#dreameat

[prestochange]

A mass text

(txt): I am aware of the situation and am busy trying to handle it.

(txt): To those of you sleeping, I've taken the liberty of turning your devices to make a loud alarm to forcibly wake up. I apologize for overclocking your devices.

(txt): Please report to the Saffron Dojo for an emergency meeting tomorrow night.

[missingstarter]

The hisses turn into shrieks, and screams, muffled as if underwater.

He looks at you, seriously. And he says he forgives you. And then he burns.

[ gore tw under read more ;; dont rb unless youre Rabid or Cas!! ]

[primordialfell]

Do Gods Dream?

The ones that wish they were human do, without understanding of what mortality will truly mean. What nightmares would scare a god?

Perhaps a dreamed life. An entire dreamed life, day by muddled, muffled day, and imagined memories concocted by the hour. It was a mundane life, a wasted life, each day just slightly to the left, and each aspect of each day not exactly right but with no reason or rhyme to be wrong.

Until the entire mortal life feels wrong, and everything and every memory feels wrong. The dream continues, and somehow encompasses an entire existence, with every pain and broken bone. Every single car crash, every death, every fight, every misery.

And no joy. There's no joy in it. The world is plastic grey and there are claw marks on everything.

And you have no power over it.

And you can't wake up.

what, you have nothing to say this time?

you're normally so insistent on barging in to my every sleeping moment. so insistent that I never be allowed a moment's peace. you're obsessed with me. with my pain. you call it sanctity and holy but I know that you are a cruel creature of low cunning and low remorse. have you finally learned sorrow? finally decided to leave me in peace?

Your feet find purchase on shifting sand.

oh god.

YOUR NAME IS ETERNATUS. You are the Worm Our God. At least, you are in waking. In sleeping, you are a creature of isolated weakness and quiet contemplation. It is here that you are vulnerable, dreaming deep beneath the sea as you consider old things, great things of high import and such wondrous magnitude. Your castle is old and it is interminable.

SOMETIMES YOU WONDER what it might be like to be human. You have worn their skin and walked among them, as you have for every species you have visited, but it is not the same. You're old, incalculably so, and because of that a lifetime for them passes by you in a blink of an eye. You breathe and an entire generation is dead. In the time it takes you to smile, you have watched a nation fall. You know this. You know what you are. You are a coiling ouroboros. It would take a man a hundred years to walk your length.

YOU'RE OLD. You're very old. As if that makes what you're about to go through any easier.

You wake up. Your hands are rough and calloused as they fly to your face and all your memories come rushing back. Fuck. The alarm on your bedside table blares without mercy, screaming at you to get up and get dressed already, you're going to be late for work. Fuck again. It's Wednesday, worst day of the week for Poke Mart freight.

You prepare yourself for your terrible manual labor job. You arrive late and your manager yells at you again. He does it to everyone. Your abuse isn't special. Neither are you.

You see on the news more stuff about stuff. Terrorist attacks in a distant region, the Kanto bill is dropping in value. Wow, another PWT. You'll get to watch rich assholes with millions of yen fly out to a stadium and get sponsored by corporations to battle with their purebred, IV trained, six-stacks of absolute monsters from the comfort of your ground floor studio apartment.

The news hums at you again. Black pyramids found in Hoenn. You change the channel. Mt. Silver claims another life. You change the channel. Political unrest in Sinnoh. You change the channel.

You switch to your streaming services and watch worthless TV for the rest of your night.

You wake up. Your hands are rough and calloused. All your memories come rushing back as you look at your alarm. Fuck. You're going to be late for work. Fuck again. It's Wednesday. worst day of the week for Poke Mart freight. You prepare yourself for your terrible manual labor job. You get there late. Your manager yells at you. Black spit flies out of his lips and hits you on the face as he does and you sit there and take it.

Your abuse is special. It was made for you. Only you.

You get home. You watch the news. Another terrorist attack. PWT. Met Gala. Climate change. Silph Co coming back. Kanto bill even lower. Unova pyramid found. Unrest. The world is getting worse and you can't do anything about it. How could you? It's like the world was designed to make everyone so miserable they just have to sit there and take it. Like how your boss calls you all family; it's just a tactic to make sure you put up with all sorts of degrading shit.

The man in the corner of your kitchen stares at you and you try not to look at him. He makes you cry.

You wake up. Your hands are rough. Memories come back. Alarm. You're late for work you drive very fast to get there and you rear end some bitch on the highway. Hit and run but it's fine, she'll never catch you. Dog eat dog world out there. Manager yells at you. His jaw snaps off halfway through, his tongue kind of uselessly flopping around the gory, chunky black mess where it used to be. He sounds like someone shoved a fistful of organs down his throat but you know he's still screaming at you.

Home. News. Unrest. Terrorist attack. Economy in shambles. Mundanity. Wealthy people flaunt it in your face. The man in the kitchen takes a step closer and you scream and cry under your couch. No he doesn't. That would be something new. Something interesting. You don't get that luxury. Climate change. Sky blotted with ash. Mt. Silver erupts. PWT. Your Cleffa dies that night. You take her to the Pokemon Center. You can't afford to keep her ashes.

stop it. stop it stop it stop it. i want to wake up. why? how can you do this?!

You think this is me?

it could only be you.

Not every bad thing in the universe is my fault.

Wake. Hands are rotting stumps. Bone pokes out. Drive to work. Your eyes are falling out. Stagger towards your boss an hour late. He's a pile of ash and meat on the ground squealing hateful slurs at you. Ignore him. You run someone over on the way home. Don't bother stopping. Freight truck was filled with bodies today.

These things would scare a human, wouldn't they? Do they scare you, Worm Our God, who is so used to seeing blood and death?

No, they don't, do they?

That's why you realize how horrifying it is.

You wake up again in bed as your alarm blares. You lazily slap it and roll out of bed. Somehow, between the first paragraph and now, it's been fifteen years. You stagger to work. You barely feel alive. Your life is a haze of monochrome mundanity and hope forever dangled out of reach. The news talks of change. Worms flying overhead and breathing life back into the oceans. Well isn't that wonderful.

In retaliation, oil companies jack up prices the next day to compete. Can't let that thing interfere with profits. It brings back a new species, almost in retaliation. That's fine; the next day eggs cost twelve dollars everywhere.

Fuck.

Sometimes you think about getting another Pokemon, then you realize you can't afford it, and you watch the PWT again. You see people competing from all over the world; the people who've gotten lucky enough to steal the eyes of the spotlight. That's the lie everyone always says: anyone can be that great, but they're liars, aren't they? You have to know people to be someone.

Are you even real, then, if you could be removed from the world and no one would ever know the difference?

You wake up again. Your alarm is making noise and you turn it off. You go to get ready for work and your front door is gone. All the windows in your apartment are gone. You realize it makes sense. You were never going to survive for very long anyway, not with the world becoming like it is. Not with nobodies like you, of whom there are billion, being overshadowed by the ones that really matter. Taller flowers get the Light you so desperately crave.

You aren't strong enough to thrive in the Dark. To grab a knife and cut their stems down and take their place in the Light.

You sit down in front of the TV and you watch as it all falls apart around you. Black mist seeps around the floor and swirls like a fog machine. You stare at the TV. The man in the corner watches you. There's no point. There never was. Some people are meant to make history and some are meant to fill the numbers of the lives they change. You are a number filler. That's all you'll ever be.

You realize you are not special. You have struggled into this existence and you will now slip silently out of it. This is everyone's experience, Eternatus. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter.

You're everyone. And everyone is you.

You think about going somewhere. Somewhere faraway where the world can't catch up, as the things that supposedly make you unique peel away bit by bit. Your laugh. Your memories. Your personality. All of it crushed away by a mind that doesn't hate you... but you just aren't important enough to be worth consideration.

That's the real rub. You didn't do anything. You just have to suffer the crime of being so missable.

You sit alone in darkness and the world forgets you.

god, what's the point?

I don't think there is one.

i have to help them. when i wake up i have to help them.

I don't think you can.

i'm eternatus. i can do anything.

Then wake up.

I--

Then save them.

...

I ...

... ... I know. It's okay. I know.

[moonkssd]

[cursedmystic]

You.... dream.

You...

You dream?

You are dreaming, right?

You don't remember falling asleep. You do remember lying down on your sleeping mat, after trying to chase nerves down with a glass of water.

But you are not asleep.

There is a shape your doorway and it's not one of your ghosts. It is something... else. And it walks to your bed.

And it's waiting.

You aren't asleep, but you're starting to dream with your eyes wide open.

+2 corruption.

It started with a migraine early in the morning. You made it through two gym battles before you falter on the second one and lose to a rookie move. Passing the badges on doesn't feel right, but it's how things are done. Medium Yoneko takes one look at you and tells you to go home before you take a tumble in your own gym.

So, you do go home. The Mōri greets you with an oppressive silence that should normally be a comfort when your head is pounding as much as it is. A glass of water, a couple of extra strength painkillers, and you sink down for a nap. . .

You wished you were napping. You know you're not asleep, because your head is still pounding so hard you can hear it. You're mostly aware of this fact because you see the shape in the doorway and you can hear the Murkrow outside crowing in a nonsense way. (It's particular how they sound in your dreams, always in sets of five. This one isn't following that pattern.)

The shape sits by your bed and it waits for you. The miasma that follows it chokes the air and it seems to simply be watching and waiting. It doesn't have to do anything -- it's already got hooks in you.

The not-dream ends in a brilliant flash. The Pokeballs on your dresser shake and shake and one finally breaks open, with Chandelure's ghostly lights illuminating every corner of the room in a burning flash that brings the room's temperature to a scorching high. Overheat burns whatever remains of the dream before the move fades and she gives a miserable warble of warping glass to you.

It's enough to finally drag you to your feet. The rest of your Pokemon release themselves as you vomit into the garden, your hands white-knuckled onto the railing. The only thing that finally soothes the aching in your skull is a combination of Jellicent wrapping his arms around you and an insistence from your cousin to go to the clinic when she gets home and sees you in the state you're in.

So, you spend the night in the local clinic. It's not enough to ship you off to Goldenrod's hospital, but the threat is there.

It's always there.

[allthingsglittergold]

You wake with phantom pain in your arm, resting atop the workman's bench in the new craftspersons' shop you were gifted. You must have fallen asleep while working.

Things are good right now, in some ways at least.

The region, largely thanks to you and your friends, has been quiet.

And so, it's peaceful here.

Save that phantom pain.

You look down at your arm, and it's fine, your skin dotted with scars from a young lifetime's worth of training. Your loved ones are asleep, Silver crashed on the couch in the back and partially in shadow, out of the aura of your hanging lamplight.

Things are very good. You think you might have a future with a shelf life. Everything you built?

You start lifting your tools up to put them away. Empty apricorn tops go into a separate set of boxes. Carving tools go into their sleeves and into the correct boxes.

Silver shifts, and you look back to see if he's awake, squinting into the dark.

He doesn't say anything, but you hear a quiet, restrained hiss from him, and it pulls at that age old fight or flight sense you carried since the Slowpoke Well. You move quick, to go to him, and... You can't. You can't take a step past that lamplight. It's like the dark is solid.

Silver hisses again. You see why now, starting to feel the blood in your body run cold.

There are pieces of him being peeled off as if cut away and shredded like fruit. Piece by piece, in violent familiar letters. R. R. R.

The hisses turn into shrieks, and screams, muffled as if underwater. Or under layers and layers of concrete.

You can do nothing. There's the smell of blood and you watch the shadows start invading your little circle of light, blood creeping over the floor. You watch a fingernail slip over the ground, and step back quickly, your hand hitting the edge of one of your still-out carving knives.

It pricks you.

And miraculously, you wake, sweating so badly that if feels like you drowned.

Gold wakes, and he isn't in bed.

He's in the kitchen.

Panic grips him. The blood rushes away from his head (why does his hand hurt?) and he feels light-headed. He's sweating, drenched, and the room is spinning. Gold staggers against the counter hard enough that his hip hurts, smacking the wooden door under the sink into the frame.

The Champion clings to it for dear life as his gorge rises and he can't hold it in-

He throws up into the sink. Its violent and harsh. There's a stabbing pain in his forehead like the edge of a headache. The lights come on and he's blinded briefly, a brief strangled sound passing his lips.

Its a panic attack. Its a panic attack. How long has it been? Years. Since before the Lake of Rage.

The world regains sound now. He can hear Homura snarling up a storm in the living room, her nails clacking as she paces laps around the lower floor. She's on high alert - if anyone would have known something was wrong, it would be her. She'd been trained to help with spirits. He can smell the faint poison wafting from her jaws from here.

Mojo is by his side in a second, scaled head pressed against him with a rumble of concern. The Feraligatr helps keep him up as Gold fights to bring his breathing under control. He can feel the tears welling up.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." He half hisses. His throat won't open and he doesn't know who he's saying that to - himself or Mojo.

The Feraligatr isn't inclined to trust him, and Gold is quietly thankful for that. He isn't fine.

He knows what that dream was. No - not a dream. A vision, as much a promise and a threat as anything else. His mind's eye flickers to the imagined ball on Green's bedside table and he can almost hear the gurgling laughter.

Gold finally realizes why his hand stings. He's bleeding.

[chounaifu]

Kiss................................ meme

Kisses: BONUS ROUND

He is fast asleep when he feels the brush of fingers across his lips; Proton’s eyes flutter open to see somebody standing over his bed in the dark. His mind, not processing anything yet while sleep still held it hostage, does not register any facial features. What he does sense, is a forgotten memory, a nostalgic smell that reminds him of days long past in the Saffron streets: Kenzo brand perfume.

A woman he once knew, she’d been secretive about her life, and he had been the same. Neither of them revealed their names to each other, but that did not change the dynamic of their casual relationship, meeting in smoky bars and dingy clubs to relieve each other of tension and give in to carnal frustrations.

Their ending hadn’t been a pleasant one, it was full of explosive behavior. But if she didn’t know how to control a man with a kiss—

It takes only three seconds for him to act on an impulse, sleepily leaning in to greet those lips.

Instead of a kiss, a hand wraps around his throat and violently pushes him back down to his bet, and he’s gasping for air, eyes wide open. Proton cannot move, he is paralyzed on the spot, frozen as the presumed woman leans in closer— he was unable to notice facial features, because she lacked all of them, until a mouth ripped itself open from thin, papery flesh to reveal bleeding, black gums, prepare to swallow Proton whole—

Until he wakes up, sitting up in bed, sweating and jarred.

He’s wiping his mouth rather aggressively with his blanket.

[twilighttheater-archive]

You dream that your friends are back with you. You ca

Things have worked out.

And you're not you. You're never going to be the same again. You know this, drifting with your friends in a car through one of the older back roads. Green's laughing, Blue leans over and kisses your cheek. Nothing bad happened. You actually can feel a little fuzz on your face now.

Things worked out.

Green's driving. He looks at you, says something you don't hear. You both don't see the other car coming.

You can't wake up.

He's not usually lucid during dreams, but seeing Green's face clues him in immediately to the fact that this is a dream. A fact he hates is disheartening, but he doesn't try to force himself awake or anything... he supposes there's no harm with indulging in a dream scenario where everything feels fine.

Green's shifting through his bag up front, fruitlessly looking for something while Red tries to look out the window from his spot in the back. He almost doesn't recognize his own reflection, but he still believes that he is himself... it's not like he's dreaming of an alternative version of himself, surely.

He's startled by Blue snapping him out of his thoughts, he only just realized that she's sitting next to him. She's the happiest he's ever seen her, and idly he wonders what could be going through her mind if this was real. Were they together, here? He doesn't dare ask, but she is amused with the fact she managed to surprise him. Saying something about him spacing out while watching the trees pass by.

He smiles, he almost feels comfortable... yet there is still some form of unease to him. Green still hasn't stopped shuffling through his bag, the same repetitive motion and sounds. Almost like audio skipping over the same moment repeatedly, and Red offers to help. To his surprise Green looks at him gratefully giving him the go ahead with a smile.

He reaches to try, but the world falls away in an instant. He barely sees anything at all for a moment. His ears are ringing, his head is pounding, the sound of creaking metal is the only thing that reaches him in his daze. It's a dream. It's a dream. He tries to repeat to himself, but through tired eyes he sees Green sitting in the front eerily still. Blood is leaking from his head-- it's doing so from Red as well, he comes to learn.

He's shuddering as fear courses through him, but he forces himself to look for Blue. Her state isn't any better, the glass to her window has cracked with her head leaning against it. The glass is stained red, he can't tell if she's breathing.

He tries to move his mouth to scream for them both-- but finds his voice is nowhere to be found. It feels like ages that he sits there, in agony, tears running down his face and not a sound to be heard from him. Nobody arrives for them, darkness clouds around him.

Even there it feels like it doesn't end, just sitting in a void and still unable to make a sound or express anything at all. He tries to fight back against this dream-- wake up. Wake up. Please for the love of Mew wake up--

He does, but it's the worst he's ever felt on waking, every part of him aches like he was truly there. He reaches for his pokegear and reflexively he wants to call them-- he's still in tears just like before. He reaches his contacts and almost tries to call Blue.

But logic catches up to him, it was a nightmare... just... a really awful nightmare. He wasn't going to wake her over that of all things, and... it wouldn't matter if he did try to call Green.

He gives an unsteady sigh, feeling as though his mind had been played with somehow. But if it had been, he was unaware of how, and simply grateful it hadn't been real.