When I woke up, I had no idea where I was.
Everything was dark, yet I could see myself. I was floating in some supernatural void. Greens was gone. The arena was gone. As far as I could see there was nothing but endless darkness. I floated for what seemed like an eternity. I realized rather quickly that I was in a dream, but any attempts to move anywhere seemed fruitless. There was no feeling of air, or water, or anything. Only endless black that seemed to hold me suspended. Eventually, I decided to count, but for the life of me I couldn't keep my numbers straight. Counting aloud only lead to deafening and confusing echoes, and I could still get no further than ten before my mind forgot where I was.
Slowly, however, things became more clear. I was able to count past ten. Far past it. My thoughts became well-organized shortly after, and I felt as if I had achieved lucidity. I had heard about lucid dreaming some long time ago, but never bothered with it. I tried to conjure up a clock to check the time, but nothing appeared. I was only in control of myself. It was still, however, painfully quiet. So long as I was asleep, however, I was fine. I reclined in mid-void, simply floating along in the feeling-less expanse.
"What is it you fear?" The voice cut through the dark like a knife, hurting my ears and echoing endlessly until all that was left was a dull rumble. The rumble grew, and grew, and became a familiar, deafening roar. I span around to face the growing tidal wave and my feet hit some sort of invisible floor. The waves towered higher and higher until it hurt my neck to look at. It frothed red, the inside of it churning with the forms of dead trainers and Pokémon. The eerily narrow wave crashed over me, suffocating me, bodies slamming in to me and leaving me bruised, bloody, and damp. I felt like I should fall over, but an invisible force held me firm and upright.
The wave wasn't water at all. It was blood. There was a flicker of sheer horror before I realized what was going on.
Something was Nightmare-ing me.
The wave seemed to pummel me endlessly, faces looming ahead of me long before their bodies crashed in to me. My shoulders dislocated, ribs snapped, flashes of grotesque visions plagued my mind as the wave poured ever on and on. My throat was slit open by a stray knife, held firm by the girl I had murdered in the same way, and I gurgled out a roar of pain as my head was forced backwards by the tidal wave, my lungs and veins filling with water. Right before I finally blacked out, the wave ended. My head snapped back in to place. My bones were mended and I coughed out lungs filled with diluted blood in to the endless abyss below me.
I stood myself up, shook my head, slapped my face, pinched myself in an effort to rouse me. Every one of those actions hurt, but none of them worked. It was as if I was actually existing in this strange nightmare-realm now. A high-pitched cackle rang out, painfully loud. The cackling distorted itself, warped and seemed to stretch in to a painful gurgling from behind me. I did not want to face whatever it was, but the entire world began to reshape itself around me and turn me towards the source of the sounds. The canyon walls rose up next to me, endlessly tall and horribly close, as I was forced to lock eyes with a familiar, pallid form.
"You killed me," came the pained voice from the water-logged corpse, gurgling as blood dribbled from his mouth. He coughed and sprayed me with fetid water and rancid gore, "you murdered me! You let me die!"
"And I would do it again!" The apparition was caught off-guard by this, and the whole nightmare seemed to stutter. Ferris looked at me blankly, not quite sure what to do. Whatever was inside my mind knew it was the truth, but even they didn't want to accept it. I continued, "there's only one winner! I had to win! Somebody has to survive, and damn-it-all it's going to be me! You were too strong, too smart, you had to go! I had to let you go!"
"We could have worked together," he yelled, "and you killed me! You were jealous! I was the better man and you had to take the coward's way and drop me in the wave!"
"Like you wouldn't have done the same thing?" Suddenly there was a sword in my hand. And in his. I had some control again, and I swung wildly at him. His arm was lopped off, but from the stump a fresh and lively arm grew back.
"I would have saved you and you know it!" I swung at his leg, and he stumbled for a moment before a strong, healthy one replaced it. His other leg came off just as fast, and grew back the same way.
"You can't even save yourself, you pathetic little coward." His tone was low and cruel, and my temper flared as I lopped him in to pieces, each rotting slice giving way to strong, living flesh. Soon I was standing face-to-face with the true, healthy Ferris, who gave me a simple, sad smile.
"You owed me one, remember?" I hesitated, holding the sword over one shoulder, "I had saved you, and you were going to save me. Remember? I thought we were friends."
"Shut the fuck up, Bueller."
He lunged at me, wrapping his fingers around my throat. He throttled me, choked me, beat me, and I was helpless. Whoever was in control kept my hands from moving, my feet, everything, and just when I thought I would pass out, I was revived. Ferris turned to the tribute with the Squirtle, who screamed and called me a monster and sliced in to my face. I screamed as I felt my cheeks give way to the jagged dull knife he was using. He plunged the blade in to the middle of the chest and disemboweled me. I couldn't possibly describe the feeling of having my own organs spilling in to the void as he gave a deranged laugh, screaming "Monster! Monster! Monster!"
Then the Dragonair, who wrapped itself tight around my entire body and squeezed until my ribs broke, body-wracking pain as each one snapped. Everything was horribly, vividly real and there was nothing I could do. And just as my last breath eked out, the dragon would relax, and I would heal and take one small gulp, and the cycle would begin anew. This was possibly the worst. Getting so close to death, every bone in my body snapping, then finally letting out a death rattle and being brought back from the brink by the malicious being who was in control.
What followed this was actually relaxing. The man who I buried my ax in materialized, wielding the very same ax, and he slammed it hard in to my own temple. My brain scrambled itself, memories flashing by in rapid succession. My starter being murdered. My name being pulled. The fear of finding the dead Butterfree. My sobbing parents. A roulette of memories spun, beginning to slow until it landed on one particularly biting one. I felt myself shrink. I was ten again. Alone, in the woods. I had my starter with me, a Cyndaquil, keeping me warm. I heard tree branches begin to snap as something approached-
No. Not this one.
"Hey, sport," came a gruff voice, a large filthy man appearing out of the trees, "what are you doing out here all alone?"
Not this memory. Not this one. Never again.
Very, very dimly, I heard Greens say something.
I screamed and screamed as loud as I could, calling her name, calling for Slink and the lizards, my parents, my friends. I felt rough hands on my arms, the bark against my back. I hadn't thought about this in years, and now I was living it again.
No, no, no, no, no…
Something wasn't right.
"Something isn't right!" I landed on the Sceptile and clicked to him softly, "It's too quiet."
"Hush, bug," he said, though he turned his head to where I had felt the disturbance. "I smell something strange."
"Watch my back and stay quiet." I flitted off after the strange aura without another word. My lone antenna twitched, soaking up the surrounding energies, but having a hard time pinpointing anything. However, the strange darkness was fairly strong and I was very certain of its danger. After a time, I came across the disturbance: A sleeping human and some strange feminine ghost in a trance. Perhaps it was sleeping, too?
"What'll we do," the lizard asked as it caught up to me. I hushed it angrily before silently flapping my way over to the ghost. Out cold, the both of them.
"I'm going to eat their dreams," I hissed, settling over the girl, feeling the spectral energy pool in my mouth, "watch my body for me, would you?"
As I laid there sobbing, bleeding, and defeated, I was given a short reprieve. The forest floor warped slightly under me, the thick of Ilex forest being replaced by the somewhat familiar pines and snow of the arena. I was my normal age again. I still ached, and my mind was still reeling from what had just re-happened. I wanted this nightmare to end. This was hellish. Greens, wherever she was, wasn't waking me. My Pokémon had failed me. I had just relived the single worst moment of my life, a moment that I had finally locked away in my memories, never to be spoken of again, was dredged back up. I would rather have died at the cornucopia a million times than suffer that again.
The girl whose throat I slit suddenly materialized, and my aches and pains dissipated as she approached me. She held in her hands a needle and thread, and when she cackled the entire room rung.
Wait. This wasn't the girl. This was the other Johto tribute. I could just barely remember her, my mind so far gone in this horrible nightmare. She could see the recognition on my face as I was stood up and brought to bear in front of her. I didn't fight it.
"Oh, yes, little Wildcard," she spoke, the dream voice cackling behind us, "now you remember me. And trust me, this is going to be quite the memorable experience. I didn't know how busy of a Combee you've been, but you will serve your penance. Just like the rest of my victims." She was on me in a flash, the needle pressing slowly in to my lower lip, puncturing the skin. I did not scream. I couldn't. There was no reason to. this was all a dream, anyways. The pain was nothing, not even the ragged, thick thread running through the hole. I think she was perplexed with how calm I was. I smirked, I actually smirked. There wasn't anything she could do that was worse than that memory. I hardly even remember her sewing my mouth shut. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
She stood there when she was done, endlessly frustrated. She seethed for a moment before she snapped in front of me and brought her hand around as hard as she could before vanishing. My cheek stung as I reeled from the blow, but I righted myself easily. There was a sharp pain at the back of my legs and I hit the invisible ground on my knees. My head was yanked back, my hair clenched in her fists.
"Beg for it," the girl hissed seductively in my ear, an incredibly sharp knife pressed in to my throat. She shook me, slammed me against a wall, pressed the knife in deeper. But I would not beg. I would not give in to this. Oh, no. I would never give in to this foul creature. I had suffered much worse. She couldn't hold a candle to the tortures I had previously endured. This was just a dream, and she couldn't actually kill me in here.
Could she? I actually wanted her to. But she wanted me to want her to, so I couldn't want her to, then she would win. She couldn't win. I had to win. I will win.
The cackling raised to a fever pitch as the blade was dragged slowly across my skin, a thin trickle of blood running hot down my neck. She gave a breathy sort of moan that sent a chill down my spine. She was enjoying this far too much. The cackling likewise changed, almost a heavy pant.
" Why aren't you broken?" She floated above me, the knife leaving my throat and trailing down my chest, "how come I can't seem to break you?" My shirt and skin parted, blood running down my front, but the pain was all but gone now. It was a numbing, welcome curtain for the memories I was trying to once again repress. She was over my head, around my back with the knife cutting a thin horizontal line across my chest, the bloody cross slowly healing over at her will. Her breath was hot in my ear, her tongue flicking against my earlobe for a moment.
"I could let you live, my pet," a chattering, anxious giggle rang through the dreamscape, "live forever with me as your queen in this… nightmare." Cackling for a moment, but then silence. Eerie silence. The woman, however, took no heed, "you would be my king. Isn't that what you want? Domination? Victory? An escape?"
"Did someone say escape?" Quick as a flash, a blue and white blur slammed through the ceiling and in to the woman holding me. A hole had been punched in the dream, the ghoul controlling us shrieking with terror as the dark sphere around us crumbled. Something had punched a perfect hole in its defenses, and that something was now devouring the young woman behind me. I spun around to see my Butterfree, now an absolutely giant specimen, very swiftly scoffing down the shrieking assailant. She was absolutely powerless, and in seconds she was gone. As soon as she disappeared, I was in control again. I leapt to my feet and pulled the thread from my lips, and it dissipated in to dust. My head snapped towards the source of the sudden pillar of light.
Through the hole in the ceiling I could hear Greens calling for me clear as day, but somehow her words were warped and strange. This was acceptable. Usual pointless dream-chatter. As I watched the hole, Slink zipped up to one edge and began to move around in huge, lightning-quick spirals. The shrieking of the ghost controlling me was almost unbearable, and then suddenly… Gone.
"Slink, I need to wake up now!" As if on cue, I was swept off my feet and in to his arms. We flew higher, higher, higher, up through leagues and miles of open, white air. The speed was exhilarating and the wind was wonderfully refreshing. As this new dreamscape, my dreamscape, began to collapse around us, I could feel myself being shaken…
I was cold. I was cold and wet with sweat, and I had a very worried little lady over me who was shaking me furiously, and I myself was so furious that I couldn't even see straight. I don't remember getting up, or what Greens was shouting to me, or how I even found Slink, who had already subdued the ghost and strung up the girl. I do remember, however, hauling her up from the snow and sticking her to a tree.
She stirred, slowly shaking herself free from my nightmare, and awoke in her own. She was actually rather pretty: pale, flawless skin with long, ebony hair. Her eyes were a pale blue-grey and were innocently beautiful for the split second before she realized who I was. Oddly, she did not scream. She was awake, she was frightened, her eyes looking in every direction, but she did not scream. Maybe she thought it useless. Maybe she wanted out as badly as I did. Her lips, chapped yet still somehow gorgeous, parted for a moment, but then her thought was gone. She was hardly dirty. I stood there, my hands pressed hard on her arms, sticking her on the tree a good foot or so off the ground as Slink crawled around her and wound her up tighter.
Both of us were at a loss for words, it seemed. She must have never had to face a victim of hers before. My fury was subsiding in to a seething state of sheer loathing, but she seemed to be rather worked up. I swear to god, she even bit her lip. I let her go and she sagged slightly in her cocoon, but she refused to move. We locked eyes, just… staring. I was taking her in, taking everything in about this poor tormentor. Now she was just another competitor. She was a thin girl, roughly my age, caught up in some hellish game. And within that, she had invented her own.
"I've never had someone survive me before," she eventually whispered. I didn't respond verbally, only pulling out the hatchet from its sheath. She hissed in a breath of fear and anticipation at its appearance, but I merely looked over its surface. There was a dent where I must have hit a bone on someone, but it was otherwise pristine.
"It's intoxicating, isn't it?" I ran my thumb over the axe's edge as she spoke, quiet yet enticing, "the power, the control. You are in charge of my fate. And if I were to die," she hesitated, gulping back a sob - or possibly a moan - before she pressed on, "it would only be fitting for one of my… My victims to do it." She let her head sag as she laughed, quiet, terrified. "Poetic justice."
"I was told once that, when the body dies, there's a release of all sorts of pent-up drugs in the brain," she looked up at me as I approached, I could see her tingling with anticipation and shaking with nerves, "and that, in the few moments before you die, you enter a euphoric dream state. Many people claim this effect could possibly last forever due to the volume and potency of the chemicals. Many people claim it to be the last reprieve before finally passing on. One last dream." I pressed the knife to her throat, and she let out a shuddering sigh. "So long, of course, as your brain is intact."
I leaned in close to her and hissed in to her ear: "Beg for it."
"… Please."
Slowly, deliberately, I pulled away. The hatchet came up over my head, clenched tightly in my fist. She realized what I had done, and only now began to scream in protest. A strip of string was wrapped around her mouth and held her shaking head steady against the trunk. She screamed in fear from behind the silky gag, muffled pleas for mercy as I let the moment hang for what seemed like an eternity. Tears streamed down her face, her body shook in her silken bindings. She was broken. She was mine.
The hatchet came down hard, and with a sickening crack, her skull split. I saw her brain, turned to a bloody goo beneath the blow of the hatchet, ensuring she would never be able to live in her own little dreamscape - or anyone else's - again.
After the final blow, I left the hatchet firmly planted in the mess, staggering backwards from the carnage to try to process what I had just done. Somewhere to my left, Greens was looking at me with absolute horror in her eyes. I could see the cogs in her head begin to turn. She was realizing how much of a monster I had become. She was rethinking every thought she ever had about me, completely reassessing her small worldview now that I was terrorizing it. Her mouth was agape, her hands frozen in the air as if she was going to try to stop me at one point.
She, too, was broken. She, too, was mine.
