This is the first. In some entries, following these scenes, I may include some background ideas that came with its creation. Some have a little DaddyBats! tossed in at the end of them while others might not. A second nightmare will be posted this weekend sometime . . .

"Belly Laughs"

Warning: Disturbing imagery . . .

Dick awoke to the sounds of his own screams.

It wasn't his usual nightmare . . . How he could ever describe that dream as usual, he didn't know, but this one was somehow worse . . . Somehow . . .

The white face with the wildly-grinning, blood-red mouth hovered in front of his eyes. The eyes seemed hollow of anything sane; of anything . . . human! Instead something else stared out at him; something sick, evil. Its acrid stench rose to sting his nostrils; a combination of ammonia from urine and of bowel, of Sulphur, of sweat, and fear. It made his stomach roil.

Yet beneath the odor was something else . . . something rotten?

Dick looked down at his stomach and cringed at the sight of blackened intestines spilling out of an opening in his abdomen. The jagged slash was curved; shaped into a sickening parody of the clown's disturbing grin.

He screamed.

His eyes snapped open to find himself back in the relative safety of his own room. Dick's hands scrambled to tear open his pajama top. He ran his hands over his stomach in panic. His eyes widened at the half-moon scar and the ugly, black stitches that kept it closed. It was just like in the dream.

Dick screamed.

The door burst open and Bruce ran in. Panic and fear replaced any semblance of self-control. He didn't care if he appeared to him as a mewling infant. His dream had been real. His dream had been real!

Dick held his arms up in desperation. The stitches pulled and burned. He thought it should be hurting worse, and the thought that he must be pumped full of painkillers fluttered through the back of his mind.

"Sh, easy," Bruce crooned as he sat beside the boy on the bed. He tried to be gentle, but Dick was having none of it. The boy practically crawled into Bruce's lap. He would have crawled into Bruce's skin if he could.

"It's real," Dick cried. "It really happened! Noooo!"

Bruce came running at the sound of Dick's terrified scream. He had been expecting it, actually, but when the boy had seemed to be deeply under with the drugging effect of the painkillers, he had hoped to have just a few minutes to shower.

Somehow, the boy's blood had managed to seep beneath his costume and stained his skin. He needed to get it off of him; been desperate to be clean of Dick's life blood.

Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed with naught but a towel and the tatters of his dignity. The boy was grasping at him; his dilated eyes open, but he was obviously still caught up in whatever nightmare had him in its clutches.

"Dick! Dick, wake up, son," Bruce begged him. Whatever the dream contained must be truly horrifying.

Dick suddenly jerked awake with a gasp. His hands clawed at his pajama top; ripping buttons and sending them scattering and skittering across the bed and floor. His fingers slid over the smooth, nearly-unblemished skin of his abdomen as he gaped in bewilderment. He was bruised, yes, but the only marks he could find were the scar from the surgery he had received for an appendicitis from last year and one he had gotten from some third-rate mugger's lucky shot.

There was no sickening grin carved into him; no black stitches holding back rotting intestines . . . A dream? It was a dream within a dream of something that hadn't happened? What was wrong with him?

Dick clambered into Bruce's arms and clung to him. His hysteria was well and truly in force. He was weeping and hyperventilating. Black spots threatened to drive him back into the dream and Dick clutched at Bruce's damp shoulders in an effort not to fall into the terrifying darkness of his mind again.

"Sh . . . It's okay now," Bruce crooned; rocking him. "I've got you. It's over! No one can hurt you now."

REACTIONS?

Don't you hate these kind of dreams . . . The ones where you dreaming about having a nightmare, only to dream that you woke up, and the nightmare goes on? Bleh!

Anyway, I just sat down one evening and wrote this one out. All I know for sure is that young Robin had a close encounter with Joker (his first?) and got hurt, but not the kind of hurt he dreams about - Thank Goodness! How would you explain a huge grin carved on your stomach while changing for gym class?

Okay, now that I creeped you out, pleasant dreams . . . Bwahahaha!

Oh, hey! I have a poll going on at the top of my profile about a second collection, but this one will be of deleted scenes and excerpts not used in some of my other published stories. If you are interested in seeing some of the ways these stories might have gone before I came to my senses, then vote "YES", if not then vote "NO", and if you're just "EH, WHATEVER" there is an option for you as well. That's right! Everyone can vote - even those who have no opinion one way or the other. :D