Welcome Back to the Nightmare Factory
we've missed you we missed you with the we are coming for come inside
Eddie Munson x Reader
Info: I received a request many moons ago for a Camboy Eddie, but had no inspo to get that scenario rolling. That is, until someone (Somna and Drac) suggested I loop it through the Nightmare Factory world. This is so simple and silly, and I hope you enjoy.
No serious warnings, but my blog is 18+. Mention of monsters, nightmares, and sex work, but no actual smut will take place.
Word Count: 2.4K
There’s a massive sinkhole in your yard.
Stranger yet that you don’t even have a yard.
Keeping what you imagine to be a safe distance, you move closer to investigate. Sun bitterly bright, the rest of the yard just a blinding flash of light around you; a dagger to your temple. Whatever boots you have on are heavy, making each step a chore to the point that you wonder if you’re even moving at all. Where were all of the trees? You swear there are more of them before, but maybe they went into the sinkhole as well. Like sand down through a funnel.
You really hope you do not follow suit.
How far down does it go? Suddenly, your proximity changes like you’d floated in the air, weightless. You’re at the edge, close enough to see that the dark cavern below appears to go on for infinity.
Will you just keep falling until you are whooshed into outer space?
Or maybe Hell is down there.
A whisper brushes your ear, urgent and fast; too fast to understand the words. It makes you jerk away, and the next thing you know, gravity yanks you down.
You tumble like a starfish into the ominous void.
Wailing, arms windmilling, your hands can’t find purchase in the soil. There’s no dense earth to grab onto—the only thing you catch is more air. There’s a thickness about it though. Something clammy, something alive. Your mouth tastes like static.
You’re about to hit the ground and you’re sure that means death, so you have to find a way—-
But then there is impact—
In bed, your eyes blink open, and it takes you a few shallow breaths to realize you’re not dead.
A familiar Nalgene bottle half full with water sits to the left of you on the nightstand, and when you shift to reach over and grab it, you realize that you are frozen in place. Panicking, you try to push onto your side, but the only things able to move are your eyes. They dart from side to side, sensing another presence nearby.
You are trapped in a body that won’t move and there is someone in your room with you.
Something.
A troubling new smell breeches your senses. It slithers over you in all of its foulness, humid with rotting flesh and feces.
Is that the sound of flies buzzing?
To the right, in the pitch black corner near your bookcase came a snorting sound followed by shuffling, like a bull preparing to charge.
You’re frozen. In your head, you are screaming.
Your arms are outside of the covers and you want so badly to tuck them under the blanket, to pull the comforter up over your head where you feel you’ll somehow be safe.
Something the size of an alligator skurries across your ceiling making “chittering” noises just as a shadow the shape of a person in a shroud steps into the moonlight from your window.
The television on the table at the foot of your bed pops on like a lightbulb, buzzing with waves of static.
The unwanted guests in your room vanish, and along with them goes the fetid smell.
The channels change of their own accord, flipping through various sitcoms and commercials.
“Not much on tonight,” a voice says. It sounds so far away, like someone talking in the next room. “What I wouldn’t give for some WWE right now.”
The familiar voice says a few more things that you can’t make out while the images click by.
A wave of tingles runs up the length of your flesh, and you realize with a curl of your toes that you can move again.
“Jesus,” you squeeze both fists around the blanket, blinking and panting with relief.
“No Jesus. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me tonight.” The other voice is clear now. “How was the trip?”
Eddie Munson is on the bed next to you. He smells freshly showered with an Irish Spring soap bar, one black sock on while the other is missing. California Raisins boxer shorts.
He had a remote in his hand, concentrating on the television screen.
“This one was a doozy,” you groan, pushing up into a seated position..
“Sinkhole again?” He hums casually, placing a comforting hand on your thigh, squeezing a few times. “I keep trying to redirect that one, but Kevin always overrides. He’s a sick fuck.”
You rub your lips together, taking in the details of the motel room. Brown and pea green paisley comforters, turquoise carpet complete with cigarette burns and unidentifiable stains. The painted faces of traditional clowns framed on the walls, and what appear to be containers of Chinese takeout for two on the desk in the corner.
“You ordered food,” you say, shifting to drape an arm over him and exhale hard as you rest your head on his chest. There was a classic Nightmare Bible in the top drawer of the bedside table, but it sat on top of the other queen bed as if Eddie had been thumbing through it out of boredom.
“Thought you might be hungry.” He turns to plant a kiss on your shoulder, still thumbing the remote. Price is Right, I Love Lucy, a public access show where a spider the size of a human is behind a desk interviewing a Shadmock, an Evangelical preacher with black eyes preaching, and a news clip about a Nightmare Factory annex opening up in the old Cracker Barrel building.
His lips are warm and soft as he mumbles against your skin. “Or maybe after we—,” he trails off. “Because we might get hungry later on after the—”
You see the masks hanging on the wall and remember why you are there. One is the likeness of a crow and the other a black goat with four inch horns.
You’d found out about the dark web selling pornography involving conventional humans and Nightmares from Eddie not too long ago, but you still aren’t sure how it all works.
“So people pay money for…to watch that?” You’re behind Eddie on the grass that day, not too long ago, braiding his hair.
“You’d be surprised how many,” he scoffed. “I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy but—”
“Wait, you do?” You tilted your head around to check his profile, holding his hair like reigns.
“Yeah, it’s alright,” he shrugged. “I’d much rather think about you but it will do in a pinch.”
He really wasn’t that into it, but he didn’t want you to think he was weirder than he’d already proven to be. So-called normal dudes enjoyed porn; that’s just a fact he was sure of. Watching disconnected, pussy pounding sex did absolutely nothing for him. To make it work in his favor, he’d have to believe the people fucking were really into each other and that the partner involved was getting genuine pleasure from it, which was not very often the case.
“How is Nightmare porn different from regular porn?” You continued braiding. Clouds dominated the sky and it would surely rain soon.
“Hard to explain, but it’s totally legit,” he gnawed at the skin on the side of his thumb. “A lot of it is the equivalent of astral sex, like a wet dream. Participants have to sign whole contracts and all that.”
You frowned. “So, how does that work? The Nightmare sets up an old-fashioned video camera in the corner and presses record?”
“No, they have recording devices implanted inside their eyeballs.”
“Wait, really?” You finished the braid and then unraveled the whole thing to comb his hair out with your fingers.
“Um, no,” he chuckled, and you cupped his throat to shake him in a faux choking. He went along with it making a dramatic face with his tongue out. “They do set up video cameras. Like I said, it’s a whole thing.”
In the distance, a vein of red lightning cracked the sky into jagged shapes. “I need to get you home soon,” he plucked at a few blades of grass. “The Dragons are out later and I don’t want one of them to think you are lunch.”
“Have you ever done it?” You waddled over on your knees through the sea of dandelions to sit in front of him. You’d touch those grass stains later and smile into the melancholy of missing him.
“Turned into a Dragon? No that’s not really in my wheelhouse yet but—”
You shake your head. “No I mean the…the porn stuff.”
He avoids eye contact, grinning down at his lap. “Sort of, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Would you think less of me if I had?” His chin is tucked and he’s picking at that piece of skin on his thumb again.
“Of course not,” but then your heart did skip, and his head snapped up at the notice of your hesitation. “I think maybe I’d be a little jealous, you know, to think of you doing that with someone else but, I’d still like to know about it.” And then, softer: “I want to know everything about you.”
“I never did it with anyone else,” he insisted with a frown. “It was always a …solo kind of thing. I was totally broke at the time and single and I thought well, why the hell not. If Steve mutherfucking Harrington can make money on it, so can I.”
You stared up at the tree trunk, absorbing that. “Okay so, it was just masturbation?”
“No nothing like that,” he blew out a laugh like you’d suggested something totally absurd. “Once I just sat there naked in nothing but mismatched tube socks and flossed my teeth. That was one of the most popular ones I ever did.”
You scooted closer so that your feet were in his lap and offered a few exaggerated, flirty blinks. “Heyyy,” you cooed. “Do you by chance know where I can get a copy of that? For research purposes.”
He returned the flirtatious batting of eyelashes and took the side of your hand into his mouth to bite down playfully.
“I’m serious!” You said it through a hiccup of a giggle
“I’m sure someone made a copy of it somewhere,” he used a thumb to swipe his slobber off of your hand. “But at the time it was recorded live. There is a special channel the people have to subscribe to, like cable access. Different time slots for different, um, performers.”
You traced a finger over the scar on his knee. “Did you have a lot of fans?”
“I did alright,” he didn’t want to brag that his numbers for solo shows were some of the highest in his genre.
Your sweetheart Edward Munson use to be a Camboy.
“Was it worth it?”
A long, pensive intake of breath through his nose and then: “Was able to pay off all of Wayne’s medical bills that month. Put a new transmission in the van. Could afford orange juice with pulp for a while there. Name brand cigarettes.”
Another crack of crimson lightning followed by a rumble of thunder that could’ve also been the vocalization of a distant beast.
You put your forehead to his. “Why did you stop?”
He sniffed, pulling the hood from your sweatshirt up over your head to shield you from the pinpricks of rain. “Well I…I met you and I got busy. I was only part time at the Nightmare Factory back then and when you do solo gigs, people start writing in and wanting more, like for you to do things with a partner.”
“Oh.”
“So yeah, I just haven’t thought about it much really. It’s in my past.”
You knew that Wayne was still struggling physically and financially, and that Eddie was selling weed again on the side to help with groceries and utilities and such. The proverbial lightbulb went off in your head.
“How much do you think you’d make if we, you know, if we did something like that together?”
Eddie had been bobbing his knee and playing with your fingers–fidgeting as always—but then he stopped and made like a statue, wondering if he’d heard you correctly.
“You mean, do it on camera?”
“No, on the radio,” you replied snidely. “Yes, on actual video cassettes for the dark web or wherever. Or however you did your solo thing. You said people like to watch couples.”
“Yeah but I wasn’t thinking…I don’t know if I want—” He thought about the guys at work tuning in one night and getting off on the sight of you and he was absolutely not okay with that.
“I could wear a mask,” you volunteered. “That way I wouldn’t get identified if someone somehow recognized me.”
You did have a few identifying tattoos though, but didn’t consider that until later.
“I don’t know, Potato. Not sure I love this idea.”
“You don’t have to love the idea,” you shrugged your shoulders up so high that your neck disappeared. “You just have to love me, on camera. Like we always do but get paid for it. C’mon, I want to do this for Wayne. And for you.”
“Jeesh, you’re really chomping at the bit.”
It hit you like a wave and then you were bursting with energy over the idea. Eddie eventually caved and agreed to try it out ONE time.
Back in the motel room with the turquoise carpet, your gaze fixed on the Sony Camcorder perched on a tripod. You curl your leg up over Eddie and nuzzle closer, kissing his arm before your head rests back on his chest. He’s wearing one of those white, ribbed tank tops, and there were tufts of hair sticking out of the top.
“You sure about this? Not too late to change your mind,” he assures in a raspy whisper.
“I’m sure,” you respond without hesitation.
He chooses a channel where an episode of Elvira’s Movie Macabre is on. Soon he’d have to click the television off all together, but somehow the distraction is successful at easing his nerves.
He doesn’t need a distraction from you, but more the idea that he might not be able to perform under the pressure. Felt like some type of stage fright. Kinda like that first time the two of you were intimate and he was so nervous his cock was like a gummy worm.
“Pick your mask, sweetheart,” he says, swinging his legs off the bed. “I’ll practice juggling the bowling pins.”
