Calpurnia Heights Apartment Complex stands tall against the dark miasma of the night. Situated in a rougher part of the city it is bathed in pink light, oozing over it from the neon sign of the stripclub across the street. Erected in the 60s the age of the building makes everything about it feel heavy and stiff, like it's bones are old and tired - and over the last few years it's residents have began to reflect it's weary nature. This sleepy building has put itself on the map in the last half a decade. It managed to find itself on several Ghost and Urban Myth blog sites, some of it's inhabitants have been interviewed for multiple podcasts, several private psychics have been contacted and it was once invaded by a film crew to record an episode of "Afterlife: America's most Haunted places." All of them were searching for the same thing, an entity with many names.

All the stories start the same. People living in the building are having vivid dreams or horrid nightmares. Many are afraid to sleep. Several have moved out but some didn't have that luxury. All of the dreams they could recount however were wildly different, from their apartment being on fire to them living out a week of their lives only to find themselves waking up and learning that only an hour had passed in the waking world, but all of them shared one common denominator. The Purple Man. The Dreamon. The Dreamcatcher.

The Daydream.

Many residents have declared him a demon who has cursed their homes so that they may never know rest. Some have said he's a ghost trying to reach out to them for them to help him complete his unfinished business. Others dismiss him as some sort of coincidence or a false memory phenomenon. Some of the residents, specifically children (whom this entity seems to bless with sweet and peaceful dreams), and an artist in Apartment 2C, have formed a strange devotion to him and often try to depict him in artwork - children's drawings and artistic sketches. None of them knew the truth about this powerful dream demon. This new God that spoke to them in their sleep and tormented those who displeased him. What could this mysterious, omnipresent being possibly want from them?



Elliot let out a monstrous snore his temple crushed against his bed's headboard, one arm wrapped around his neck, one foot in the air and his mouth wide open, drool trickling down his chin and into a small stain on his bedsheets. A truely glorious sight to behold, and behold it his Mother did. She sighed and picked up some of his laundry from the floor, stuffing it into a wash basket under her arm. She looked outside through his window blinds which were covered in dust from disuse. The Golden Hour had long passed and now black and pink light was filling the air. She looked at her son, slumped into the most awkwardly contorted ball most people had ever seen. She walked over and put a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. "Elliot."

Elliot mumbled, his eyelids flickering rapidly. She shook a little more firmly. "Elliottt." The flickering slowed down. "Elliot!" Her grip tightened and Elliot's gasped awake, his eyelid's shooting open and exposing his Pink and Purple eyes to the dark stuffy air of his bedroom. 'into the Ocean!" He sat up, arm still contorted around his body. His eyes rapidly shot around the room. Where was he? Why was the air so heavy? His pupils began to dilate and adjust to viewing the waking world once more. Oh yeah, he was in his bedroom. As always. he watched his mum move back over to the window and undo the latch, pushing it open and letting the... 'fresh' New York City air bleed into his sanctum. He thought about protesting but instead sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I need you to go down to the lobby and check our mail." She dangled the key to their mail box infront of him, and dropped it intending for him to catch it. He let it fall onto his bed instead.

He looked down to them and back up to his mother. Oh my god she was serious.

"But Mooom, the elevator's broke an-'

"No buts Elliot. Get going."

"Why can't you do it..."

"Because i've told you to do it, get moving sleepyhead."

She paused. Was she allowed to call him sleepyhead? It's not really his fault but she didn't want him spending his entire life in his bed so even a little trip down to the lobby would be good for him. Get his joints moving. She picked up another sock from the ground as she was leaving his room, and left the door wide open allowing the light from the hallway to stab into his eyes just incase he got any ideas about staying in bed.

Elliot grumbled, mumbled and then stumbled out of his bed. As soon as his feet touched the ground and attempted to support his weight they buckled and he fell to his hands and knees. They felt like they hadn't been used in days. He looked at his digital alarm clock. Oh they HAVEN'T been used in days. He lowered his head and rested it on his carpet's fur briefly before pushing himself up and back onto two feet. With his eyes half closed he reached down and grabbed whatever shoes his hands touched first, one of his yellow doc martens and a black converse high top. They were both left footed but he pulled them on over his holey socks and his faded black jeans no problem, too indifferent to notice the discomfort.

His hand fell ontop of the key to their mailbox and lazily lifted it like one of those carnival claw machines and he began to slump his way through the hallway. With his other limp arm he allowed it to glide across the table beside their door and the fingers wrapped around a pair of rip off mirror lensed aviators. He pressed his hand against his face and managed to slide them on over his eyes, blocking out the humming lights of their dingy, yet homely, apartment. He took the door off the latch and heaved it open with all of his minimal effort before walking out, allowing it's weight to close itself.

Their apartment building had a simple layout, Six floors, the first floor being a lobby containing the mail boxes, some store rooms, basement access, a building bulletin/notice board and several janitor's closests. The rest were 5 floors with 5 apartments on each. Elliot lived on the top floor, apartment 5B and now stood before the greatest rival he'd ever faced. The Stairs. With a deep breath and a grueling amount of effort, he eventually managed to slither down all of them without falling and desperately tried not to think about the fact he'd have to walk back up them. The Lobby was filled with cold winter air that had leaked in through the thin door and made it feel like it was trapped in some sort of stasis. As he began walking towards the mail boxes he noticed some new drawings and fliers had been put on the notice board. It had been a while since he had last checked it out.

He liked to refer to their building's notice board as his 'Altar' because it's where residents shared any information they had about The Dreamon. Some of the fliers were complete nonsense, talking about how lavendar candles can ward him off or how if you circle your bed three times like a dog before you lay down that it will leave you alone. Others wrote down what they'd dreamt about and asked other residents for help interpreting the dream, there was one resident who was actively posting propaganda and details on how to effectively worship it, Elliot liked him. But his favourite was the fanart. The kids in the building often drew him and he adored it. Looking at their little masterpieces where they'd drawn him as a purple crayon circle with horns, holding hands with them and their mommy or something stupid like that. It always made him smile. Elliot's eyes drifted upwards to a new piece of art. An image of The Daydream painted on a sheet of canvas paper depicted him as hovering in mid air, legs together and arms apart, as if he were Jesus on the Cross. The Artist in 2C. Elliot enjoyed his dreams the most they were always so different and creative and something about his artistic nature made him easily inspired. I'll have to reward him for his efforts Elliot thought, before resuming his walk towards the mail boxes.

He heard the bell above the building's front door jingle and turned as little of his head as he had to to get a look at who had just walked into his domain...

~Several Days Ago~

“I’m serious, Elliott. It’s haunted. Been on Afterlife: AMHP and everything! Something is going on. You should look into it!”

The green man stared at his red headed girlfriend, unsure what to do. He was at a loss.

“Kenzi, that’s not really... what I do. I handle muggers and stuff? Patrol work. Friendly neighborhood stuff, right?” Elliott said.

“Hmph,” Kenzi crossed her arms.

The conversation seemingly ended.

~Two days ago...~

“It’s getting worse, Ell.” Kenzi said. From out of nowhere. Continuing a days-old conversation, even.

Elliott blinked at her. “What is?” He said carefully.

“I read a blog.”

“Yeah?” Where was this going...?

“People living in the building are having vivid dreams or horrid nightmares. Many are afraid to sleep.” She said adamantly. “There’s this story about a little boy. Billie Porter.”

“Billie Porter.” Elliott repeated.

Kenzi told him.

Elliott halted full stop.

~And now-

Sick. He felt sick. The blogs all reported about the hero worship thing, the good dreams kids got. The artist who devoted an entire collection to the Daydream. The purple man. Whatever. But only one blog had talked about the kid who went off the deep end because the waking world was inferior to his dream life. Elliott didn’t even want to detail all the crap that went wrong. Whoever this thing was, whatever this thing was, it was some sort of monster.

Maybe it had wanted the kids to have happy dreams, to make up for the twisted crap it gave the general populace. But it had gone too far. The boy was in an asylum now and Elliott hadn’t even realized those things still existed!!

Kid had sent an open message, a truly demented thing, promising $1 to the person who could bring him the Purple man. So he could thank the horror. And beg it to take him back. Into his dreams.

Elliott didn’t want that $1. But he did want to talk to the purple man. He didn’t want to thank him. He wanted to kick his ass.

The kid slept most of the day. Listless. The rest of the time, he spent drawing pictures of the things he’d dreamed. Jagged lines, dark motion. Bright colors. Twisted. The kind of abstract expressionism that spoke to you. The kind only children could create.

Elliott was not sure if he could fix him. It was probably a one in a million case about the kid. Because yeah, sure, he had read about dozens of cases. Dozens. That seemed positive! At least, for the kiddos. Adults got it worse. But they were better equipped to differentiate. To tell the living world from the dream. They had a barrier. Tools. This guy had played with fire, manipulating people. Messing with them. Messing with kids. Elliott was no saint. He had done things he regretted. But one thing he had vowed, since after he’d turned over his new leaf, was this: you don’t mess with kids. And yes, that was about as cliche as cliche could get. Maybe he just needed justification to investigate this. Because it was out of his comfort zone. And he’d had to deal with something messed up the last time he’d gone outside his wheelhouse.

He found himself humming Santa Claus is coming to town, and he shuddered. Then, he strolled into the building.

He was dressed in steel-toed boots that felt uncomfortable for his two-toed feet, black three-fingered biker gloves, blue jeans and a black leather jacket with Kevlar inserts. Oh, and his green motorcycle helmet with the wide Cheshire grin and the jagged teeth. The one he had painted himself. With the lolling tongue and the tinted visor to obscure his features. Shoes and gloves were an oddity for him, but hey. He wasn’t planning to climb any walls here.

A bell dinged. The door swung back shut.

A fairly normal apartment building lobby. He’d been in enough to know the basic layout. What was not usual was the little bulletin board full of fan art. He didn’t immediately pay attention to the person near the board. Just felt his feet get drawn toward it, out of what could have been morbid curiosity.

Would the board have it? And what was his plan here to confront the nightmare?

Cheshire scanned the board.

“There.” He placed a finger about an inch away from touching the page. A psychedelic scribble, with a yellow and pastel pink swirl that reminded him of a fingerprint. In its center, harsh dark lines. Darkest purple. A silhouette. A man. Above the swirl, a blood orange sun so harshly scrawled onto the page in crayon it almost tore the paper. In the bottom right hand corner, a name. “Billie Porter.”

He felt sick. Had felt sick. But oh, it came back all over again.

“Can you believe this guy...” He muttered, not really paying attention to who he was talking to, If anyone. Mainly, he was just being disgusted, and talking to himself. “All the worship... but this kid is in the mental Health hospital because his real life was dim in comparison to the dream... spends all his time sleeping. Hoping for good dreams.”

Elliot's eyes slowly scanned the figure who had walked in. He wasn't afraid to stare, the mirror lenses of his glasses had the added benefit of obscuring what his eyes were doing. Leather jacket, gloves, heavy boots and an... exhaustingly decorated helmet. Who was he? Probably some sort of courier or food delivery. He turned his attention back to the mailbox and lifted the key towards it.

He scraped the key around the lock of their mailbox several times, his wrist too limp to force the key into the hole. When it finally slid into the groove and clicked into place he noticed the man in the helmet was staring at his Altar. He couldn't see his face but his head slowly glided from the top of it to the bottom, moving with a purpose before he stuck out a finger and almost touched one of the sacred art pieces. Yes that's right, take it all it, bask in his Dogma. Overcome with a small piece of hubris he allowed himself to smile, briefly, before he turned back to mailbox on the wall. Using a single finger pressed against the key Elliot pushed open the little door to their mailbox and collected the letters that were inside it. He began cycling through them to see if there was anyhting interested but after the third one decided that he didn't care enough. He tucked them into his yellow jacket's pocket and began to meander towards the stairs. That was when he heard the man in the helmet speaking. Muffled as it was through his helmet Elliot's ears always seemed to pick up when someone was talking about him, and he was more than happy to oblige.

His walk took him listfully over to the side of the man standing before his Shrine. Listening to his words, Elliot grew confused - at multiple things. The way the man spoke, the things he said and something about a kid wishing for good dreams? Elliot kept his eyes on the portrait depicting his demonic alter-ego as Jesus himself and spoke, his voice deep and slow. "You... talk about it like it's a person...' he reached out and plucked the portrait Billie drew from the wall, clasping it between his fingers. He hadn't known that Billie had been taken. Hadn't noticed. He had several children in this one building who he interacted with fairly frequently. 'I'm not usually one for gossip but' he paused and brought his other hand to his mouth, sucking in air with a gaping yawn. 'apparently Billie had it pretty rough. Didn't know he'd been taken away though, that's... sad." He finished.

Truthfully, Elliot didn't really care. Billie's life was terrible and in his own divine wisdom, Elliot thought that hiding from such a harsh reality by creating your own was a perfectly valid reaction. He did it all the time. It was sad that Elliot hadn't known sooner or he would've tried to spice up Billie's decision to stay in his own dreams but he couldn't control human's reactions. 'Who's really to blame though?... His father is the reason is life was so... shit." Elliot pinned Billie's picture back onto the noticeboard and closed his eyelids to blink but they were heavy and stayed shut for several seconds.

When they peeled themselves apart again he looked the figure up and down. 'Who are you? Do you have like... a delivery or something? Are you another journalist..."

>> "You... talk about it like it's a person...

Elliott glanced towards the person curiously. And listened as they took the picture and spoke.

The way he spoke, the way he held the picture... something was off about it. More so than how a usual person would be off.

He spoke as if he had close knowledge of the kid in question. And if they lived in the same building, maybe they would. Placed the picture back on the wall. Guy closed his eyes, and— they just stayed that way for a little bit. Like he was tired. Barely hanging on.

Guy asked who he was. Elliott shrugged. “Investigating, I guess.”

Not a lie. Suspicious, sure. But so was a lie.

He wasn’t really in a position that merited a motorcycle helmet or a disguise. Nothing he was doing at that moment required hiding from the law. So, he took off his helmet and held it in the crook of one arm.

Underneath the helmet, his was a green-skinned alien-looking man with red eyes and antennae on his scalp. Totally bald. Hairless. Not even eyebrows.

“My girlfriend thought there had to be more to the story than what the horrorsites post. So I figured I’d do a little digging.” He said.

Really, he’d been considering knocking himself unconscious in order to see what interfered with his dreams. But that seemed so... vague and liable to fail.

“My name is Elliott. You sound like you’re familiar with the guiding. What’s your name?” Elliott asked.

The Helmet came off.

"Ew."

Elliot's mouth leapt ahead like the hare, leaving his tortoise brain behind.

He paused, half-lidded eyes taking in the man's... unique physiology and seemed to stare into the distance for a second.

"I'm... sorry that came out without me thinking. I did not mean it."

He cleared his throat a little but underneath his glasses, tried to avoid looking directly at the man's face. He couldnt work out why looking at it freaked him out, it's not like he hadn't seen a physical mutation before. Ok well, he hadn't seen any other physical mutation but his own, but still it was strange that it bothered him. Made his strange eyes itch. He said he had a gilfriend? Brave.

Elliot recalled the rest of his sentences and then seemed to nod his head when his brain finished processing it, like it had finally caught up. His lips curled into a pleased smile when the freaky man revealed his name. "That is going to make things easy... to remember... I'm Elliot too. What are the chances of that..." He yawned again. "I've lived here for my whole life, knowledge of the place has sort of drifted into my head... like osmosis...."

He looked away a little and brought his palms up to his eyes, pushed the glasses up and rubbed sleep dust out them before his hands slithered away, the glasses falling back into place. "If you're investigating I'll give you a suggestion... you won't find out much while you're awake.' his hands moved into his jacket pockets. He'd been awake too long his feet were starting to wake up and his toes were starting to feel the effects of wearing two left shoes. 'No-one ever has. It's why the ghost hunter people left - you can't film dreams."

He remained still, looking at the wall of art and chased off another yawn by chewing his tongue. "Maybe someone will let you sleep in their bed. I won't though."

Ew? Well that was friendly. The guy in the aviators was no beauty pageant princess either.

He hastily apologized but the damage was already done.

Tactfully, Elliott said “Sure. It’s fine.” But really, he was speaking in code like what his girlfriend always used. And it wasn’t.

Elliotts antennae twitched twitched twitched as he watched the guy avoid looking at him. Sort of like the tail of a perturbed cat.

Elliot and Elliott. Well. Could be worse.

Guy yawned again. Sleepy. Sleepy. Sleepy. Something about that. And he had always lived there?

Ok.

The guys suggestion to just go to sleep and investigate... sort of made his skin crawl. Why? Who knew? But it made sense.

“Honestly. I was just going to knock myself unconscious somewhere like this guy in a comic I once read. Kid complains of nightmares so he hires a mercenary to investigate it for a dollar. He wants to figure out what monster is messing with the kids dreams so he does. And a dollars a dollar.”

He paused and let the story sit a second, then began again.

“Knocked himself out with a brick or something. Real comic book crap, for something licensed off a real superhero here in New York. But whatever.”

“Guy went to the realm of dreams. Morpheus’s domain. The sandman. Not the Neil Gaiman one. And he thought that master of nightmares was the monster. Long story, short? The Sandman wasn’t the one responsible for the kids bad dreams... it was the kids’ next door neighbor. The creep. Which just goes to show... sometimes the real monster isn’t always what we think first. Oh,” he caught himself before THAT ominous but of messaging could sink in. “I also read one with mold ghost nightmare demons and a haunted lab experiment!”

“Some guy got injected with psychotropic brain mold that kept growing after he died. Because the mad scientist killed him for some reason and stuffed him under the floor. So the mold released psychic spores that invaded people’s dreams snd made them insane. As a sort of psychic call for help. From beyond the grave. Do you think it could be that?”

Elliott sure as hell didn’t. That was just trippy cover up for the first one in case something weird about it resonated with sleepy and put him off.

He stood patently, smiling enthusiastically at his namesake. Elliot and Elliott, haha! That was kind of funny. He really needed to chill with the paranoia. Guy was probably just some nice kid trying to be helpful. Years of being involved in organized crime just got in your head and set up shop. Kind of like the brain mold.

Weird.

((OOC those are real comics. 2019 Deadpool, and the Ellis moon knight run.))

The Bug Man's mouth revved faster than a motorcycle and twice as loud. It kind of made Elliot's head hurt. It felt as if he'd been speaking for twenty minutes and somehow he didn't say a single word. Prattling on about comic books and demonic mold? Noise - it was all just noise. Except for one word. Morpheus. Elliot had looked him up before, trying to work out what he was, back before he knew the answer. He'd look up Morpheus, Hypnos and even the Oneiros of Greek Myth to but ultimately came to the conclusion he was none of those things. He was better. The Next Generation.

When the climax of the insect's story was that the kid's next door neighbour was doing it, Elliot had to stop his face from reacting to how well that story paralleled what was happening here. Except instead of tormenting Billie he had been trying to provide the kid with some sort of escape. Elliot chewed his lip a little. His brain, lagging behind, processed and then re-processed the nonsense that had left the Bug Man's mouth. One part hit his brain and finally got some cogs to turn.

"You should know, hitting yourself with a brick' as funny as watching that sounded 'won't do anything." He put his hands into his denim jacket's yellow pockets. "You'd be knocked out, not asleep... you can't dream when you're knocked unconscious, it turns your brain off wrong." Would it be weird that he knew that. Maybe. "I looked up a lot of crap about sleeping to try and work out what was happening here... everyone's looked into it a little.... nobody's found anything though."

He couldn't help himself. "I don't think it's a person... I think it's something else, something bigger. And not one of those muta' - he realised present company - 'and not a mutant either. There's no way a mutant could keep this a secret unless they were' he yawned 'very good or powerful' he could feel his ego purring as he stroked it 'Mutants usually aren't very quiet and subtle either, a mutant would probably have burnt the building down or something by now I've seen the news. No offense."

He swallowed. Not because he was nervous, just to fill a gap of silence.

"You'll have to go to sleep the old fashioned way. You could knock on some doors - there's not a person in here who isn't taking melatonin to help with the insomnia. I'm sure they'd lend you some." His voice throughout remained one note and dry and his slouched posture barely moved.

A brick. That was the thing the guy had patched onto. The brick?

“Fair.” He chimed in, stuffing hands into his pockets. A moment later, he realized he might have been mimicking the other Elliot’s movements.

He went whole hog and mimicked Elliott’s body posture and mannerisms, too. Elliott yawned. Wasn’t there something someone had said, about people tending towards trusting people more if they mimicked posture? Yeah. Probably a load of horse manure.

He hadn’t actually planned to brick his brain. Too easy to go too far. The comic book character could recover. He had special abilities that helped with that. Elliotts particular grade of nonsense did not aid in injury recovery. It only made him jump good.

Apparently Elliot had looked into things, but gotten nowhere. He should try sleeping, Elliott thought. Maybe then he wouldn’t yawn so much.

Elliott yawned. The Nyquil. Maybe it was starting to work? He’d specifically taken the drowsymaking kind.

Elliot did not think it was a person. But Elliott thought it was.

He slouched some more.

“Eh. Thank you. none taken. So. You think it’s a God? Who knows... maybe! Or maybe it’s just some sort of magic cult thing... Hah! No way that would ever happen.”

He was so funny making jokes for himself.

“Thank you for the suggestions, Elliot. I think I got this. Have a nice day.”

That said, he turned and walked away. Towards the stairs.

Elliott went about 2 flights up, turned, and sat down in the stairwell. Then he closed his eyes and slumped down.

He’d probably wave at anyone who went back upstairs. But for the moment, he focused on doing a quick awkward stair well power nap.

The frea- he had to stop that.

The Man walked behind him. Elliot's head kept facing forward towards the paintings but turned to follow Elliott's movements up the stairs. Whenever he was around the corner, Elliot yawned and took Billie's picture off the wall, putting it into his jacket pocket. He allowed a few minutes to pass, his eyelids forever dancing between open and closed before he turned back to face the stairs and took a deep breath.

When he was God of the new world the first thing he was gonna do would be ban stairs. Elevators only. Creeping up each flight felt like a fish trying to swim up stream. He turned the second floor's flight and was met with the bug man resting his head against the wall, sleeping in the common area like some sort of hobo. Elliot quietly slithered past him, and mutterered 'Sweet Dreams."

He finally made it to the top floor and pulled the door to his Apartment open. "What took you so long?" He heard his mum call from the other room. He closed the door over and set the letters he'd gotten from the mailbox on the table beside the door. "There was a huge bug in the lobby... I was helping it out." He dropped the keys in the bowl and dragged himself over to his bedroom. He opened the door and sitting on his bed was a bowl of stew with some bread. Now that he'd seen it, it was like someone had slapped his stomach in the face and reminded it that he hadn't eaten in several days. It growled like a lion and he moved towards the bowl with an uncharacteristic quickness. He wolfed it down within 3 minutes, ignoring the heat, before he put the bowl down beside his bed. He quickly kicked his mis-matched shoes off his feet and onto the floor and cracked his neck. It was showtime.

He closed his bedroom door, and as soon as the lock clicked into place his bedroom's energy completely changed. It wasn't just his bedroom anymore. It was a sanctuary. His sanctuary. He crawled back onto his bed and sat upright, staring at the drawing Billie had done. He slowly put it down the side of his bed before looking up at the ceiling, his hand dragging the glasses off off his face. He opened his closed eyes and his magneta iris' shifted into an incandescent indigo colour. He felt as if his being was being lifted upwards, towards the heavens. And just like that, his physical body fell backwards, eyes closed, lifeless. Elliot wasn't in there anymore.

The Daydream was.


Just as Elliot's body hit the duvet of his bed, The Daydream sat up in the dream world. His demonic body sitting in a realm of infinite purple water, surrounded by a whispering dark smoke. Within the smoke were dozens and dozens of purple lights. Each one represented a sleeping person. The Daydream gently floated from orb to orb, searching for the one that belonged to the Green Man. The other Elliott. It didn't take long for him to find it. His purple clawed hand gently traced along the sphere's outer surface. It felt like glass. He firmly grasped the orb with his entire hand, and crushed it. After the shattering noise the purple smoke within completely encircled Elliot's vision before it drifted away like a foggy memory, replaced by new images of Elliott's dreamscape.

Elliot chose not make himself visible or intervene at all at first. He simply wanted to see what the bug man was dreaming of by himself. Learning the limitations of his subject's imaginations was key to learning how to use it against them. And he wanted to make sure that when this man left, he left with a message for any further investigators - stay away from Calpurnia Heights.

((OOC: What is Eliott dreaming about *eyes emoji*))

Elliott was dreaming of the eyes emoji. 300 stories tall, and winking on the side of a skyscraper. There was also a mouth. Two disgustingly human lips. It made a chomping motion, smacked its lips, then exploded into a million million fragments of glass.

He leaped away from it all, flipping end over end in the air. He had been running up the side of the building. Dressed in a leather jacket and a yellow smiley face motorcycle helmet with a darkened visor. Why had he been running? He didn’t know. But he was falling, now.

In desperation, he reached towards a nearby building, hands outstretched. Towards a flag pole. Two pinkish tongues shit out from the hands as he drew close. 5 feet, 8 feet, 10. They caught the pole and wrapped around it. His body jerked to a halt, but he swung with the sudden change in motion and lessened the strain on his shoulders. Up, and around. He landed on top of the pole in a crouch. His yellow smiley face helmet reflected a cityscape on fire in its visor.

“My works on fire. How ‘bout yours~?” He sang wryly.

Such is the life of a hero.

In the distance, two giant monsters wrecked ^*+t. One of them was a green lizard. Modzilla. The other was a giant bear with the words pro boards painted in green on its back. Maybe he shouldn’t have watched that kaiju movie last night?

Music bled in through the walls of the stairwell. Somebody’s neighbor listening loudly to a song. The same song he’d been singing, magnified until it bounced off the walls of his dream.

How was he going to take down the legendary pro boards bear? Even as he watched, it destroyed another building. The skyscraper shattered into hundreds of words which drifted off, and were lost.

This entire scenario played out in the palm of a giant Daydream's hand. He simply observed the psychedelic onslaught of the man's dreams like a distant God. He'd seen some crazy visions in his time but it was rare for someone's imagination to be so... chaotically vivid. That was when inspiration struck the Dream God. He knew exactly how to unnerve this interloper. Mundanity. The Modzilla creature, the Giantic Pro-Boards Bear, the burning city. They all froze in place. Modzilla and Pro-'Bear'ds turned as if they were on Lazy Susans until they both faced the Bug Man. All sound stopped and was instead replaced by a slow, low hissing. Modzilla, the Giant Bear, the buildings they'd been fighting amongst and even the fire itself melted like timelapsed candle wax leaving nothing behind but an infinite, haunting abyss and an evil, sickening Silence.

All that remained of Elliott's dreamscape was the building he was standing on, the blackness surrounding him and that heavy malevolent silence. That was until it was interupted by the gentle clinking of metal behind Elliott. A spoon stirring tea in an ornate cup. "Well, Well... What have we here?" The Daydream's demonic visage sat at a small table, a tea pot infront of him. The crackling of the flames that poured upwards from his head was incredibly soothing and his horns curled in such a way that the eye couldn't quite follow them. There was another chair at the table. "Hello Elliott. Please do take a seat." The Daydream motioned to it with his clawed, purple hand.

Preemptive of any objections and without any notion of a transition, Elliott would suddenly find his bum placed firmly in the ornate chair. "Would you like anything to drink? Tea? Coffee? A beverage you saw on TV once that you think you'd like? I do try to be courteous to guests in my house." It didn't matter that it was Elliott's head. The Daydream wanted him to know that this was his home. The Daydream tipped the teapot and poured a clear liquid into a cup infront of the Insectoid. If Elliott were to drink it, it would taste like anything he wanted.

"Now, whatever can I do for you My Dear?"

The Demon grinned.

Everytime he spoke it sounded like a choir of whispers were repeating the words a second after he said them.

Well. That was certainly strange. Things halted, things changed.

Things change all the time.

The two giant things turned and faced him. Elliott eyed them. And then, things melted away in a hiss.

Coooool.

All that remained was him and his perch. And another. Elliott glanced over his shoulder at mr tea cup. Strange. The funky thing was, before things had melted, Elliott had been crouched on a flag pole. The only way the person / demon could have been seated at a table, level with anything, would have been if he were established on the side of the building, stuck there like a suction cup on glass.

Well, okay then. Elliott hopped down from the flag pole that had dangled out over the void, and casually approached the man at the table on the side of the skyscraper. Walking up the buildings side like both things were normal. And still, the tea did not dribble out from his cup of his tea pot, in spite of gravity’s oddity.

>>well well well what have we here?

“Dunno, doc. You tell me.”

Elliott stood impassively, arms crossed.

The flames on the head were fascinating. They drifted to the side, not up.

He remained standing, even after that nice offer. Gee! Maybe he should have listened to the stranger.

He had remained standing. That made his sudden perspective shift of being seated all the more a betrayal.

>> "Would you like anything to drink? Tea? Coffee? A beverage you saw on TV once that you think you'd like? I do try to be courteous to guests in my house."

“Got any grapes?” He quipped. He would have asked for tide pods at this guys tea/lemonade stand, but there was a chance he would actually get them. Electric kool aid was also off the menu for jokes. Too easy to mess with him and actually give him poison or acid.

Even though he poured something, Elliott did not drink it. Did he suddenly find his hands holding a cup this time? No? Good.

The thing asked what it could do for him, and called him dear. Its voice was... freaky. For lack of better descriptors.

His motorcycle helmet kept on smiling as he told mr tea time. “Well. First off, please never call me dear again? We can go by first name basis here. You have mine. Please, do share yours.”

Since the being referred to him by his name name, maybe he needn’t have kept wearing the helmet. But a gimmick is a gimmick. He kept his schtick sharpened, like his wit. No one would ever want to mess with that wit, either. They’d feel the stab of his wit’s end. It just wouldn’t feel nice.

“Secondly,” he continued. “You called me. So what’s up, doc? That thing where I was suddenly seated was pretty weird. Was that you?”