Red pills, to stay anchored in the dark nightmare. A hunting knife in its sheath. A pistol. A shotgun. Dark glasses on my eyes to protect from horror. That's all I need for the night journey. The rest of the items I will get along the way.
Night. I closed my eyes in my own room, on my bed.
And opened them in a dark otherworldly place. At first, it was the Constant Room. Everything was just like the previous times. This was the room where the terrible destructive forces of nightmares did not act, where they could not reach with their dark tendrils.
I sat on the bed, which floated three or four feet above the stone floor. The bed flew toward the large double doors. On them were images of two red eyes. As I approached, the eyes flared, and the doors opened, revealing a long twilight corridor. The bed moved through it.
Arches appeared on the left and right, leading to side rooms. Usually, useful items were there, and sometimes even artifacts—completely rare and unique items with supernatural properties. But turning there was too dangerous. Monsters roamed those rooms, ready to devour a nightmare traveler at any time.
Even thoughts are dangerous in nightmares. As soon as I thought of the monsters, they appeared from the rooms and rushed at my bed. I fired the shotgun. Right. Left. Right. Three monsters were blown to pieces.
Left and right, side corridors appeared. Dark, full of unknown dangers. But I moved on the bed forward, to where a large ominous figure stood by the big door.
Fear touched me with sticky fingers. The nightmare space trembled, threatening to swallow me irreversibly. I immediately took a red pill, and the surrounding environment gained clarity and realistic outlines.
The large figure was called the Guardian of Nightmares. Tall, powerful. Dressed in a black hat and a long black coat. In his right hand he held a huge axe, frozen with the blood of previous victims. From under the hat, two blue fires burned. He guarded the entrance to the Nightmares. Behind the iron door behind him were dark labyrinths of horror, about which no one knew anything. And from there threatened the destruction of all living things who entered.
On the door was a symbol. But I could not see it because the Guardian blocked it.
When I got close enough, he raised the terrifying axe and moved toward me. A dark, frightening figure, as if from nightmare dreams, strode toward me down the corridor. I let him come within a dangerous few steps, then fired the shotgun.
He shuddered and stopped. Part of his head was blown apart. Under the hat, one blue fire still burned, which immediately switched to red. I fired several more shots, knocking the enemy to the floor. But from past attempts, I knew that this way he could not be killed. Very soon, he would begin to regenerate and rise to his feet. The Nightmares themselves filled him with new strength.
At that moment, I saw the symbol on the door. A black web, with a toothy mouth in the center. The door would not open. I drew the pistol and emptied the entire magazine into the symbol. From the first shots, the symbol on the door began to spurt black blood. It flooded everything around. Walls, floor. It flowed from the wounds of the Guardian of Nightmares, who twitched and convulsed on the floor beneath the bed. I knew he was dying, because his life was bound to the symbol on the entrance door to the Nightmares. Now the symbol was destroyed to pieces. And with it, the Guardian died.
The door opened. Behind it lay an unknown dark chamber. I still had ammo. So the bed moved forward through the doorway.
Behind me remained the large dead body of the Guardian of Nightmares.