Zork Personal Community
Nightmare Dance Party

"NANCY!!!"
The voice from the street kept shouting. It was 3am. Weren't there cops policing these streets? Whoever Nancy was, she wasn't home or she wasn't interested, guy, so you might as well--
"NAAANNNCCYYYY!!!!!"
I turned in my bed, trying to get a little sleep before the alarm went off.
A few minutes later... music began playing. Dance music. Really loud. As if it were right in my room. I turned my head to the wall... and suddenly the wall lit up as if it were a paper screen, and I could see a large room filled with people dancing in the space next to our apartment. They all turned and seemed to look at me.
This was not real.
I glanced at the time: it was 1am.
The wall went blank. The music disappeared. Stupid dream.
Moments later, I heard someone opening the front door...
I went out to see who it could be. It was several strange men I had never encountered in my life.
"Excuse me," I protested, wearily.
One of the men approached me. "Where is Bonfer? "
"I don't know a Bonfer. There's no Bonfer here."
The men looked at me with greater suspicion as they examined the walls and the apartment at large. "What are you playing? How long have you been here?"
"We've been here for YEARS," I exclaimed, heading to the next room to wake my roommate who'd lived there even longer.
"We've got visitors," I explained as my roommate got up, bleary-eyed.
"What the fuck?!" my roommate muttered as he approached the men and began arguing.
I retreated to spectator mode as they bickered. That's when I noticed the "uniforms" some of the men were wearing. They were cheap plastic costume versions of a police officer, of a fireman. These guys were NOT for real.
I forcefully ushered them all back out the door. I shook my head and I was --
-- back in bed.
I glanced at the time: it was 1am.
I read about this. It was a scary story. A "creepy pasta"? None of this was real. It wasn't 1am. The fact that it was 1am was an indicator that it wasn't real.
This painting on my bedroom wall -- that my sister had made many years ago -- was suddenly next to me in bed. I'd had the painting for years but the other night, I'd noticed a face in the painting that I'd never noticed before.
I shook my head. None of this was real as long as it was 1am.
So hard trying to wake from a bad dream when you know it's a bad dream, but somehow... I managed to.
I woke up in the darkness of my bedroom. My real bedroom. It was past 3am. This was real. I thought this was real. Better to stay up a little longer just to make sure.




And you mock me for surrounding myself with creepy things... 💙
Oh this gave me the shivers!!!
There, there...
eee
The image at the top set the mood and you continued it beautifully. I loved this.
Aw, thank you! I was half-asleep when I wrote it out but I wanted to get as much down as I could before I forgot everything...
A true nightmare when you can't tell what's real and what's not. Didn't know you had that painting.