Who: Lettie and Angel What: Sweet dreams and beautiful nightmares When: 4 AM Where: Lettie's Room Rating: Mild, for gorey imagery
I felt the shifting of muscle, the stretching of bone, and the burning, tearing agony inside reached a fever pitch. I saw my father's face morph, blurring and realigning itself into a configuration both more pleasant and more terrifying, and I screamed as dark, fleshy tendrils, long ago sculpted in imitation of a thick fall of hair, draped themselves lazily across my skin, twitching, grasping, and caressing with a sickly sweet tenderness that made my stomach churn.
"Stop, stop, stop," I pleaded, sobbing, tearing at the carpet, twisting and struggling like a worm on a hook. "Hush," I heard from somewhere above me, and then, all at once, piercing pain shot through every nerve cluster in my body, flashing lightning white in the hellish dark. I screamed again, against the shredding of skin and muscle, against the burrowing, pulling coils digging down into me, in search of I knew not what, and the cracking of ribs and the crazed rhythm of a heart threatening to explode with terror.
I heard laughter, indulgent, cold, unlike anything I'd ever heard with my waking ears. "Lie still, and close your eyes," came the whispered command, thick with the gnashing of razor sharp teeth, and then everything was awash in blood, gushing warm and wet across my face as the pulsing, shivering prize, all knotted muscle and corded veins, was lifted from my chest. I heard her make a sound of deep rooted contentment, almost a purr. There was a flash of fangs, and a squelching slurp as she bit down...
Lettie woke with a hoarse, aborted cry, half strangled in the bedclothes, covered in her own tears, nightshirt shredded in places where her nails had clawed the cotton apart, tinged black where they'd broken skin. She barely saw it; already she was moving, even before her half crazed mind caught up with the truth, that she had been dreaming, that the monster was still safely buried inside...
and not crouched, bat-like, at the end of her bed, issuing smoke from its mouth and staring at her with dark, bottomless eyes. Lettie met them for an instant, tried to scream, and then felt something slam into her like an iron fist, something cold and evil, something that drove her back against the pillows and left her gasping. She had stared into Death's eyes, and the full force of her own power had rebounded on her.