The Nightmare Man

The flicker people- humans- they place so much value on the power and truth of dreams. They never stop to think about what might be hidden in the darker things their minds summon at night.

I walk their streets and eat their food, flirt and laugh and cry with them, but I am not of them, and I think they can tell. They always move on sooner or later. I think I have been alone for so long that I have forgotten what it is to feel love. If I ever knew to begin with. Memory stretches out behind me, and the things I do not use begin to fade.

I am the nothing man.

When I want it, when I choose, I can sink into nothing, become darkness that creeps between houses and around doorframes. It is the easiest way to travel- fast and silent and so, so simple. They almost stop mattering when I'm here. I almost stop seeing the lights of their dreams, the darks of their nightmares.

I am the shadow man.

There are some of them who dream so furiously that I can feelsee the lights from far, far away. They don't realize when I come, of course, but I stand in their dreams and watch hopes of a future that will probably never come to be. Those people's lights are so strong, though, that they'll lead the way to a future. Maybe not the one in the dream. But the light of a dream is a powerful thing, enough to brighten the way to a future, enough to summon me through space and time.

I am the dreamer's man.

Both of the above are redundant, come to think of it. Space and time, I mean. They don't really apply to me. I have only the vaguest idea of what they mean, but I see the effect on the flicker people. Their lives- there and gone in a heartbeat, lasting an eternity, it doesn't matter. They are caught up in a current in the ocean that is Time, and I am a far, far larger denizen than they. But that doesn't mean I can't step into their current and let them sweep me along for however long I want.

I am the eternal man.

They don't seem to realize that their nightmares aren't of them. That they don't make them up. That dreams are false, lying things, spun of fragile ice-webs that melt in the harsh light of what they call reality. Not that they have no power- oh, no. They are rebuilt over and over every night and every moment alone. Glowing, sparkling, burning brightly while they last. But they're still false. Not like nightmares. My children, my beauties, my perfect monsters.

I am the honest man.

They're dark compared to dreams. Little clots of antilight. Black holes in miniature. That is why dreams and nightmares are different, I think. Dreams are things born of a human mind but they are things that emit, that give out, that project their images on a consciousness. Nightmares... they pull, they suck. They splay the deepest, darkest truths out from the depths of one's mind where one has hidden them and across the inner eye in vivid and terrifying detail. Sometimes disguised. Sometimes hidden beneath layers and layers of meaning. The truth is only there when one is brave enough to strip away all the layers of what they are and find the bare bleached bones of one's psyche. And that is what my perfect monsters try to make you do. They're little truth-seekers. Terrifying, dark and deadly, sallying forth with unconquerable power, because of course their power comes not from me but from the mind of whomever they find to draw from.

I am the nightmare man.