Then two.
I begin to think he has no nightmares when I spot it.
It’s faint.
Barely more than a shift, a ripple beneath the sheets. Then another. And another.
I bite my lip as the movement increases rapidly, a coiling and writhing mass.
Etienne shifts in his sleep. His thick eyebrows crease with his confusion. His momentary lapse in understanding.
He moves, attempting to find comfort amongst the sea of motion all around him.
And I smile.
I grin as he gives a grunt and turns over.
Opens his eyes.
“Can he see us?” I ask, never looking away from my prey as he struggles to sit up.
“No.”
“I want him to. I want my face to be the last thing he sees before he dies.”
The demon chuckles in my ear. “Oh, how beautifully twisted you are.”
But I know the moment I materialize before him. His muddy brown eyes bulge, mirroring the unhinging of his jaw as he starts to scream.
“No screaming,” I tell him.
He does, but there is no sound. Only this lump of a man flailing and clawing at his throat and no sound emerging.
Then … then he throws back the sheets and he sees them.
All of them.
The black mass of hundreds of crawling, angry snakes moving and fighting all around him.
Beneath him.
Over him.
And the panic.
The horror.
Etienne Duval turns a white I have never seen and he tries to throw himself off the bed.
But he can’t.
He can’t leave.
I giggle as he thrashes. As he kicks and swats and only manages to tangle himself further in their bodies.
If he could scream, I know it would be horrific. Curdling. It would be a haunting sound of pure terror, and I would love to hear it, but I like that it adds to his fears. To that helplessness in his glassy eyes.
No one can hear him.
