Hey, I totally did this challenge! :D I even did it ahead of the deadline. Now, you should all go and do the same. It's fun. Creatures, people, creatures! (I layered my creatures... so do I get bonus points for that?)
Challenge 013: Creature of the night! (I still have no idea where Madame "stole" this idea from.)
Prompt: Creature of the night (or day).
Word/Pic count: NONE (W00t! I didn't even count...)
Expiration: 10/28/08
Johnny Smith had always been a light, efficient sleeper, and for that reason he didn't dream often. When he did dream, he didn't think too much of it, and the dreams were completely forgotten by the time he had finished washing his hair and had moved on to his exfoliating facial scrub.
Lately, however, this was not the case. He dreamt a lot, about all sorts of things. Well, mostly just the same thing, but he dreamt about it frequently, and in many different variations.
He dreamt about them, and he dreamt about himself, and he dreamt about what they were doing.
He tried to figure out what they were doing even while he slept.
Sometimes the dreams weren't even particularly original.
Like the most recent one, where he was the woodcutter, out to save Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf.
He was even wearing a goofy wool cap, like the drawing in the children's book his mom used to read to him as a child. Not exactly creative.
He entered grandmother's house, which had the interior layout of the Specter Estate, even though it was also a log cabin. He knew exactly where he was going... up the stairs, which were now there for some reason, and into the bedroom.
The wolf was always hiding in the bed, right?
This wolf was definitely no exception to that rule.
But he wasn't eating her.
Or was he?
He was.
He was just about devouring her.
But no... he wasn't going to harm her. Not this wolf. This wolf was more like a puppy: devoted and eager to please.
But he was still a wolf. How could Johnny be sure she wouldn't get eaten up?
He had to save her. That's why he was there. He had a plot to follow.
So they fought.
He lost.
That wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.
Then he realized that he'd been bitten.
He was transforming.
There was nothing he could do about it, so he let it happen.
What had he become?
He was a monster.
But he didn't feel like a monster. He felt renewed, and everyone was happy and cheering him on.
He leaned back and let out a long, loud howl from deep down in his core. It felt good... freeing.
He was a wolf too, and he could do as he pleased.
He looked at himself, since it was a dream and he was now somehow watching himself instead of inhabitiing his own body. He thought it looked pretty good on him.
He'd always wondered what it would be like to have body hair, and he figured he was already an alien, so what was one more layer of weirdness to add to the mix?
What was one more strange dream in his increasingly strange life?