Villains and Damsels Pt. 02

Part 2: The Nightmare

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Around 11 that night, the Somnigo beeped, alerting Sam that Natalie was asleep. That was later than he'd expected; she was usually a lights-out-by-ten kind of woman on weeknights. But he hadn't wanted to text her to check in for fear that it would only stimulate her more.

He took a deep breath, pulled the goggles out of the unit, and put them on.

#

It always took Sam a moment to get his bearings when he entered someone else's head. Things would be fuzzy at first, before the visuals adjusted to be more lifelike, less vomit-inducing, less like a bad acid trip.

He'd imagined Natalie's head as something clean and practical, and while the area he found himself in wasn't dirty by any means, there was nothing practical about it.

It looked like a large ballroom, with silks and cushions strewn about. Gilded columns and vaulted ceilings. Paintings with ornate frames. Marble sculptures. Glass decanters of wine being passed around with twinkling giggles while harp music played softly in the background.

Everyone in the room was a woman. Scores of them around him. Well, around Natalie, whose eyes he was watching through, at least for now. Some of them had faces, and some didn't. That was typical, but still disturbing no matter how many times he saw it. The brain could only replicate faces it had seen in the real world, and so dreams tended to be populated by a mix of real and imaginary people. The imaginary people looked like their faces had been blurred in Photoshop, and they usually had a different aura about them that Sam couldn't adequately explain. But both the real and imagined women were dressed in a variety of outfits from different locations and time periods, some fancier or more exotic than others, but all of them were flowing and revealing. Some of them left absolutely nothing to the imagination, and he was surprised to see that Natalie's mind had conjured up tits more gigantic than he'd seen in some anime shows, waists tinier than a Barbie doll. Some of the women would glance at Natalie as she passed them, with pitying or even jealous glares.

He wished he could see what Natalie was wearing. For research purposes, of course. He also wished he could get a better idea of her gait, her expression. How did she feel about being in this room? How did she feel about these other women?

One word kept wisping into Sam's thoughts to identify what this room was. A harem. That alone might be the embodiment of Natalie's worst fears, being reduced to one of many women in a room who only existed to please a man.

Then, a gong played a note, so loud that Sam was afraid it would rouse Natalie out of her sleep. It didn't, but suddenly he was thrust out of her viewpoint, and saw her from a few feet away as all the women snapped to attention, arranging themselves in a long, straight line across the length of the ballroom, like they had the same instincts as a school of fish, with Natalie at the center.

She was wearing a soft pink Arabian-style top, which barely covered her breasts. Her midriff and naval were on full display, like a Western idea of a genie. Below her waist, she wore a matching pair of panties with a sheer pink skirt. The only change her dream-self had made to her body was her hair, which no longer had gray strands and was longer than in real life, accented with small intricate braids and flowers.

She was beautiful.

And she looked terrified.

He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay, remind her that none of this was real. But even if he could, he knew it wasn't a good idea. Reminding the dreamer that they were dreaming might help them snap out of it that night, but the only thing that really worked long-term was changing the nature of the dream itself.

If she'd been able to do that on her own, she wouldn't have come to him. And whether she knew right now that she was dreaming or not, it didn't change the terror she clearly felt.

Some of the other women looked scared, or almost as scared, as Natalie. Even some of the ones without faces trembled. Others looked bored, or excited, or just glazed-over and blank, like they were in a trance.

There were no more sounds for a moment, and then there were. Footsteps, echoing from far away, bouncing against the walls of the room. The silks and pillows strewn about had no effect; the echo seemed to be from an alternate universe where the sound encountered no obstacles. It got closer and closer. The women remained mostly immobile, save for the occasional twitch or blink.

Sam was getting scared too, which was unusual for him. He found himself resenting Natalie a bit for making him feel that, but he knew that wasn't fair. While the footsteps got louder, he alternated between keeping an eye on Natalie and trying to figure out where the footsteps were coming from, and from where their owner would emerge.

It seemed to take an eternity, and Sam wondered how long the walk had taken when Natalie first started this dream, versus how long it was taking now. He imagined her psyche had built up this particular moment, slowly expanding it over time.

Probably only a few seconds had passed in the real world, but in Natalie's dream, it took at least ten minutes before someone emerged from a doorway on the far wall.

The thing that emerged was at least seven feet tall. Sam told himself it was a thing, not a man, though he knew instinctively that it was male, or that at least Natalie thought of it that way. It was cast in shadow, with black tendrils that seemed to be made both out of fabric and of smoke, billowing around it in jerky movements as it walked towards the line of women. It was so imposing, so menacing, that Sam swore once or twice that it saw him, that what amounted to its head and face, a bulbous pitch-black blob, turned towards him. It should be impossible, but if it did see him, then he had no way to guess what it thought of him. Amused? Betrayed? Annoyed?

It walked along the line of women, first almost acting as if they weren't there. Tendrils approximated arms that were clasped behind its back. Once or twice, Sam thought it looked like the thing was wearing actual clothes: a smart dark suit with a grey silk tie. But most of the time, it just looked like an amorphous shadow monster. There were no shoes on its feet that could be creating the giant footsteps which still echoed around the room, but that didn't matter in a world like this.

The walk to Natalie seemed to take another eternity, made all the more awful by the fact that Sam knew, as he knew Natalie did, what would happen when the thing got to her.

It would pick her. Whatever that meant, it would pick her.

As it approached her, it slowed down even more, but it couldn't draw out the torture forever, and soon it was in front of Natalie, turning to her as if noticing her for the very first time.

A tendril tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She winced.

He thought the shape and tendrils were the most awful things about the creature, but then it spoke, with a voice that seemed to come from the deepest pits of hell.

"YOU."

Natalie was immediately enveloped and held aloft by the tendrils, floating helplessly in the air as it gathered her up and walked away with her. It flicked another hand-like shadow and the other women broke formation and went back to their leisure time as if snapped from a daze, acting as if nothing strange at all was happening. All the while Natalie screamed and tried to break loose from her incorporeal shackles.

Sam ran after her. Or rather, Natalie ran after Natalie, with Sam grateful that her dream-self was doing what he'd be doing anyway. What he hoped he'd be doing, at least.

As if sucked through a funnel, they were suddenly in another room, similar to the last one, but smaller, with a giant canopy bed. Natalie still screamed, her face red and raw with tears. Sam shouted her name even though he knew it was useless. She couldn't hear him. Nobody could hear him, except maybe his next-door neighbor.

It's not real, he kept telling himself, like he had to remind both himself and a Natalie who couldn't hear him, couldn't be reassured by him. It's not real. Natalie, wake up. I've seen enough. We've both seen enough. It's not real.

He could take himself out of the dream, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. He needed to see it through, even if nothing important happened after this. He wouldn't be able to look the real Natalie in the eye tomorrow if he had to lie about watching the entire dream.

But he'd never felt so impotent, so helpless, so angry, as he watched this creature throw Natalie onto the bed and take her. It moved like it was fucking her, even though it didn't seem to shed any real or imagined clothes or produce any kind of eldritch member. Its movements seemed more like an approximation of copulation, with two tendrils holding Natalie down by her wrists. Flowers fell out of her hair and onto the blanket under her.

Just as Sam was about to give up and tap out, his perspective shifted again. Suddenly, he was in Natalie's POV once more, staring up at the creature. Okay, fucking horrifying, but maybe this was good. Maybe now that he was looking straight at the thing's face, he could--

A woosh, and then he jerked in his chair as the world in front of him went blank. Even though he'd done this dozens of times before, it took him a moment to realize what had happened.

He scrambled for his phone and dialed Nat. It rang and rang, and went to voicemail. He texted her. You there? And when she didn't respond within the next minute, he dialed her again. When it went to voicemail a second time, he left an uncharacteristic-for-him message. "Hey, um, I hope you're okay. That was intense, but I think we can get you through it. Just call me back, okay? Okay, Nat?" He paused, as if she could somehow respond to that question, then hung up.

He paced around his apartment, obsessively checking his phone screen. He wished he could just get in his car and go to her, but he didn't know where she lived now. Why wasn't she answering him?

Then, half an hour later, there was another knock at the door. He ran to it so fast he thought his legs would split from his body.

Natalie had thrown her coat over her pajamas, and was hugging herself. She hadn't even combed her hair before leaving the house. Not that he cared.

"Oh, Nat," he said.

She shook her head. "Don't." She sounded so small, like a tiny mouse was in her throat and speaking through her. "It can wait. Can it wait?"

"Yeah," he said. "It can wait."

She stepped inside, and rather than walking past him, she grabbed him by his shoulders, shutting the door behind her with her foot. She kissed him, and his brain almost short-circuited at being touched by lips that less than twenty-four hours ago, he thought he'd never see again, much less feel again.

He let her push him where she wanted him, over piles of clothes and shoes and a pack of toilet paper he hadn't put away yet. They reached his bedroom, and he fumbled for the light switch, but she stopped him when it started to flicker on, putting her hand over his to shut it off. "No," she mumbled as she caught her breath in between kisses. "No, no, no."

He murmured an acknowledgment and before he knew it, he was on the bed. The room was pitch dark at this hour, but it was almost five, and she seemed eager to get him inside her before the first rays of the dawn peeked through the window. She took his fingers and plunged them into her depths. "Just need to feel..." she gasped. "Just need to feel good."

"Okay." He said nothing else, but pumped in and out of her, feeling her get wetter and wetter. He felt so awkward and fumbling, like he was back in high school, figuring out how a woman's body, how any body, functioned in throes of passion. His first girlfriend hadn't been impressed. He didn't even know what a clit was at that point, and now he struggled to find Natalie's, out of practice and no longer able to access any sort of map he once had of her.

"Oh...oh fuck..." He'd heard greater passion from her, but she'd never seemed to need it before. She'd never seemed to need him.

It felt good to be needed in so many ways. His dick was so hard that it was painful. It was too dark for her to see, but surely she had to know how much this was turning him on.

But right now, he seemed like little more than a puppet to her pleasure. He bit his lip, partly from the heat of it all, partly to stop himself from jokingly asking if this was better for her than staying home and masturbating.

Not that he was resentful she was here.

Definitely not. Absolutely not.

Finally, she pulled on the waistband of his sweatpants, exposing his member to the dark air, and she lowered her dripping pussy onto it, grinding and swaying with no sense of cadence or rhythm. "Fuck yeah," she whispered, seemingly with no request for a response from him. "I needed this. Oh, I needed this so bad."

He couldn't help a moan escaping from him then either, a wordless grunt as his hips rose to meet hers. She continued to stimulate her clit while she pumped on top of him; he felt her hand resting on his lower abdomen.

There was so much he wanted to say. That he missed her. That he still loved her. That he was so, so sorry she was going through this literal nightmare. But he let her work, let her concentrate on the task at hand. He'd learned long ago that when Natalie was stressed, the last thing he should do was try to "fix" it.

Her voice trilled with an approaching orgasm, and he swore he felt the heat rising in her thighs, making its way to her pussy. She tensed, and then gasped with the sudden release. She slumped forward, and then got off of him.

"I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "I'll be right back."

She disappeared into the bathroom, and he felt his cock, still hard. He hadn't reached climax, and once she was gone, he stroked himself, determined to finish the job on his own before she came back.

But his mind was severely preoccupied by a disturbing thought that had been gnawing at him since she woke up.

Fake people didn't have faces in dreams. They also had a distinct aura, a feeling they gave off to Sam. Like a subsonic hum.

The thing that had taken Natalie didn't have a face.

But it also didn't have that aura.

To Be Continued