Dreams of a Boy Called Flowers

Sacrifice

warning: violence, murder

 An amusement park, old and run down. Its familiarity draws me, but why are we here? I've been here once many nightmares before; I was alone then and the buildings weren't so broken, so dead. Unfamiliar faces surround me, but my dream self knows them as friends. Together we make our way through the foggy, abandoned grounds to a building that was falling apart. Glass lay shattered in piles, and cement blocks crumbled from more than just abandonment. Together we entered the rubble.

 When inside, the building felt as if it were expanding, changing, so much larger than when looking in. Broken windows lined the walls to the outside, but the world around us was too dark to see too far. We walked down hallway after hallway and three floors up until we made it to a room that looked exactly like every other room from the outside. On the inside, solid ground, and ten graves in a perfect circle. On the far side of the room, a wooden chair covered in blood and a katana protruding, hilt up, from the ground.

 At that moment, everyone had the same thought planted in their heads; the dead needed a sacrifice and if they didn't get one, we would all die. But who of us would be willing to be the sacrifice? How would any of us be able to go through with killing the sacrifice? Would living after this endeavor ever truly be living, but filled with guilt and mourning? We all shared knowing glances and the air around us was thick with dread. The answer was that none of us could do it, but the fact remained that we had to.

 In the next moment, we were forcing an otter-like girl into the chair. She was screaming and kicking, afraid of what was going to happen to her. Could we blame her? I was appointed to calm her down and make things easier, so, despite her flailing, I knelt in front of her, took her hand, and began speaking soothing words to ease her. Once she stopped kicking and her screams finally subsided, I lied to her. I told her we wouldn't go through with it and she had nothing to worry about.

 "Really?" She asked in a heartbreakingly hopeful voice. She was trembling violently and wore a tearful smile. I nodded, but she had no time to react before the appointed executioner cleanly sliced her head off. I felt guilty. We all did, but the spirits were quieted. We had no idea this nightmare wasn't over until we stepped out of the room. As we were looked out the broken windows into the desolate courtyard, we saw a large dark figure step out from the darkness and onto a balcony one floor below on the other side.

 Chains clanked against the stone floor with each rise and fall of his cloven hooves. His horns were the first to emerge from the thick darkness of the hallways behind him. His hooves came next; each step taking more than five ticks. When his goat-like human face could be seen, we feared that he may spot us and come after us somehow. He was abnormally tall, slouching so his horns barely grazed the high ceilings of the halls. We watched him turn and slowly clear the balcony before entering the hall on the other side.

 We had just caught our breath when the laughing came. It was her. She was back to torture us and she brought a new friend. We were paralyzed with fear, but the persistent laughter goaded us to move, to run. Each step we pushed only made the hallway stretch endlessly. Her laughter bounced off the walls and sounded closer, further, then closed once more. It was everywhere, and as deafening as it was terrifying. Screams of vengeance, hatred, and agony all in one. She had trusted me and now she wanted revenge. Her scorn was more than enough to summon a beast.

 This thing was now searching for us. We had to keep running, or we would all die from his sharp horns. The further we ran, the more clearly we heard his deep breaths and heavy footfalls. Eventually, we all found ourselves hiding in the tent with a duck pool, he was close and we weren't fast enough to outrun him, but we knew our running and panting meant he would find us sooner. As we crouched there, a realization came to us as hard as the first: he will leave if one of us is offered to him as a sacrifice. The three of us looked at each other, tears forming at the corners of our eyes. Not again, not like this. We had thought the first one would be enough.

 Suddenly the tallest of our trio stood and began walking out, we clambered after him, begging him to stop, but he shrugged us off and kept going. He would willingly give his life after what they had done to the other girl. The two of us remaining crumpled in a pile together, not wanting to see him be bludgeoned, so we heard more than saw the beast's terrible roar, a thundering sound of his hooves beating against the ground, then the quick, squelching sound of his horns piercing our friend's body. No noise came from him, not a scream, nothing. We heard the thud from the beast tossing his limp body to the side, then we heard him slowly walking away.

 The two of us cried together until we were gasping for air, then a blue light appeared to us shaped like the otter girl we had first handed over to this dreadful place. She giggled, holding up her hands, and congratulating us before turning to the girl beside me whom I had just cried my eyes out with. The ghost girl repeated her congratulations, then handed over a knife, saying it was her reward. The ghost disappeared and my friend turned on me, her face completely changed to something much more sinister. She lunged at me as I begged her to stop, to think of the boy who just sacrificed himself to save us, to think of our friendship and how this would affect her, but she didn't care. She stabbed my body so many times, I couldn't keep track, then she turned the blade on herself.