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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The doctor hums, visible surprise shifting to resignation as she stands back up to her full height. A nurse circles around to one side and puts a hand on your shoulder, as if to guide you away from the rest of the forest.

The doctor crosses her arms, unable to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Jay's fine. Nurse Jameson found him first." A muscle in her jaw tenses. "Either I or somebody else is going to have to have a talk with you both about how this happened. But first, it's my job to make sure you're both safely inside. We need to take a look at you, make sure you haven't gotten hurt out here." She gestures stiffly to the blood on the ground.

Edited 2017-07-26 20:48 (UTC)

Wait - what?

Tim jerks around to stare at her, incredulous, acknowledging her properly for the first time. The hell's she mean, he's fine? Jay isn't - he was never here. He never got to be here. Not for years.

"You're lying," he says, the words leaping automatically to his tongue as he flinches, pacing back. "He was never here. He was never here."

The nurse who placed a hand on your shoulder earlier--male, still crouched down to eye-level, around the age you should be if reality held any sway here--speaks up. "He might not've been here, exactly, but they still found him here, as in Rosswood." He looks up at the doctor. "They wouldn't've put him to bed yet, right?"

She nods. "We need to make sure you're both alright before we can make any big decisions."

The way she says 'big decisions' sounds an awful lot like 'room reassignments'.

No - no, he remembers, he remembers this. He knows this. Jay wasn't here. He didn't grow up here. He didn't grow up broken the way Tim was. He'd know if he had. He'd know.

They're not real. The sequence broke, and something went wrong. This isn't the same setting as before, but Tim's eyes fall to the patch of scarlet on the ground.

Breadcrumbs.

He takes off after the trailing red at a dead sprint, the shreds of his past forgotten.

"Jay!" The word squeezes in his chest like a bubble of hot air, but he's not losing him again. "Jay?"

As you run, the forest looks more and more unnatural. The trees twist in strange directions, and patches of earth and bark look flat and featureless, like matte-painted metal. Then there are pieces that are just missing, flat, unnatural shapes that, if looked at from the right angle, look like endless holes.

The further you progress, the more you see evidence of a fire. Burn scars across the trees and the scent of smoke hanging heavy in the air.

There's something on the ground up ahead.

When you get closer, the shape becomes familiar.

It's Jay's body, burn-scarred and tied to the ground with thick vines. Upon closer inspection, the vines appear to have taken root underneath his skin. He's not breathing.

There's another form lying next to it in a similar state, a little harder to recognize.

But it is familiar.

It's you.

The trees whip past in a blur of black bark and trunks gnarled like arthritic fingers, but there's no direction, no knowing, no nothing. It's like the place has lost its direction, gapped with empty patches of nothing that hurt to look at, so he doesn't.

He waits for the nurse to call behind him, for the rustling tread of footsteps launching in pursuit. But instead the trees coarsen until it becomes obvious that they're burnt black. That they've been seared by something that raged through here, intense and heated and destructive.

Shriveling the crumpled shapes at the foot of the trees, practically melting them into the bark. The hot smell of singed flesh rank in his nostrils.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tim staggers, then falls, his lungs heaving. Coughing, spraying more clotted blood onto the mess beneath his hands. Between sputtering breaths, he manages a word -

"Jay - "

There's a shuffling in the leaves behind you. It's not the sound of a pursuit, but the sound of something already settled.

If you look back, you can see her: white coat, sensible clothes, and an unreadable expression.

"I'm sorry you had to see that."

Oddly enough, it sounds sincere.

They said he was back at the hospital. They said he was all right. They said he was safe.

His hands curl at his sides, knotting into fists. That's - familiar, in its own chilled way. It's the way the blood roared in his eyes when Alex seized Brian by the hair and tilted his head back before turning to Tim with his mocking deadpan.

"How does it feel to have killed one of your friends, Tim?"

How does it feel?

The word that tears from his throat is hardly classifiable as human. He lunges for her, hands outstretched and reaching for her throat, the moisture beading in his eyes and whipping down his cheeks.

She lied.

(She didn't expect this.
In retrospect, she probably should have.)

You lunge for her neck, and even though you fall short, the force is enough to knock her off her feet. She twists, topples backwards, and hits the ground crookedly with an audible snap. Her face contorts with pain.

You're on top of her in an instant, fingers wrapped tight around her windpipe. She reaches up, tries to claw your hands away, but it isn't enough.

"Tim--Timothy, stop," she chokes out. "This isn't all--He's not gone. Please, listen."

Edited 2017-07-27 05:20 (UTC)

A slip of metal plunging into another man's neck, his life's blood crimsoning out like a grotesque flower as he'd gasped and choked in shock, in pain. Because he missed one. Did he feel the way Tim feels now, pinning her down, fingers constricting, constricting, trying to grind her out?

He's killed before. He's done worse! He'll keep doing worse. This is all he's good for, isn't it, now. What's one more body to his name? What's one more line slashed out in red? What's one more crime to his record?

He's fucking crazy, right?

"You said he was fine."

"We did--" She wheezes, barely able to draw in enough breath to keep talking. "We did everything we could. We saved...part."

She shoves at your hands, but the force of it is weaker now.

"At the hospital."

Edited 2017-07-27 06:16 (UTC)

"Part?"

He releases her almost at once, jerking upright as though burned. They did everything they could. They saved part - what do they mean, part. The hell is that supposed to mean? His gaze swivels back to the seared, blackened shapes coiled at the foot of the tree, his stomach turning.

"The hell you mean, part?"

Pulling back at once, she sucks in a painful, haggard breath. "Thank you," she mutters hoarsely, "Thank you, Timothy, that was very good."

She makes no move to escape, but she takes an interminable while to catch her breath. Finally, she answers.

"You two did something truly impressive. I want you to know that." She rubs at her throat with one hand, her left arm curled tightly to her side. "In cases like this, where there's too much broken to repair it quickly, this place finds it easier to start over. Rebuild from scratch. That includes Jay, and that includes your own memories."

She takes another moment to breathe, air whistling through her bruised throat. "So we stepped in. What you see there--" She gestures to the corpses, to the roots buried under their skin. "--is what we couldn't save. The rest of you is, well, you. And the rest of Jay is with us."

Edited 2017-07-27 19:04 (UTC)

What the hell is she...

She knows. She knows what this place is like, what it's doing, and for a long moment he can only stare in open-mouthed uncertainty, eyeing her suspiciously. This is supposed to be just a dream. Just some - some construct of his own damaged head. How's she, or anyone, meant to make sense of this?

"How do you know?" The words aren't as hard as he means them to be, wavering with doubt. "How do you know that?"

With some effort, she manages to pull herself to her feet.

"The simplest answer is that you know," she speaks slowly, gently, like she's explaining your next course of treatment. "You're dreaming, as I expect you've noticed, and in a dream, what happens is entirely up to you. Even if it doesn't feel that way. When the dream became a nightmare, you did just what you've always done before." A smile tugs at her lips. "You called for a doctor."

Her face falls, and she looks deeper into the forest. "Unfortunately, the simplest answer isn't always the right one."

There's that tone he hates, all over again. That smooth, calm displacement of genuine consolation in exchange for the false, clinical disconnect that all doctors master. Objective and clean, a flat drape over every problem poisoning his brain.

You called for a doctor.

"I didn't." The words emerge almost sullen, a reminder of the child he used to be, shoulders hunching in the way he hates. But he blows out a sigh between his lips regardless, glancing out across the woodland, and then back to the doctor - to the construct he himself created, or whatever she wants to call herself.

"Let me see him."

"Of course." Again, she isn't completely able to conceal the pity in her expression, but at least she makes an attempt. "This way."

The trail back through the forest feels slower than before, and if you look long enough, you can see the burnt, split trees knitting themselves back together.

Eventually, the hospital comes into view, at first just a pale shape between the trees. Ironically, the flames don't seem to have reached this place. It looks exactly like you remember, though that might not be the most reliable metric, given how rarely you saw it from the outside.

"I do have to say," the doctor starts, warily, before opening the simple glass doors at the entrance, "that we had a more difficult time with Jay than we did with you. He's doing as well as he can, and I want you to keep that in mind."

It looks precisely how he remembers it looking. Not an overgrown building flooded with kudzu and fines, flaking paint welded to the walls by the remnants of the burn damage that chased through the halls. He follows her at a wary slouch. The space between his footsteps diminishes as he crosses it, the world shrinking and compressing in accordance with his new desire to get in and find Jay.

"Is he okay?" The answer is probably no, not really, but he can't know until he sees him. Is he still blinded by his own hand? Is he - missing pieces of himself, the same way the trees were?

Is he alive.

"He's a fighter." She's in front of you now, striding ahead a little faster than you can comfortably follow. "He's doing better than we could've hoped."

She comes to a closed door (an examining room, if you remember correctly), knocks twice (more as a formality than anything else, because she has her hand on the handle before she gives anyone a chance to respond), and cracks the door open, just enough to look inside.

"Jay? I'm coming in now. I've brought Tim with me."

She opens the door wider, enough for you to see.

The form perched on the examining room table is small, looking only a year or two older than you were when you were admitted. He's missing the cap and the black windbreaker. Instead, his hair is sticking up at odd angles, and he's wearing a long-sleeved red shirt. (It hangs on him, but that's familiar.) Both eyes have been wrapped with clean bandages.

He turns his head toward the sound.

"Tim?" His voice is thin, small like the rest of him, but there's recognition there.

He's a fighter. The curt clip through the hallways is all wrong; he's never on this side of things, never on this side of the door. He's always the thing huddled in the corner, waiting for the tap of knuckles on door that heralds the white-clad shape he knows is coming, inevitable.

The door opens.

But it's...wrong. It's all wrong. It's the frantic way Jay's voice cracked when he muttered about how Rosswood had grown scrambled, how the layout was completely wrong. It's unreality, spiking and jittering across his fingertips and down his spine, and he flinches.

"Jay." Can't quite keep the horror from his tone as he says it - not at the look of his eyes (he's grown used to those, or the lack thereof, by now), but rather because of the shape he doesn't recognize. The child who may as well have arms and legs made like sticks, disheveled and small.

"Are you alright?" Jay pipes up, characteristic concern in uncharacteristic words. "I can't--" See is what he wants to say, pawing at the edges of the bandages over his eyes. He wants to tear them off, but he's been told one too many times to leave them alone. Instead, he scoots toward the edge of the examining table, crepe paper crinkling as he moves.

The doctor ushers Tim further inside. "I have to leave for now, but someone will be here very soon to take a look at both of you."

She gives Tim one last knowing, sympathetic glance before snapping the door shut behind her. The lock clicks.

The door shuts. He flinches, the lock snapping like a broken bone across the silence. They knew he'd come. They knew he'd come and they knew he'd take the bait, and now he's trapped all over again.

He's raking the walls with his eyes, but there's no window. Jay must not have been good enough for a window. He must have been too unruly for a window. Can't risk him running away.

"Don't..." A weary huff of a sigh as he paces closer, scanning the edges of Jay's silhouette - waiting for a break in his shape, for some part of him to dissipate and prove its unreality. "What happened?"

Jay snorts, familiar tension returning to his narrow shoulders. "Don't remember." He crosses his arms over his chest. "Or, I do, but it's...pieces."

Again, he reaches up to pick at the tape holding the bandages in place. "We...didn't get out, right? Nurses said we escaped, but it didn't sound right." His brow furrows. The motion is hindered by the gauze and tape, but it's still recognizable.

"Something about a sequence. Or--or a script."

And a man in the woods, but Jay doesn't want to say that just yet, even though for some reason he knows Tim would understand.

Okay. So he knows the script. He knows that it's flawed, and he knows that things have been...degrading progressively. Only instead of losing their setting completely, it's been expanded?

No. Doesn't make any sense.

"We gotta get outta here," mutters Tim. Doesn't waste any time starting to prowl the perimeter of the room, extricating the lighter from his pocket, clinging to it like a talisman. If history wants him to repeat what he did -

It's easier to burn down something you hate.

Jay nods furiously from atop the examining table, listening to Tim's footsteps as he circles the perimeter.

"I want to get out. I definitely want to get out." Jay draws his knees up to his chest. "Do you see anything? Is the door still lo--?"

With a click, the latch slides away, and the door creaks open.

"Sorry for the wait." It's the young male nurse from earlier, and he's grinning sheepishly. "Just need to make sure nobody's been too badly banged up, and then you two can finally get some sleep."

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and now that jay's back we're back to third person because why not

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