Dreams of a Boy Called Flowers

Lucifer's Lullaby

 Atop the freshly washed and made linens of my bed, two girls stood by my side. I know them as friends, but their faces were blurred like white noise. My bedroom, I noticed, was different, larger. We were the size of mice. I crept toward the edge of my bed only to find my room flooded in murky spring water. I could just make out the twisted shadow of my submerged desk chair's wheels. As I crept along my bed, looking for a place to go, my faceless friends followed like mindless zombies. Perhaps they'll be helpful to me at a later time.

 Looking towards the wall across from my desk that sat a stand with my old 9-color Magnavox, I saw something glowing faintly between the stand and a floor vent and dived towards it immediately. The faceless zombies began pacing dramatically around the spot I had been just standing like companions in a video game that are unable to go in the water. I reached the glowing area and found two neatly bundled objects. I unraveled the closest to me and suppressed a fruitless scream as the bloody, dismembered limbs of a baby floated out.

 I grabbed the other bundle without unraveling it and swam back up towards the top of my bed. My faceless friends were waiting for me, as expected. Once I was back on two feet, I unraveled the large, bulky bundled and found 7 dolls. They stared back at me with glassy, lifeless eyes. I shuddered as I realized who they were supposed to be: Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, The Zodiac Killer, Luis Garavito, and Gary Ridgway My hands trembled as I rolled them back up, my gaze being forcibly pulled upward.

 I found myself looking toward the top of my slim computer monitor where an inky shadow stood on its makeshift platform. Someone was waiting for me to deliver the horrid dolls to them. I realized I was trembling in fear and shook myself to focus on the task at hand: I had to get to my desk somehow. Swimming there would be an easy and fast route, but I knew I might need my friends, no matter how zombified they were, and they couldn't go in the water, so I set out to find a makeshift raft and oar.

 Luckily, a notebook and pencil lay discarded near my pillow. I got the help of my friends and we quickly pushed the notebook down into the water. It held, but it would only be good for one trip. We set aboard with no issues and I began to clumsily push the pencil through the water on either side of our notebook raft like a normal oar and it worked for the most part, albeit slowly. By the time we had reached my desk, there was little light streaming through the window, setting my room in a darker tone.

 We stepped off our little raft, which was beginning to sink due to its pages absorbing the murky water, onto the sleek black plastic top of my desk. I immediately started studying the steep sides of my monitor and looked back to my friends. We definitely weren't tall enough to make a human ladder, so there had to be another way. My friends only followed me as I paced, the dolls still bundled tightly in my arms. I kept my mind on the task, knowing it would all be over soon.

 I tested the keys on the keyboard, picturing myself climbing them, and got my friends to help me prop it longways against the side of my monitor. I began climbing and noticed that they weren't following me, that they were just standing there, so I assumed the rest of this journey was mine alone. I finally reached the top after slipping several times. I adjusted the dolls and fixed my gaze on the fuzzy-looking cloaked figure standing at the farther side of my monitor. They were perfectly still and hard to focus on, but I managed.

 I walked up behind the figure and they let out a deep masculine laugh. It was hollow and unsettling. I stepped forward once more and the figure turned to face me, its skeletal arms outstretched to take the dolls. His face was a pasty white, looking as though it was a sheet stretched over a human's face. His eyes were huge, gaping holed and his mouth was lipless, revealing a fixed toothy smile with grimy yellow pointed teeth. He was the very embodiment of fear and absolute horror himself.

 I held out the bundle of serial killer dolls against my better judgment. I had no idea what he wanted with them or why they even existed, to begin with, but I wanted them out of my sight as soon as possible. The bundle unraveled as if by magic and the dolls lifted one by one towards the grinning demon. He began laughing more and his echo sounded like the collective laughter of children. I was paralyzed as they began singing the song that has haunted me ever since: 

"try once for atrocity, twice for prosperity, thrice for fatality"