'It feels so good to be back...I left a monarch. Yet I return naked, alone...'
'..Hungry.'
'Weakened, I clutch at a passing dream...First, food...'
In Mort Notkin's recurring dream, he goes to this great party, but he's dressed as a clown...He thought it was a costume party. He didn't know.
Everyone laughs at him: Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, even John Wayne...
He watches a man with bone white skin appear and steal a piece of chicken from Colonel Sanders. 'That's weird!' Mort thinks to himself.
This is the first time a naked man has shown up to raid the buffet...Dreams. Go figure.
Brooks & Dunn arrive on a snowmobile and Mort is back on familiar ground, forgetting all about what he saw.
"My first food in seventy four years." Onerios says to himself as he exits the human's dream. 'I'm so hungry, I don't even taste it.'
'I am weak, lacking my tools. Still...I imagine the texture of fabric against my skin; sculpt it from dream-space...It has been so long.'
'Shirt. Trousers. Overcoat...There.'
'That's two of three. I have food and raiment...I need the tools stolen from me by my former captor. He will give them to me. And he will also give me the other thing I crave...'
Ellie Marsten sits upright in her bed within the charity ward, muttering half-remembered phantasms.
"...Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream! If that there King was to wake." added Tweedledum, "You'd go out...Bang!"
"...just like a candle."
Kingston, Jamaica
A couple of kids stand over Daniel Bustamonte, gawking, as he sits near comatose against a door jamb.
"You look at this mon. 'es the living dead. Just sits there all the day...'e can't talk. 'es crazy."
"...No. Not Anymore" he said aloud with a smile as the spark returned to his eyes.
London, England
In the nursing home garden, Unity Kinkaid comes to herself again as a tear wells in her eye.
The elderly man walks through a corridor of mirrors, towards a warm, glowing light. With each reflection of himself he passes, he sees himself getting younger, with each step, he can feel himself growing stronger. Compelled by a combination of base instinct and selfish desire, he continues onward.
At the end of the corridor, the middle-aged Burgess finds the source of the light. A candle.
'Meowrrr?'
A black cat with glowing eyes rubs up against his leg.
Taking the candle, Burgess follows the feline up a very long spiral staircase.
The tabby enters the room at the top, jumps upon an ancient chair, turns to face the doorway and waits...patient and purring.
One moment later, a teenaged Burgess enters the room and looks in the eyes of the thing from the mystic circle.
"I'm...god, I'm sorry...It, it wasn't me, it was my father, he did it, I, I never knew, I wouldn't have, I'm sorry, I didn't--"
"Shhhhhhhh....Enough."
"There are offenses that are unpardonable."
"Can YOU have any idea what it was like? Can you have any idea?"
"Confined in a prison for three score years and ten. A human lifetime."
"Time moves no faster for my kind than it does for humanity, and in prison it CRAWLED at a snail's pace..."
"I was...I am the Lord of this realm of dream and nightmare."
"You--your FATHER--piped me down with his petty hedge-magicking, his twopenny spell..."
"ME you did that to me."
The lord of the dreaming rose from his seat and closed the distance between himself and the petrified human.
"You barred me from my realm with your foolish circle..."
"You threatened, cajoled and pleaded for gifts that are neither mankind's to receive nor mine to give."
"You had no thought for the harm you must have brought to your world..."
'lord, what fools these mortals be.'
"WELL? Have you no EXCUSE? No EXPLANATION? Some reason I should not take reprisal?"
"We didn't want you." Alex whimpered. "It was all a mistake. We weren't trying to capture you...We wanted to capture Death."
"WHAT? You wanted Death? Then count yourself lucky for the sake of your species and your petty planet that you did not succeed..."
"...That instead you snared Death's younger brother..."
"You'll never know how lucky you were."
"Where are my TOOLS?"
"...Sorry?"
"A POUCH, a HELM, a RUBY. Your people stole them from me. Where ARE they?"
"I, I don't know...that was part of the stuff Sykes pinched, fifty years ago. we never saw any of it again..."
"I see."
"So. Your punishment then. I will grant you a GIFT...To reward you for your years of HOSPITALITY."
Onerios places his hand upon the head of Alex Burgess
Alex Burgess bolts upright in his bed...screaming.
"NO!!!"
"Are you alright?" Paul asked at Alex's bedside as he put his book to the side.
"Yes." said Alex, his heart pumping in his chest and sweat beading on his brow. "I--Ohhh...sorry, I must have had a nightmare. I dreamed that our prisoner had escaped in this tower, he was...he said..."
"He has. He did." Paul told him as the skin began to melt off of his face. "He checked out this morning!"
Alex Burgess bolts upright in his bed...screaming.
"Keep away from me!" he pleads. to the young nurse at his bedside as she attempts to replace the covers he threw off in his sleep.
"Now now, Mr Burgess. Calm down. You've had a bad dream, that's all" the nurse said to comfort him. "No point in getting all worked up about it."
"God. Oh god. It was terrifying. So real." Alex began. "Ha-have you ever had one of those dreams, you know...where you think you've woken up, but you haven't? It's just part of the nightmare and you're still in it?"
"I can't say that I have, Dear, but you know what?" the nurse asked him as her head separated from her neck, rolled into the lap of the old man and continued to speak: "I think you're going to have quite alot of them from now on."
Alex Burgess bolts upright in his bed, screaming......
The Dream King gives a small nod of satisfaction.
'It was more tiring than I had expected, but he will never return to the life he knew.'
'His is the nightmare everlasting...'
'...Eternal Waking...'
Paul and the nurse hover over Alex Burgess's sleeping body.
"How long has he been like this?" asked Paul.
"He's only been asleep for a few minutes, if that's what you mean." the nurse told him. "Funny--He's normally such a light sleeper."
'...and I have shown him fear.'
"Alex? Alex? It's me, Paul. Come on Alex, c'mon old fellow. Me and Nurse Edmonds, We're here. It's alright, so wake up."
