One-shot

Written in an hour on 4/19/2017
No beta
No proofreading

Her eyes opened, and she slowly sat up.

She rubbed her tear-stricken eyes, and sighed.

"Just another day," she muttered to herself. 'And just another nightmare.'

Lifting the covers off of her swiftly, she threw on her workout t-shirt and white nylon shorts. A pair of socks were put on her, and she was ready for her morning run.

Her body jogged forth, and her mind chanted.

'It's just a nightmare, it's just a nightmare, it's just a nightmare, it's just a nightmare.'

She tried to ignore the new tiny scar on her back.

Taylor stared at her ex-BFF.

Emma just sniped at her with little remarks, and Taylor only felt pity.

Compared to her nightmares, her peers were pathetic.

Words hurt not at all compared to the serrated scythes of the mad creatures. The tiredness weighing her down consumed all of her conscious effort. Tripping? Falling? A book tossed backward. Compared to keeping herself awake after the nightmare, it was nothing.

Compared to her nocturnal torture, the pests of daylight were nothing.

She frowned as she picked up her books, slid them into her backpack, and walked away.

Sophia bumped into her.

Taylor let her. She stumbled a little, but made no noise nor comeback. Just stared at Sophia for a second in her eyes and then walked away.

She needed to plan for the upcoming nightmare; it was a waste of time and energy to even think about the pathetic trio.

She gulped.

Her hands tightened around her makeshift weapon, wet with blood and creaking with use, just as she had left the nightmare.

She wildly looked around, trying to spot any of the Nightmares.

She found none, but her mind screamed. Her previous deaths shouted.

Move

She didn't hesitate.

She ran.

Her instinct proved right. The rubble she had been hiding behind exploded upward as a monstrous creature of a hundred arms and hundred axes sprung forth from the decaying ground.

It stared at her.

She stared at it.

It shrieked.

She charged.

She woke up.

And sobbed.

Dead again.

Though awake as she was, she remembered the axe digging into her body, and the way the Nightmare refused to kill her quickly. It had its way wit her, ripping her apart limb by limb. Skinned her with its fingernails.

Then when it was satisfied in its gory glory, it finished her off with an axe to her face.

She sniffled as the alarm clock rang.

6:00 A.M.

She sighed.

Time to move, time to move.

Forget the nightmare, forget the nightmare.

She tried to ignore the new scar on her cheek. Tiny as it was, she hoped her dad would not notice it.

She screamed as she woke up.

Dead. Again.

Chopped, raped, and then cooked.

She sobbed, and sobbed, though muffling her screams in her pillow.

She ignored the thin long scar going down from the crook of her neck down to her belly button.

She woke up.

...

She didn't know what to feel about it.

There was no scar on her.

She sobbed.

She won, for once. She finally killed one of those Nightmares.

She sobbed in happiness.

One of her faded scars disappeared, though she didn't know.

She grinned happily.

She was sleeping better now. She won against the Nightmares more.

She grew stronger awake as she did in the nightmare.

The bullying didn't bother her.

She was too happy to be bothered.

She stared at the hospital bed.

"Dad?"

Someone hurt her dad.

There was a beep from the EKG.

Dad's eyes fluttered open. "...Taylor?"

She smiled gently. "I'm here, dad."

"No one hurt you, right?"

They tried. They were now screaming in her nightmare.

"No. No one hurt me. What happened, dad?"

"Some E88 thugs came by. You know the usual. I refused to let them control the docks."

"I know you did. You always do."

"...Good. Imma take a nap, alright?"

"Okay."

Someone hurt her dad.

She gave a polite nod to the nurse taking care of her father as she left.

She needed to hunt.

She stared down at the Nightmares before her.

Every single one of them, which had raped her, killed her, eaten her, and even played with her dying body, now knelt before her. They had changed after her victory. They were no longer her enemies. She changed them when she killed them. Molded them to be her hand. To be her eyes.

They were her soldiers.

Her Nightmares. Her personal demons.

The remnants of the E88 thugs that tried to harass her laid quietly in the corner of this building inside her Nightmare.

She smiled. "Someone hurt dad."

The Nightmares roared and shrieked as one.

The Nightmares that once plagued her were now parts of her.

"I'm going to hurt them back. So I pledge to you all, I shall be the Nightmare to them as you were to me. There will be no rest until the Empire is gone."

A pause.

"Let's get to work."

Crusader roared as he struck.

It hit.

It didn't matter.

The creature before him grabbed him by his head and slammed him into the ground.

He tried to gag, to spit, to let the blood out of his mouth, but to no avail.

It slammed him into the ground again.

It let go and grabbed his arms.

"N-!"

CRACK.

POP.

He wanted to scream, but he was faceplanted into the ground again.

His necks were grabbed.

He sobbed.

CRACK SNAP

SNAP

The creature moved away, revealing a young woman behind it. She was dressed like a regal king of the north, if one can call her patchwork of different colored leather cape, costume, and skinmask regal.

Crusader shuddered as it looked upon the faceless skinmask.

"W-Why...?"

The "queen" knelt down.

"Do you hurt?"

"What do you t-think?!" he hissed. Unfortunately, his legs and arms were broken, so he couldn't her hurt.

"You and your friends hurt me and my friends. It's only fair that you are hurt too, right?"

A statement.

"Unfortunately, I don't intend to get hurt in retaliation for this."

The green-skinned giant creature behind her grabbed his broken arms.

"W-Wait, please-" he begged, knowing what was to come.

"Did you wait for my father and my friends?" she asked.

She brought up her fingers, and snapped them.

A short scream, a cascade of blood, and then silence.

Armsmaster stared at the report before him.

Crusader was dead.

PRT had received a call from an anonymous source that E88 was fighting someone close to the docks. One of their bases, he had presumed, and some hero or other gang hitting it.

He led three Wards and two Protectorates to the scene.

It was silent.

They walked in cautiously.

And was met by .. an art.

That had been Clockblocker's quote.

If it had been drawn on a canvas, Armsmaster would have agreed, but because it was not on canvas, definitely not drawn, and made out of the torn bodies of E88 gang members, it refused to call it an art.

Bodies of the gang members had been reshaped to look like a helix, and rose up to the ceiling of the warehouse they entered.

And at the center of it all was Crusader, torn in half.

He didn't blame the Wards and the other Protectorates from vomiting and contaminating the crime scene. He wanted to barf too.

A creature was there, and from the looks of it, it was there to greet them.

It was a tiny thing. Barely bigger than a chihuahua and without a face.

It looked like a fetus that hadn't developed properly, and thus had grown to a dog-sized fetus ... with weird stick-like wings without feather or skin to keep it afloat or flying. Yet it flew.

"What are you?" he asked.

The creature stared at him for a second with its huge eyes. "I am a messenger."

"To whom?"

"All who would listen."

"Who made you?"

"The Nightmare Queen."

"How?"

"I know not."

"...What is the message?" he asked as he readied his halbard. As soon as the message was said, he was going to kill this thing.

" 'The souls of the wicked have been claimed. They shall be used to fuel the Nightmare. The Queen will no longer watch over as corruption rapes the innocent. She shall become to the corruption what corruption was to the innocent. This is a promise.' "

Then before Armsmaster could do anything, it blew up.

Miss Militia wiped the bloody gunk off of her face. "Fuck."