NIGHTMARE

Red. Orange. Yellow. Colours spilled across the quickly fading azure sky in artistically woven tides of transient waves, each overlapping on one another, as the Sun’s reign over Day slowly came to an end. Dissolving in a pool of crimson light, the Sun disappeared gracefully over the horizon.

Once a bright blue sky during the day, it darkened as Night finally came to play. Shinning bright and silvery, it climbed higher and higher, to its pedestal in the heavens, where finally the Moon would take the reins and roles of the Sun during the Day.

The Moon, shinned on the world below it, scaring and chasing the sinister shadows. They hissed, and snapped at its powerful silver beam as they retreated away sullenly. Pleased, and happy it continued shinning upon the world below it, save for one place hidden from its heavenly perch.

Shrouded within by the long grasping hands of the writhing shadows, a mansion stood, hidden. It looked to be made out of stone, as it was grey, with large arching windows and a sturdy front door. To an outsider, the place would have been said to look nice and cosy, and often times considered, homely.

But in reality, it is anything but naught.

Of a little ways from there, following the downtrodden path paving towards the east, was a small little town, with rows of perfectly neat cottages, stores and shops lining the cobblestone streets in various shapes and sizes. During the Day, it would be a prosperous little town, where many, would come to trade and bargain. People would hustle and bustle along the busy streets, fish mongers would shout out their prices, children would be playing and squealing, and everybody would be happy and jolly.

But as the Sun left the sky, and the Moon took its place, a disturbingly eerie silence began to fall upon the previously cheerful town as the horrors of Night came ambling through the streets in the shape of a white dense fog, sending the towns’ folk scurrying to their respective homes, locking and bolting shut their opened doors and windows in petty attempts to keep out the Nightmares that were born from the black abyss called Night.

Nightmares that were born from her.

Alone and uninhabited was not the mansion, as a figure stood, watching through its darkened arched windows as the Nightmares, in the town not far from there, unfolded before her very eyes. Emerald green eyes trailed the gnawing fog as it slipped through the streets like an agile serpent, its teeth brimming with poison, poised ready to strike.

At that thought, she could not help but chuckle to herself, the sound of it melodious but yet cold, resonating throughout the empty ballroom, save all but for her.

As if were right on cue, the first screams of the Night began.

‘Yes,’ she thought, her rose petal lips curved into a pleasurable sadistic smile as shiver of delight scalded down her spine at that sound. ‘For the fog is no other than-‘she purred at the next word ‘poisonous.’

Behind the temporary safety of their homes, they watched, each varying in expressions from horrified to helplessness, through the transparent glass as the figure writhed in painful agony in the streets below, agonised screams touring out his throat, as the fog sliced through his skin, till they could see the whites of his bones in the midst of his shredded skin.

Fat hot tears escaped from her eyes, as she watched her father drawn in his last breath, his body shuddering violently from the effort before finally, he went still. A silent wail escaped from her lips, as she buried her head into the comfort of her mother, shaking from the torrent of grief swirling within her, hopelessly denying that what she had just witness were no more than an illusion, that the Nightmare that had laid dormant these past few months was gone and had not just claimed the life of her father.

She smiled lustfully as the wafting aroma of the metallic aftertaste of blood mingled with sweet, addicting airs of salty tears simply intoxicated her, her tongue darting past her lips to taste it. It was euphoria that paled any comparison, easily prolonging that habitual notion of shivering anticipation right down to her very existence, as she felt them all.

The fear she had freshly awakened, the agonising death she had orchestrated, the melancholy she had inspired, the death…

She was Nightmare, Lady of the Night.