Sweet Dreams

Status
Not open for further replies.
N

n/a

Guest
Original poster
((Please excuse how crappy and short the starter post is. I'm afraid I'm rather out of it tonight. ^^; ))






It seemed as though everyone had better things to do than spread old fairytales about make-believe men these days. He didn't exactly blame them. As a matter of fact it made his job easier, being discreet; rather than being an idolized real-life being for children to keep their eyes peeled for each and every night (as he'd been in England's earlier days), he was now nothing more than a subtle bit of lore to be found in only the sweetest bestiaries. Which was slightly offensive, he decided with a sniff, since the he was hardly a beast. But, scurrying back to the point, he wasn't what one would call a popular legend anymore. The popular legends were left to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and that was really something of a pity, because the two of them didn't even exist.

Shrugging his shoulders noncommittally, the man floated along leisurely. Never mind his popularity loss. Lately, he'd discovered a brand new fascination, and this was one he had been pondering since the last evening. She'd fetched his interest by living in a house he hadn't discovered until quite recently, which wasn't common to say the least. Although he wasn't fully capable of stopping by every single house each night, he knew of nearly all of them, and he kept a precise list and a careful schedule. It was rough work, but it was made easier by...well...himself. In all senses of the word, he was made for this line of work. Literally. So while it was a scrap tricky here and there, he was talented with it. He was aware of every home in London.

Or so he'd thought. One had slipped his notice--the house where the object of his fascination lived--so why not others? Perhaps he'd have to make another round around the city, just to make sure. Oh, but he did not like that idea! He hated combing the city. Not only would he lose one night of good work to several hours of the grueling art of making a new list of houses, but the next night as well. Composing a new list took two nights of labor, minimum. And he despised it. Deeply.

He gave another noncommittal shrug, dimly concluding that he wouldn't scrutinize London anytime soon unless he found another undiscovered house. That topic wasn't even important tonight. What was important, what was curious, and what was most attention-grabbing was the people in the fascinating new home. That was what the Sandman was keen on tonight.[/hr]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
She didn't know what she was doing in London. Her therapist told her to take a long vacation after divorcing her abusive husband. Of course, he'd claimed to come back for her, but if she moved to an entirely new country, maybe he wouldn't have the gall to follow her. Still, something did follow her from her past: her nightmares. They wouldn't ever go away, not with the pills or the therapy or anything.

Even now, during the night, they threatened to break her mind. Several times she woke up in a cold sweat, shaking as if he really had hit her. She even flicked the light on to make sure there weren't bruises riddling her arms. The pills were supposed to help her sleep, and now they weren't helping when they should have.

The house she was in was rented by some English friends who offered to let her use it after she'd told them of their predicament. "Oh, Raina, sweetie, that's terrible," they'd said. "Stay here as long as ya like. We'll visit and go out. You can be safe here for a lil' while," they'd told her. In that moment, tangled in her sheets, Raina didn't believe that for one second. Every sleeping moment was the threat of his meaty fists barreling over her skin, his harsh words stinking in her ear. It was so bad that she'd gotten used to it, but not the sleep deprivation it caused and had caused for a few years.

Doing her best to fall back asleep, Raina slid her brunette head underneath the pillow, the silk sheets cold against her even colder skin.

((No worries. Mine's probably way worse. xD hopefully it's correct for what you had in mind.))
 
((Your post was fine~ ^^ let's get this show on the road))



Picking up the pace just a smidgen, he performed a small spin out of boredom, paying no attention to the tiny shower of sand falling to the streets below. It would be gone by morning anyways, with no "harm" done. If it didn't disappear after its time of need was spent, after all, there would have to be sprinklings of sand left in everyone's rooms. And for someone who was made for this work, that would be mighty inefficient. It simply wouldn't do.

Arriving in the desired neighborhood (Grimmens Drive), he absentmindedly latched onto the windowsill of a beige-painted home, his spindly fingers skimming along the pane. This home was one he knew of, of course. One he'd known of for the proper amount of time. It was rather small and modest, but the couple living there was a happy couple indeed. He neglected to drop by very often, as the dreams in that home were generally quite sweet. If he wasn't mistaken, though, his schedule had the house pinned for a check-in sometime soon. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after that. I'll have to look at my schedule later, he thought, shrugging golden shoulders as his toes caught gingerly on the air beneath them.

The next house down, a cozy little green one, was filled with less tender loving care. It consisted of a father, a step-mother, and the father's four young spawn. Those brats were constantly at war with each other, and sometimes their bickering could scrape over the Sandman's nerves. This was largely because the fights in that house--typically raging betwixt the eldest brother and the second-to-eldest sister--could draw on long into the night. Many was the time he'd had to call off his check in that house merely since he couldn't fit it into a proper time frame. Waiting for the arguments to wrap up was a major problem.

He hoped his new, recently discovered house would carry a more civilized household. After briefly inspecting it last evening, he'd only seen one woman, but you could never really be too sure about that sort of thing. Maybe her kids had been at a sleepover, and her husband had been working late. The Sandman had seen his share of workaholic spouses throughout his time. And to no one's surprise, said workaholic spouses usually landed themselves straight in the divorce bin.

But hey, to be fair, they never seemed to get fired.

It was with curiosity that he drifted to the mystery house's bedroom window. There weren't any lights on at this time, which was both altogether unsurprising and pleasant. A pleasant unsurprise, he supposed; if "unsurprise" was even a word. It wasn't. Probably. He shrugged, halfheartedly linking his hands together behind his back as he silently surveyed the room beyond the window. Or, to be more precise, as he surveyed the woman sleeping in her bed. Well, he conveniently used the word sleeping, but her head was placed underneath her pillow. Was she trying to sleep, then? He frowned.[/hr]
 
His fist connected with her face, causing her to spin and slip on the hardwood floor. "Stupid bitch! Look at me when I'm talking to you!" he roared at her, watching with insane fury as she shied away, scrambling to her feet. He chased after her, skidding to a stop as she toppled a chair in an effort to make him stop. "Little whore!" he snapped as she slammed the door to the bathroom, sobbing with no control over her actions. She looked up in the mirror with a watery hiccup as the black and blue hues swirled around her cheek, such an ugly color on her gentle, pale skin. Her forearm had also sustained a bruise from barely managing to block one of his punches. She tried to cover her mouth and cease her crying so she wouldn't alert him to anything else. The bathroom was a safe haven for the time being, but she heard his rampage stop, she made the mistake of opening the door to look out. He swept up, fat fingers around her neck and hitting her against the cabinets in the hall. "If I find out you've gone somewhere with anyone else for anything, I'll kill you! Hear me?!" She nodded with a vigor, a motion revealing just how frightened she was of the man choking her. He released her then, watching her drop to the floor in disgust. She coughed and sputtered, but not before one last punch to her other cheek and--

"Dammit!" The pillow flew across the room and landed with a soft thump as Raina shot forward, breathing hard. Her hands went across her cheeks, as if to reassure she wasn't really bruised on her face. "Another nightmare...," she sighed, leaning away from the window to dig through a drawer. She produced a near-empty bottle of large pills, and flicking the cap open, she dumped two pills into her hand. Slipping out of the sheets, her bare feet padded on the tile leading to the bathroom where she threw the pills into her mouth and used the sink water to wash them down. Wiping the excess water away from her face, Raina rubbed her eyes and forehead, finding a thin sheen of sweat coating her skin. A soft groan of frustration escaped her as she crawled under the sheet and curled up in a ball. She snapped her hand up to her face to wipe away a stray tear as she thought about her life.

She'd ruined it by falling for him. He'd been so sweet and caring, it had been too good to be true. Turns out, her parents had been right, and he'd revealed his ugly side a week after their marriage. Leaving hadn't been an option until recently, since she had some place to go. Raina couldn't help but think about his threat: he would find her and beat her until she was black and blue, and that would be just the start. Raina shuddered at the thought, closing her eyes in a poor attempt at sleep again. The cycle would start all over again.
 
He licked his ever bone-dry lips, the shy, subtle taste of sand twirling unnoticed on his taste buds as he gazed into the house with curiosity. Had she just now fallen asleep? Was this some sort of fitful sleep cycle? With the window barricading his way, it was hard to get a steady flow of her dream. He could only get small snippets of it here and there, and to be blunt, he didn't like what he saw. This was physical abuse he was seeing, coupled right with emotional abuse, and the Sandman wasn't fond of the aftermath: nightmares. Well, it was his job to clean that up, was it not?

A slice of dream flashed before his eyes, yielding some man--"the culprit," he'd be called from now on--giving this woman a death threat. His thick fingers were curled around her throat, but she still managed to give a vigorous nod before he dropped her to the floor, and...from there it cut off, the sliver of dream reaching completion. The window wouldn't allow anything more than brief little glimpses like that through it, which was a little inconvenient. He clicked his tongue distastefully. In a way, he supposed, it was something of a gift as well; it wasn't as if he had fun watching nightmares, even though it was technically his job. But with any luck, he wouldn't have to just stand by and observe this later on. The first night was observations, and the first night only, and from then on it was him working on making improvements. A good enough schedule for him.

A pillow was suddenly thrown across, and he couldn't help but to flinch a little. So she was up now, he thought with a small sigh. The possibility of him having to wait until the next night to take care of her was growing steadily, so...no, unless...Sandman blinked, his eyes following her as the woman left the room on soft feet. He could do that thing. He could. He'd done it before, so it wasn't like he was a newbie to making the deal, but his last contract had ended in a disaster. Oh please, the man scoffed inwardly, pursing his lips as she re-entered the room and curled up on the bed. That was way back in the sixteenth century. People were so much more gullible back then, so it was practically bound to happen.

Maybe so, but still. He sighed again, watching absently as his breath fogged up the clear glass of the windowpane. It was worth a shot. Maybe. You should come back later, he told himself, nodding sagely in an agreement he didn't follow up on. After all, what would he have to gain by leaving? It was selfish to reason that she was the only one who could get hurt by the deal in this century, but as aforementioned, his last deal was all the way back in the sixteenth century. And he wasn't immune to loneliness, despite being made for the job.

Which was a pity, really. He'd have been much better off without that one specific emotion. But, shrugging noncommittally, he began to search for a way in against his better judgment. With most houses, he'd memorized a way to enter, be it through an unlocked window or through the chimney. Some houses were even impossible to enter without waking the entire neighborhood, so he tended to skip those ones until they left something unlocked by mistake. This task was far simpler in the thirteenth century, since many windows hadn't even had panes back then. Nowadays, everyone tried to make it a policy to lock their windows. It was a major inconvenience. But after awhile of investigating, he managed to discover an open window down in one of the spare bedrooms. The room appeared as if someone had lived in it, Sandman noted curiously as he clambered through its window expertly. Well, regardless of who, or who had lived in this room, he had a ton to worry about. Human nature was definitely not a nature that welcomed strangers into the owner's home, especially when strangers came in uninvited.

How in the world was he supposed to placate the woman if she was startled and frightened? And she probably would be, at that. He could always put her to sleep, he guessed, and they could discuss everything in a dream. There would still be a rocky road ahead even with that method, but with any luck, it would be slightly less rocky than it'd be without it. He pursed his lips for the second time that night, pondering his options. This was the problem with the twentieth century; they weren't nearly as gullible as he would've liked. Yes, that had its perks, but in times like these, he found himself wishing for the time when he could merely waltz into someone's bedroom and receive a grand welcoming. He reckoned if he tried that now, he'd get a baseball bat to the groin.

Needless to say, that particular experience was something he could do without. Moving on from that subject, though, he'd just brought himself a halt just outside the woman's bedroom. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Right. Yes, just leave. Come back tomorrow night for the usual check-in. Don't get involved in any of this again. But even as he thought that, his feet brought him over the imaginary brink and into her room, utterly disobeying his common sense. He knew just how high the possibility was of this leading to a horrid finish.

He cleared his throat anyway.
 
Raina had settled back into the other pillow on the bed, having forgone the first one on the floor. She'd get it later. For now, the pills, those having been her fourth and fifth, were finally starting to do something. Raina closed her eyes, keeping her legs curled up under the sheets. Her eyes closed, for once falling into a nightmare-free doze. And then she heard him clear his throat. No one was supposed to be in her home except for her. She uncurled and shot out from under the sheets, racing toward the bathroom. It didn't even occur to her that it wasn't her ex-husband, but that didn't stop her.

The door hit the frame with a loud crack as she slid against it, bracing her feet on the opposite wall. Her hand was clamped over her mouth to try and stop her hyperventilating. She didn't have any kind of weapon, not thinking her ex would really follow up on the threat. Come to think of it, the one second glance she'd gotten at the strange figure in her home didn't really look like him, but why would she take any chances?

Raina pulled her hand away from her mouth, unsure of what to do. "Wh-who are you?" Her voice shook with the question, and she willed herself not to be frightened. If it wasn't him, she didn't know what to do. She didn't even know what to do when it was him. She didn't think burglars would announce their presence via grunt anyway. Still, she was slightly reassured by the wooden door separating herself and the strange man.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.