She's always been fond of (ex_roses104) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-11 02:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: tales, pitch, rose red |
Who: Rose and Pitch
What: A nightmare
Where: Rose's cottage
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Scary imagery
The dream was white.
The castle was white. Inside, the entrance hall was white. Beyond that, the great hall was white. And the throne room, that was the whitest place of all. At the far end, the raised dais held two chairs, and the golden stained glass windows behind the chair cast them in bright and dazzling sunlight that kissed every surface, from dais to door.
The king and queen that sat on the matching chairs were faceless in the dream's sunlight. But they were there all the same, glittering clothing, glittering crowns, and an adoring crowd that murmured approvingly as they gazed upon them in wonder. Their hands rested on the arms of the chair, and their slippered feet rested on the floor of the dais. They laughed, and they whispered, and they sounded good, kindly and pure.
No matter how close one wandered to the onlookers, their words didn't clear or sharpen. They remained approving murmurs, sunlight and gold tinted. The entire room was warm, and it had the feeling of spring, of life, of things being good and right. There wasn't even a ripple of discord, nothing wrong in this white-warm place.
And into the dream walked a girl.
The dreamer, she was cast in red. Red hair, a red dress to her bare feet, and a red smile upon her lips. Her bare feet slapped against the tiles in the great, white hall. Slap, leaving a trail of red footprints in her wake. She liked the sound, this girl whose red hair dripped, dripped, dripped upon the floor. Slap.
She walked toward the dais, but the dais never came closer, never neared. That length of white dotted with red toes just grew longer, and she looked over her shoulder and frowned at the length of footprints that trailed behind her. She stopped. She pouted. This wasn't working.
She looked down, and one tiny green leaf poked its way through the white, white floor. She poked it with a bare toe, and then she stepped on it. Slap.
Outside her little dreamscape, Pitch emerged from under her bed. The door always opened here, down with the shadows and the dust bunnies, unless he was dealing with someone a little more progressive and he emerged in their closet, amongst their finery and shoes. He almost preferred the bed.
Long, pale fingers like spiders legs gripped the edge of the bedframe as he pulled himself free and stood slowly, settling into his own skin. The girl was there, on the bed, her dream hovering just above her head, painted for him in golden sand. What she saw in her dream was reflected there for him and he smiled, a grim cold thing.
"Are you watching, Sandy?" He asked the night. "I hear the slap slap slap of feet, but hear nothing of you."
A single bone white finger stretched out and the golden sand hovering above the girl's head turned black and glittering like the empty space between stars. Before his eyes he watched as the dream shifted, turning from light into heavy dark.
He might as well make himself comfortable. He crossed the room and sat down on the empty space beside the girl as he watched the faces of the couple, so previously happy, begin to fall in dawning horror of what was happening.
The little leaf she so gleefully crushed regrew, but now it was black and twisted, lined in thorns that sought both blood and fear. A single finger flicked at the scene playing out over her head and a vine of the plant, whip thin cracked at one of the darkening walls.
She didn't noticed the faces of the king and queen. In her dreams, she tried to look on that dais as little as possible. She avoided the possibilities, the what ifs and the maybes. What if she hadn't ruined Snow's marriage? What if Charming hadn't tumbled into bed with her? She didn't look upon the dais, but she noticed the changing fate of the leaf. It made her stop, and it made her crouch in front of it. Even in the waking world, she could control plantlife. In her dreams, leaves died when she told them to die, and they lived when they told her to.
But she didn't realize it was a dream, not yet.
She watched the black and twisted thing that had been the leaf climb. She didn't move back, because she was even more a witch in her dreams than in the waking world. She didn't fear it. She was red-tipped and curious, a cock of her head and no disgust for magic. The Beast hated magic, and he joined the dream, a growling thing prowling the corners of the throne room, out of sight, but there, there, constantly there.
When she moved back, it was to allow the whip-thin crack, to keep from getting sliced by the ugly black vine. She noticed the darkening walls then. It was foreign, unfamiliar, and she stood, the red of her hair tangling around her arms like so much ivy.
"Who did that?" she called out, unaware of the man in her room - if he could be called a man.
Once, centuries ago, he was a man. He had a family, a daughter that he loved more than the sun and stars and he had loved protecting people from the same darkness that now lurked within him. Those days were gone. Memories of his daughter were locked away deep and buried in his psyche where the Fearlings couldn't reach, but Pitch had kept them down for so long that he'd forgotten they were there at all.
He smiled when she began shifting, another one of those grim things that more resembled the bearing of one's sharply pointed teeth. "Dream turning on you, my darling?" he murmured, all sickly sweet comfort as he shifted as well, placing his back against the headboard to watch her and her dream play out, his legs languidly stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles.
"You don't believe that dreams can hurt?" Plants so often represented something living, new growth, spring birth after winter's death but not for her. Not anymore. The plant which should have been crushed to death beneath her prissy little shoe grew instead, something warped and wicked, the stones of the floor crumbling in its path as grew and grew, sickly looking leaves leaving the crevice. The vines grew faster, but no longer did they try reaching for the walls, but they seemed entirely focused on coming towards her. "That you shouldn't be afraid?"
She sensed the shifting on the bed, even in her sleep, and she turned away from it and curled in on herself. She muttered a name - Henry - as if he would come to save her from the unseen terror in her room, the scary monster that had crawled from beneath the bed. But it was a sleepy murmur, nothing loud or tangible, and she would never call for help in the waking world.
But in the dream, things were becoming strange and frightening. She ordered the plants to stop, to die, to turn away, but they didn't listen. Rose didn't know what to do with plants that didn't listen to her. She stepped back when the stones began to crumble, her foot catching on the rubble as she backed away. Her golden eyes were wide and fearful, and she began chanting curses, magic, protection spells she didn't remember in the waking world. The words were from her childhood, tucked so far back in her memory that they tasted new on her tongue.
She screamed them, the words, and the Beast at the edge of the dream growled louder, his loud footfalls padding just out of reach.
She twisted on the bed, legs tangling in the sheets. "You can't hurt me," she screamed in her sleep, her subconscious latching onto that word: Dream.
Those restless sounds that she made, the intangible word that came out muffled from her lips was the building block of his own perfect sonata. "I am the Boogeyman," he said as he leaned over to her, one spindly pale arm resting on her pillow just above her head. One finger reached out and wrapped a strand of her vivid red hair around his finger. "And you will fear me," he promised her.
Shifting onto his side, he pushed his free hand into the darkening display of her dream and pushed. Inside the white, white, white palace slammed into darkness and no magic that the girl could command would change what was going on inside. The vines slithered up the floor, both alive and horribly dead, but then came the sound of dead things, of those creatures that ruled the places between death and rebirth. A rat, missing half the fur covering its face went running from vine to vine and over her ankle.
And still the vines came, shuddering, creeping, black as tree branches in winter for her. Anything they caught, they coiled around, but their destination was the screaming girl, so sure that she couldn't be hurt. Maybe she was right to think such a thing, but fear could last. It could sneak up when one least expected it and Pitch could be oh-so-patient.
She could sense something in the room, but it was sensed in the miasma of sleep, and there was no truly conscious understanding of it. Instead, she twisted and turned, the physical representation of her attempts to escape the darkening dream. She tried to command the vines, but she failed, and a scream pierced the cottage when that rat ran over her ankle. In the dream, she ran. She ran, and she ran, but the vines still came. Her magic was powerless, and the vines still came.
The scene tried to change. Then, the scene did change. The marble hall tried to shift to a safer place, a place of perceived protection. The smooth walls became craggy, abandoned things. The white floor became stone, and a hearth fired in the distance. The dais remained, because the dais was the center, but the scene around it became a very abandoned castle, tall and ruins and full of old things and invisible servants. The Beast at the outskirts growled louder, closer, but he still didn't come to her.
When the vines caught her, she stumbled, tripped and fell upon marble upturned into rubble, the castle gone once more. She screamed. Awake, asleep, she screamed.
Pitch sighed to hear her scream. Such a delightful sound, reminiscent of years gone past, when he'd been at full strength. He was strengthening now and smoothed her strand of hair around his finger, watching it gleam around the bone white of his finger.
"Scream," he whispered as the vines moved faster up her, hurrying and eager, cutting over pale flesh, winding over her hips, up her torso to her shoulders, her arms, holding her down to the rubble. Rats and beetles, worms that felt far too slimy all joined the vines moving across her skin, seeking and hungry. She wanted to try and change the dream? On him? "I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am."
One fat vine pressed at her lips, her teeth, only a little bit needed to go in and then he'd show her all about roses. All it would take was one vine, even a bitten off sliver could wiggle and slide down her throat to turn to thorns, shredding their way through her until they broke free.
She screamed.
She screamed, and the blood curdling sound filled the cottage. She might not be able to change the dream in any real way any longer, but the waking world could still hear her. Magic went bitter thick on the air, and vines grew over the walls of the cottage. The garden outside, small and new, came to life with angry thrashes and spread green all over the exterior and the thatched roof.
The newly sprouted vines banged on the thatched roof, and they angrily reached in the glassless windows. In the dream the vine broke past her lips with a gush of fresh red, and she fought, kicking the sheets off, her body covered in sweat and the scent of fear. She whimpered, and she cried, and it felt so real that there was no shaking it.
The cottage trembled as dirt turned over beneath it, and the nearby trees leaned their bowers toward the small house, and the bitter magic turned angry, and it turned dark.
Contrary to the beliefs of most and what he wanted known about him, Pitch could feel fear just as anyone else could. That slow prickle of the skin at his nape, that sick feeling in the bottom of his stomach and he felt it with the first heave of the cottage.
He leaned back, ready to fall off the edge of the bed and disappear beneath it if he needed to and paused. Dare he try for more? What boon did boldness grant? Her screaming mouth offered something better than a dream and with a flick of his finger, he dispelled the black sand that made up her dream. It swept up into a cyclone, caressing his palm, wondering what he would call for next, but he let the sands drift from his fingers and into her open mouth.
Her panic climbed. Her fear spiked and blossomed, blood red magic bright against the walls. Something cracked in her mind, a deep chasm making the floor in the waking world tear. In the dream, the thorny vine slid down her throat, down, and down, and tear. The sand added suffocation to pain, and now the coughing and retching were real, not just in sleep, but real.
Her eyes flew open, and she was so caught up with coughing that she didn't see him. She was tangled sheets, and she fell onto the cracking cottage floor. Her skin hurt from inside, as the dream refused to let her go completely, and the bitter-red magic in the cottage began to focus on the dark thing that had been in her bed, even if she was too busy bent over, blood-red hair hiding her face, to see him.
Pitch did nothing to assist her, but he did reach over, ignoring the magic that bloomed thick in the air to lift up a single tendril of her hair oh-so-slowly while she was distracted. Darkness was the one place he felt at home anymore, the shadows friends, whispering in their low hiss to soothe his aches. Darkness did not scare him, even with the bitter tang that it carried.
He gave a sharp tug and waited for her to look at him before he smiled back at her, mouth full of teeth that ended in points -- a predator's teeth, not the blunted teeth of a something sweet and docile. "Boo." And then there was nothing but shadow beneath her bed and the lingering, glittering sand, her hair released as he shadow-traveled around the room.