bakerstreet | NIGHTMARE FUEL MEME

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NIGHTMARE FUEL MEME

The Nightmare Fuel Meme

WARNING: This is not a nice meme, and will likely contain triggers for violence, pain, death, sexual situations, and all kinds of other unpleasant things. Click through at your own risk.

Nightmare Fuel: This is the stuff so horrifying that it can give people the creeps for years. This scares the pants off of just about anyone to the author/creator's delight. This makes you shrink in the back of your chair, look over your shoulder, and remind yourself that what's going on is (usually) only fictional....

HOW IT WORKS:
♦ Leave a comment with your character's name and fandom, and state any preferences. If you'd like to roll for/pick an option here, go for it. If you'd like, you can fill out this handy form to make things easier for others:

♦ Tag another character. Pick one of the options, either by using the RNG or just selecting one that interests you.
♦ Play out the results and respect others' preferences.
♦ Have fun and/or be traumatized!

1. ACID TRIP - Things are starting to get weird. Very weird. Your hands just popped off and are dancing the tango in the living room with your pet alligator while a Weeping Angel watches from the corner. There are invisible spiders crawling all over you and you don't dare open your mouth lest they fall in. It can only get as strange as your imagination will let it.

2. JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DOESN'T MEAN THEY AREN'T OUT TO GET YOU - You just can't help the feeling that someone is watching you. Someone is out to get you. Who are your real friends? Is that person really an alien in disguise? Are there surveillance cameras in your bedroom walls?

3. THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES - Think about the worst nightmare that you've ever had. Guess what. You're now in it, and you just can't seem to wake up.

4. FUN WITH PHOBIAS - What do you fear? The dark? Heights? Swarms of insects? Snakes? Drowning? Whatever it is, it is now your reality.

5. TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCES OF THE NON-SPARKLY KIND - Something has gone wrong. You're...changing. And not in a good way. Are you turning into an animal? A demon? A monster? Were you assimilated by the Borg?

6. AND I MUST SCREAM - You can't move. You can't scream. You can't do anything but remain conscious of every passing second. Did you choose the wrong words for your wish? Were you turned to stone? Trapped by a curse? Turned into a doll, unmoving but forever beautiful? Sealed inside a tree for a thousand years?

7. A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES - The dread spectre of disease has raised its head. Do you have days to live? Hours? Seconds? Or will you waste away slowly? What will happen in the meantime?

8. EYE SCREAM, YOU SCREAM - Something terrible has happened to you. It could have been an accident, a curse, an attack, a disease, or a surgery gone terribly wrong. But you've been horribly mutilated (or are in the process thereof) and are disturbing to see. Perhaps the Phantom will let you borrow his mask.

9. HORRIBLE TO BEAR - Congratulations, you're with child! Except...this wasn't supposed to happen. Did you just wake up one morning and discover the surprise? Is it part of a bizarre science experiment? Are you carrying the child of the devil? Or did you just get a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong and hellspawn is about to burst out of your chest?

10. THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO - This is a really tiny space you're in. And it looks like you're going to be here for an awfully long time. Did the other person shut you up in here? Are they a fellow prisoner? Or can you somehow convince them to let you out?

11. WELCOME TO THE APOCALYPSE - The world is ending. In fire, in ice, in the zombie apocalypse, in a collision with a giant asteroid? Whatever it is, it's horrible. Do you even want to bother trying to survive?

12. SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE - You're hungry. Really, really hungry. Nothing seems to satisfy you, nothing at all. Except that other person standing nearby looks awfully tasty. Cannibalism? Can you?

13. MINDS ARE FOR GAMES - Mind control? Brainwashing? Total amnesia? Whatever it is, you certainly aren't completely in control of yourself. Perhaps the other person is....

14. THE PLURAL OF DIMENSION IS DEMENTIA - Everything looks familiar, but it's just a little bit off. Did your neighbor always have that mustache? Was the sky always that shade of green? Welcome to the mirror universe, where you're the crazy one.

15. THE LATEST DISPLAY MODEL - You're so pretty that you belong on a shelf. Or behind bars. Perhaps magically frozen in place so that you can't escape or mar those lovely features. Maybe someone just wanted you safely hidden away, kept all to themselves. Or did they want to show everyone in the world that you belong to them and them alone?

16. JUST KEEP RUNNING - Something is chasing you. Maybe you don't even know what it is, you just know that you have to keep running, because if you stop the consequences are worse than you can bear to consider. No matter how exhausted you are, you just have to keep going.

17. WILDCARD - Pick another option, mix and match, do whatever you'd like. After all, when it comes to nightmares YMMV, so feel free to invent your own.

(original meme by

enthymeme)

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(ooc: I'm fine with either format so changing it is fine. Re: smut, this is a beautiful list. My only nos are already on your 'no' list so we should be fine to include anything we want in that respect.)

Each visit ended with the same emptiness as it had begun. Did the believers ever feel the same empty presence, the sense of waiting that was never rewarded?

One night could change everything, a fact he'd learned at the beginning. The voice was as real as the air he breathed, and yet it was impossible. The brunette turned quickly, seeking out the source, but he found himself alone. Even if another body had been near enough to speak, there was a quality about the words that sounded more internal.

But the voice wasn't his own.

"What the he---" his voice trailed off. He was in a church, he was praying, could it really be something higher than he'd really hoped? If so, he couldn't finish that sentence. "Who's there?" No, that was impossible. Waylon may be deep into depression, but he wasn't crazy enough to hear voices.

He hoped.

[Excellent! I've got a penchant for giving people the kinks they don't often get to play, so if there's anything your heart desires that would work in this meme, let me know. Or shoot me a PM and we can plot devious things. ]

They always reacted this way. Didn't people know it made them look crazy? Good thing that worked to Balthazar's advantage. What didn't work was that the angel was a bit smarter than he'd anticipated. She wasn't trying to save Waylon, she was trying to push Balthazar out. If he maintained contact with the barrier, it was a direct conduit for her to pack a punch that might delay him for a while.

Do not speak. Watch for a sign.

Before waiting for anything further, Balthazar pulled his withered hand away from the barrier. Slowly, it started to reconstruct itself, like flaking ash and embers in reverse.

The angel dove for him, but he dispersed into a cloud of flies dispersing before she could make contact. Flies that would linger, waiting for the man to finally leave the blasted church. Unless he planned to linger until daybreak, a scattering of flies and the cloying odor of sulfur would be there at the gate to greet him.

Waylon waited. Like blind livestock listening to an unseen master, he chose a seat and waited for the sign. Two options were before him: divine intervention and insanity. He knows which he'd choose, but he also knew which was the more likely.

Two hours pass before he resigns himself to the fact he'd taken one step closer to insanity. How many inmates from Mount Massive had heard voices before they'd taken the criminal path? Would he begin to see things too?

The hallucination came in the form of flies once Waylon stepped from the safety of the church. The swam greeted him as if sincerely waiting, and he had enough sense of mind to wonder if sulfur and flies could really be a divine sign.

Don't speak, the voice had said.

While he waited for Waylon to make his choice, Balthazar toyed with the angel. There were rules for the both. She stood by them far more sternly than Balthazar ever would. So long as he wasn't trying to push into hallowed ground, she couldn't touch him. His very presence, right there at the edge, taunted her. That made it all worth it.

But at last his game came to an end, as it was only the opening act. Because here was his true target, emerging at last. He did not reveal himself of course, that would spoil everything. Most of the flies dispersed at last, one or two buzzing around the man at all times, no matter what he did to be rid of them. As did the lingering stench of sulfur.

Distantly, there seemed to be a scream. Not the sort of scream one might expect to hear on a dark street, but the sort of scream Waylon would have heard in the dead of night in while among the inmates. It didn't echo, it didn't come from anywhere specific. But it was there, just on the edge of hearing.

Quickly. That voice returned, finally. Even more distant than before, as if whatever spoke to him was struggling to barely reach him. Get somewhere safe. They saw you in the church.

The disbelief had no time to linger once the scream cut the silence brought on by the night. The sound was too familiar, not just for his time in the asylum but because of its reappearance in his dreams.

Waylon didn't need an incorporeal voice to tell him to run. His body turned swiftly as he ran for his car, his footsteps loud and uncaring for the noise he made. The path was clear, a small mercy in an otherwise horrible situation.

The door opened, closed, with the same frenzied movement. Despite his fear, Waylon wasn't made clumsy. The keys went smoothly into the ignition before the car started. His only plan was to drive

They were back. They'd found him. It should have been impossible, but no one could really hide from them, could they?

In the mirror, a figure seemed to unfold out of the darkness, as if it had been crouched behind the bumper. It seemed made of solid shadow, but for it's eyes that glowed white-hot, red around the edges. Not even illumination from the streetlamps seemed to give shape to the figure. But its outline would ring as familiar to Waylon as that distant scream. And as he turned on the car, the brake lights flaring to life, he would see. Lit hideous and red from beneath was a man he'd know well. A man who had once wanted to do far more than simply kill Waylon.

Hide. The voice hissed, distant as ever. And with it came knowledge. A twisting path through neighborhoods and residential streets, winding back on itself, a complicated and difficult to follow route. Ending at an abandoned house. Somewhere no one would look for him.

Unseen, the demon himself sat beside Waylon in the car, an amused smirk tugging at his lips. A coin tumbled over the backs of his fingers. As the passing lights outside the car caught on the ancient metal, it would flash, ever so slightly. And that Waylon would see. The smallest flickers of light, masked against the jumble of light outside the car.

The night was full of impossibilities. The hulking figure of Eddie should have long since been buried beneath the rubble of that hellish building. Waylon had seen it himself, the wooden spike the pierced his flesh as he hung among the corpses he'd created.

Just as real now was the man moving toward him. His pulse beat at a dangerous speed as he sped forward, eyes constantly checking the mirrors to assure he was putting distance between himself and one of his worst nightmares. While he knew the map in his head didn't come from his own experience, there was no time to properly examine the knowledge or its origin. As the roads appeared before him, true to the picture, getting to the end was of the utmost importance. What would Eddie do if he caught him now?

The brief flicker of light was lost in the madness around him, a madness both internal and external.

While Eddie never seemed to appear again, the route was fraught with other perils. Shadows lurking on corners, threatening to step in front of his car, watching him pass. Each with an eerily familiar outline. Each with those wicked, glowing eyes. Even when it was too dark to see anything but the road under the headlights, there were still a pair of eyes somewhere in the deep shadows. They were heading out away from the general populous now. Toward areas were the spaces between neighbors doubled ever few houses. The scraggly edge of town waiting for development.

At last the house loomed before them. Two storys high, sagging from decades of neglect, nature slowly retaking the facade. The windows were broken and boarded up, planks strapped across naked frames as if that could stop anything. Whatever color it had once been it was all now grey and dust.

Around back! The voice was thready and distant, barely there. It was frantic, and would have been breathless if such a voice needed breath. Hide the car! Get inside! Quick!

All the while, Balthazar sat patient. Watching. Savoring. If Waylon had the guts to set foot inside that decrepit house, there was a nasty surprise waiting for him.

A sinking possibility remained just on the edge of consciousness: none of this was real. Waylon, hoping for a sign and needing direction had imagined a voice in his head before seeing all of the faces his nightmares normally held. He was running not from the inmates at Mount Massive but from his own fears and memories.

It was impossible to outrun your own mind.

The moment the road became different from his mental map, he'd stopped, he promised himself, but each curve was a perfect match. How would he know where to go without an outside influence?

The influence could have had better taste in dwellings.

Despite the questionable location, Waylon drove behind the house and cut the lights on the car. He took the keys as he jumped from the seat and ran inside.

As the door swung open, the dilapidated house inside was visible. The second floor had caved in completely, bringing down chunks of the roof. Moonlight fell across the chaos of the interior. But the moment Waylon stepped inside, that all vanished. As did the outside world. That doesn't mean the setting was unfamiliar. In fact, Waylon might just feel right at home. Almost.

The corridor that stretched ahead of him was almost exactly like he would remember it, only it appeared someone had tried to rebuild it from the rubble it had become. Everything was fractured, and twisted. Just as the house, the walls were cracked, grayed and peeling. If Waylon tried to turn around, he would only find further corridor.

Should he try to venture far, he would find there was something distinctly wrong. While the place seemed empty of any other person, the way the corridors twisted and turned he would never be able to find his way to the door. In fact, no matter which turn he took, no matter what he tried, he would never even see a way out. No doors, no exits. Not so much as a sign pointing him somewhere.

Even worse, that voice that guided him seemed to cut out at the threshold. It had been trying to tell him something, frantically, but it broke up like a bad connection, falling to the mental equivalent of static, before going completely silent.

Waylon was completely alone. For now.

Despite the fuel-filled paranoia, Waylon was a man of logic. His chosen field was programming for the simple fact that it always followed certain theories, certain rules. Code wasn't complicated, there were no surprises. The trips to the church had pushed his sense of belief, but the night had been a whirlwind of things he had no time to examine. Even in the frenzied chased, he'd questioned his own sanity.

Something inside of him had finally cracked. Dilapidated buildings didn't turn into asylums that no longer existed. He didn't walk into the house and emerge inside the padded walls that housed most of his sleeping moments.

So, then, where was he? Had he made it to the church? Was he in a pew? Maybe even something more fantastical had happened and this was his sign.

But it all felt so real. Was this what it was like inside of their minds? It was so easy to label them as deranged and crazy and secretly think that made them bad people. If this was what they had seen, Waylon had to question his own judgment.

His steps were quiet. Despite himself, he was falling back into old habits. Inside, he told himself it was because he didn't know where he may actually be walking, but in reality, instinct urges him to stay silent lest he alert another inmate.

Slowly, the asylum seemed to populate. At first, it had been silent. Not the silence of a quiet night, but that of being absolutely alone. Nothing but his own breath and footsteps disturbing the oppressive silence. But then, just at the edges of hearing, as if far off in the ruins, there was a scream. A little closer, a sob. A rambling voice saying nothing at all. The sounds seemed to grow closer, slowly filling the spaces with the sounds of madness. All sealed away behind the walls, no patients visible no matter how hard one looked.

Then at a distance, another person. A stranger. A man in a white lab coat, crossing the hall up ahead, too far away to see any real detail other than his hair being as dark as his jacket pale. He studied a clipboard in his hands, seemingly unaware of anyone else, as he headed down a different branch of the corridor.

Fear was often a deterrent for ration, panic a blanket that covered the mind to hide the most rational of solutions, but Waylon was forged through horrific trials and experiences. Even as the world around him appeared to be real, the impossibility of the situation both grounded and frightened him. There was a name for those who saw things that didn't really exist: crazy.

The best way to dissolve the illusion would be to unravel the details until his mind had to admit the truth. With a heartbeat akin to a drum, his legs carried him down the hall, his eyes peering into every room. The addition of noise was startling, a deeper form of immersion, the opposite of what he wanted. Nonetheless, if he pushed forward, answers had to make themselves known.

And then he had a visual to add to the audio cues. As if his own inclusion would break the illusion he needed for answers, Waylon followed behind but more slowly. The figure was a doctor, an involved member, an enemy for his work at the institute. How many doctors had he seen die that night?

There was no time for such thought.

At first, the doctor didn't seem to notice Waylon. Not as though he were too absorbed in his work, but more as if one of them was some form of illusion or ghost. The doctor merely went on flipping back and forth through the chart in his hands.

"It's after hours, Mr. Park. Shouldn't you...be in bed?" The doctor's voice was calm, measured, almost distracted. He never looked up from his notes.

As if speaking had unlocked some sort of spell, information seemed to surface in the Waylon's mind, like memories long forgotten. He wasn't a doctor from Mount Massive, but he was in charge of Waylon's care. No name surfaced, however. No specific place. Just the notion of "somewhere else."

Wait for a sign.

Normally, delusions are scattered with illogicalities. In many ways, that is true for his own visions right now, but as impossible as all of this may seem, it all fits together too well. As difficult as it is to accept as a nonbeliever, what if this is, indeed, the sign he needs? What if this is the way to work through the mental trauma he's had to endure? Perhaps even, if this was an illusion, it's his own mind trying to cope.

"No, I shouldn't be here at all."

Despite the argument, Waylon's voice was calm. If this was a path to recovery, he won't fight it. If it's an illusion, he had to wait for fallacies to occur in order to challenge his own mind.

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NIGHTMARE FUEL MEME

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