The Children of Hypnos

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Sleep is for the weak, but this is not sleep.

This is a hurricane nightmare, flinging his mind from one terror to the next. Torn limb from limb by undead villagers he helped create; stitching up Marcia's skull after she dies in an attack by the villagers, filling her with poison because it's the only way he knows how to bring her back to life, being forced to watch his own hands do this and hating himself so deeply; and then, finally, being looked down upon by the Witch of the Woods while she hangs pale and ghostly and huge above him, begging her not to leave him, but she does. She always does.

Then the hurricane tosses him out, but he is still inside the castle. His whole body trembles. He cannot feel his arms or legs. Before him stand a young woman he knows, her hair billowing around her head like a black tide, and himself, with glowing green poison leaking from his eyes, his nose, and the corners of his mouth. His lips pull back and toxic green limns his teeth.

The Sandman's heart beats too fast. He cannot focus. His stomach heaves and cramps and his dreams repeat repeat repeat. This is not the whirlwind of his mind on waking water. This is the storm of sleeping sand, heavy and unstoppable.

Sleep is for the weak

Keep is for the beak

Weep is for the teak

Hot and putrid breath curls against his face. The voice is his own. "I want you to know what it feels like to be chained up and stripped of your skin, to be so reviled you are peeled to the bone layer by layer, only to have it all put back so it can happen again. I want you to know how much I hate you. I want you to know it every hour of every day until I decide to kill you."

The Sandman sees himself sometimes, in flashes when he breaches the surface of his subconscious, those green teeth and burning eyes. Sometimes his green self is accompanied by the young woman with the black hair, but she never says anything, only watches the Sandman coldly for a while. His nightmares move on the edges of his vision. Sometimes, in those dark hours while his head pounds and his stomach cramps and his green self hisses hate into his ear, he sees someone else: orange curls hidden behind a door, a wide dark eye watching him, crying, worry. She looks smaller than she should, because she stands with her shoulders hunched and never puts all of herself out in the open. But she makes him remember there was a time before this nightmare, and there could be a time after, he hopes there could be a time after, he must believe there can be a time after.

The nightmare marches in time, left right left right, out of his mind and into the world, all the pieces of it. He feels them being ripped from him. It is more than he can bear, but it does not stop.

Animals, villagers, monsters, Marcia.