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My appearance changes.
It always has, depending on the dreamer.
Sometimes it’s just hair length, other times it’s my entire body. Warped to their perception of “friendliness.”
Anything that will get them to let me in, put their guard down. Make it just that much more unnerving when I devour them.
Some people are afraid of the big bad wolf, others fear specks of dust.
It always changes, even if slightly.
But for you, no. It didn’t. And while that’s not unusual it did bring a certain type of.. personalization to it. A facade of something deeper than reality.
You dreamed despite me, in spite of me. Nothing I ever did seemed to truly matter to you, nothing I could’ve ever done truly scared you.
I slithered into your mind like a void celestial, unto the folds like spilled blood. Sure to stain.
My presence like long tendrils of all consuming nothing, attempting vainly to invoke fear.
In the nightmares of others, I would look for similarities. What scares them that doesn’t scare you, what could I do to try and scare you.
I looked for people that held themselves the same way, had the same lilt to their voice, whose footsteps shook the very ground beneath their feet like yours do.
I never found any. Of course not, how blasphemous of me to even think. But I had to.
None of them followed me around like a ghost, none of them disappeared just out of view right as I turned a corner like you do.
You were something entirely new.
In the waking world my presence would follow you, a whisper of something nearly forgotten. One of those things you don’t want to, can’t let go of, lest you forget it ever happened in the first place.
Can you feel me?, I often wonder, my heart beneath the floorboards? Do you still walk barefoot, or have you taken to tip towing in your military boots. Guns drawn and ready to fire at every beat.
Did I scare you when I wasn’t there? Was my influence alone enough to change the way you carry yourself through your waking life?
Did you search for me in strangers, the way I do you?
I found myself falling into you, your presence. I stopped caring about wanting to scare you and just hoped, prayed, to be a returning stranger.
I wanted more of you.
It’s in those dreams I found myself truly understanding what it means to sin. I’ve played my fair share of wrathful priests, but nothing I’ve ever seen or learned from those roles ever stuck. I never truly knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end. To do something you know is wrong but do it anyways.
In spite of.
Keep it as our dirty little secret, even though it was anything but.
And being in a dream when I was designed for nightmares, it is undisputedly wrong.
For me, even dangerous.
I could be killed for this.
Will be.
But being able to spend that time with you in the midst of my usual bloodshed, those fleeting moments spent with you, *that* was worth it.
The warmth of your presence outweighs the harshness of any punishment I could receive.
My favorite parts were when you laughed.
You’d tilt your head back and close your eyes, plunging the world into a rumbling darkness where the only thing that ever mattered was *us*.
And as I stand here in front of your house in broad daylight, it’s all I can think of. It’s the only thing I can think of.
And I know it’ll kill me.
And I’ve never felt it so strongly before. I’ve never felt this… this fear. A hot, burning shame that sits in the pit of my stomach and rests atop my shoulders.
The prince of stories, king of dreams, dream of the endless, Morpheus. Whichever name you know him by.
He will kill me if he ever finds out.
And my father who art closer than you could ever imagine, he will be merciless.
And I will pay my price for deviating.
And I can accept that.
For you.