zhuo turned to examine his other treasures.
Ignoring the chill gaze of the snake at his back, he turned his attention on an alcove nearby. Through a transparent curtain covering the entrance showed the silhouette of a reclining woman. Dong Zhuo approached, eager to discover who was behind the curtain. He drew aside the curtain and found a beautiful lady in a robe of shimmering silk. She seemed to be sleeping; her eyes remained closed even when Dong Zhuo lightly touched her shoulder. When he stroked her hair she sat up and turned toward him, her eyes still peacefully closed. He pulled her to him, and she reached up and kissed him with a forked tongue. At that moment the woman's eyes opened and Dong Zhuo stared horror-stricken into blank white orbs that were cold and uncaring as shed snakeskin.
With the entrance of the snake lady's tongue into his mouth Dong Zhuo was filled with knowledge, terror, and guilt. Shrieks and curses of victims rang in his ears. Nausea with the knowledge of what he had done to countless humans rose in him. Bitter venom was welling in his mouth; he tried to push the snake lady away but she held him tightly. Her tongue slid down his throat, writhing as it went. Venom blurred his vision until he saw all those whom he had tortured, betrayed, or killed. A steady chant of damnation thundered in accompaniment to physical knowledge of what pain he had inflicted coursed through him. Mutilated people bearing rusty blades swarmed upon him to hack at his nose and ears. A man with a grim expression who sat in a cauldron pulled Dong Zhuo headfirst into the cauldron. Boiling water brought unbearably painful senses to Dong Zhuo. He felt the displeasure of Human, Earth, and Heaven. Choking on the hideous tongue that roiled in him, Dong Zhuo struggled, tried to cry repentance, and slowly surrendered. No remorse, no struggle, simply fate and a long, heavy tongue dragging him down through bitter, poisoned depths. Cold, dark depths in which gory shades swam, in which he became a gory shade, and then- he surfaced, awake.
Unsettled by such a dream Dong Zhuo called for heated wine. He assured himself of the reality of his fine surroundings (utterly snakeless) and drank to forget: because ignorance is bliss.
I suck at endings. Sorry. Thanks for reading.