Goretober 2023

Paranoia gets the best of us

Nightmares life was just one terrible thing happening after another. He didn't get a break from it.

For five hundred years he has never gotten a break. A constant lingering fear of one of his many enemies finding the abandoned universe he had taken up and attacking him.

A fear that was unlike others, like he was in a near-constant state of paranoia at all times. There was no escape from it.

No way to run from the horrible feeling nestled in his body, right in his ribs. The feeling sat deep and made it hard to breathe and made everything feel off.

His back, whenever he wasn't pressed against a wall, made it all worse. The feeling seemed to amplify and trigger right behind his back, fearing that someone would come up behind him.

Fearing that someone would come up and do something to him, anything.

It didn't matter what, the fear was still there.

A fear that made him quickly spine around every few minutes just to make sure no one was behind him.

There never was anyone there.

He was alone in this place, completely alone. There wasn't a single monster or animal anywhere in this place.

Nightmare doesn't know if that makes it better or worse (he'd bet worse any other time).

Currently, he was sitting on his light grey chair, it was a cheap soft thing that he melted into, making him feel like he was sitting on a cloud.

The chair, although patchy and worn, provided a comfort to him, a small one if any. Just to let him know that no one was right behind him. No one could stab him easily.

Unless they went for the head.

Subconsciously he curled into himself more, bringing his head down a bit, more into the book he was trying his best to read.

It was hard, trying to ignore his surroundings to take in the book in front of him. He had to ignore the feeling if he wanted to comprehend what was happening in front of him and not just read the words and not process them.

He's read the same sentence to start the Twelfth chapter about seven times and each time he couldn't remember what it said.

Focusing on anything was so much more complex in a state like this. It was like everything became 10x more demanding to do when he switched into this mode.

It normally happened after a bad fight with Dream or someone snuck up behind him.

He closed the book harder than he meant to, wincing at the loud echoing noise that rang out through his small library.

He stood, looking behind him for a moment before walking out of the library and into the main house, he was muttering the whole way out.

Little whispers to himself that it was okay and no one was there with him. No one would get him, no one was behind him raising a knife to his back and was about to-

He whipped his head around, eyes moving from one object to the next to try and figure out where his make-believe stabber was.

After a moment he turned back around and began to walk again.

There was one thing he knew would help at least for an hour, it had all the other times and he was sure if he went deeper (since this seemed to be a bit worse than the others) he would calm down for a while.

Then he could read, maybe plan on a way to get a bit more negativity so he could properly dissolve the way he normally can.

Nightmare was weak.