Chapter Text
It didn’t start out as that big of a deal. Nightmares, that’s all it was. Vivid nightmares, but subconscious thoughts nonetheless. At first, you simply woke up in a cold sweat after a skeleton monster approached you and tightly squeezed your hand. He held your hand so tightly and looked up at you with empty eye sockets and the last thing you saw before you woke up was blue.
That was it.
…
Until it wasn’t.
Until a few weeks later, he came to you again. At the start of the dream, you attended a party full of monsters. You know that you didn’t belong, but you still danced and talked like you were in fact the host. It wasn’t long before your fun was interrupted by him--by the skeleton. He smirked and mumbled something incoherent and then suddenly you were sitting next to him on a couch. He leaned forward and pressed his teeth against your lips in what seemed to be a terrible attempt at a kiss. You laughed and covered your face in embarrassment because now you were sitting on his lap and he was dressed like Santa. The situation was so ridiculous, but you could tell that you’d definitely been in a worse spot.
That time, you woke up gasping for breath.
Again, you brushed it off. You figured that it must have something to do with monsters coming to the surface not too long ago, although you couldn’t pinpoint exactly why; sure, you were surprised by their arrival, but you didn’t feel any negativity towards them. You weren’t sure why your thoughts about them would manifest as nightmares.
Then a big one hit. A nightmare that shook you to your very core and left you still in your bed for hours after it transpired.
You were on your bed and he was in front of you. His name was on the tip of your tongue but you couldn’t find it, despite having felt that you’d known this skeleton for years.
You were in love with him.
You smiled as he leaned forward and stroked your suddenly naked body, pressing a hand against your chest to reveal your soul. He looked hesitant, but you nodded. After a few agonizing seconds of silence, his hands were wrapped around your soul and suddenly you were him. Well, not exactly. You were still yourself, but the skeleton’s essence completely surrounded you. Every inch of your exposed body was drenched in his being and you fucking loved it.
Then the dream collapsed around you and harsh reality hit like a whip, beating you awake so violently that you couldn’t help the blood-curdling scream that came tearing out of your throat. Tears were already streaming down your face and your body was pinning itself down to the bed for dear life and you screamed and kept screaming until your voice decided to finally give out. After you caught your breath, you sat in your bed in silence for hours, occasionally crying when you thought about the dream too much.
That was when you realized that this… might be a problem.
You went to school as usual, but you couldn’t bring yourself to pay attention. You kept thinking about your soul and how the skeleton’s thin phalanges pressed into it. Managing to open your laptop without the professor noticing, you trying looking up different dream meanings in hope of finding some cheap clarity. To your surprise, you managed to find an article on monster magic.
Souls. Huh.
More frequently, you found yourself researching up on souls and magic and how exactly that all worked. In between your studies, you would listen to music and find yourself sketching out the skeleton’s figure. At first, the sketches were vague: black eye sockets, a grey hoodie, a blue eye. The more you thought about him and the more you researched, the clearer the image became.
For the first time in a long time, you were stuck with an inspiration so strong, you couldn’t help but draw him at least twenty times a day. First pencil sketches, then more detailed drawings with pen outline, then you started colouring. The more dreams you had, the more intricate the drawings became.
You getting drunk and arriving at his doorstep: a full picture filled in with coloured pencil.
Him and you going on a television show for an interview: a watercolour painting.
You approaching him in his bed in the middle of the night: a full blown oil painting on a four foot, hundred dollar canvas.
The context of the dreams were vague enough to classify the paintings as abstract, but they made perfect sense to you. Every painting was monochromatic and you were sure that Michael’s was concerned at the sheer amount of blue paint you were purchasing every week. At a certain point you were tempted to make a mural and you had been talking to your friend about it. They had become quite fond of your choice in art style (although they had no idea why you liked skeletons so much, especially this character that you had supposedly made up), and gladly listened to you rant about ideas. They had voiced their concern before about how much money you were spending on this hobby and encouraged you to take it to the public, maybe even just starting with a website and a pay-pal, but you quickly turned that down. Everything about these paintings seemed all too personal to share with just anybody--most of them you hadn’t even shone this friend yet.
And well, that brings you to more current events: your friend excitedly telling you that they took one of your paintings to a gallery and people loved it. After people voiced that they would like to know more, your friend took pictures of your collection. Within hours, people fell in love with your haunting style and fascination with this monster. And now, after getting in a fight with your friend and deciding to not talk to them again after this and months of non-stop harassment from the media and the quickly growing popularity of your pictures, you found yourself the center of attention at an auction.
An auction where you just sold one of your more popular paintings for ten. Thousand. Fucking. Dollars.
...
It didn’t start out as that big of a deal, but it sure as hell didn’t end that way.