Page 6 of Snatched By the Sandman

Shit. He didn’t even turn around. Back still to me. No hint of a smile in his voice. Chills wash over me, and a dark silence takes up the space between us.

After what feels like an eternity, he arrives at a grand set of double doors. Nyxion raises his skeletal hand, and they push open on his command, revealing a room unlike any I’ve ever seen.

A paradox of light and shadow with seduction and violence.

In this multi-level suite, each tier seems like an intricate nightmare. Black iron chandeliers hang from the high ceiling. No, not iron. They are bones, the wick holders being hollow phalanges. Their candles flicker with dark flames casting eerie, dancing shadows on the walls.

Moving portraits of bone frames adorn the walls, each one depicting macabre scenes. Some perhaps more macabre than the left side of my body. Dark forests with twisted trees, shadowy figures lurking in the fog, and ghostly apparitions with hollow eyes seem to follow me. The air is thick with the scent of smoke and something ancient, a fragrance that speaks of long-forgotten fears and whispered secrets.

“This is your sanctuary,” Nyxion says, his voice a smooth, dark velvet that wraps around me like a cloak while looping around my throat like a noose. “A place where your deepest fears and wildest dreams can coexist.”

The canopied bed, draped in a luxurious duvet of deep purple that matches my hair, could fit five bodies. My breath catches in my chest when I understand the bed frame and posts are all formed of the same fused bones.

My relationship with bones is…complicated.

Shackles fix to iron rungs in the wall. Bondage instruments slumber in glass cases against the walls. A twisted thrill rushes up my spine, spreading electric tingles across my skin.

My Chemical Romance and Sleep Token songs erupt in my head.

I stand in the center of the room, my heart still racing, my mind reeling from the journey. Despite the darkness and the unnerving atmosphere, I feel a morbid sense of belonging, as if I’ve finally found a place where my inner turmoil makes sense. And yet, a place of forgetting where I can fade into the dark and find I am safe.

Turning to him, I wonder, “What did those faceless…things want with me?” My voice wavers, but defiance edges my tone.

Nyxion’s skull-faced visage softens slightly, an almost imperceptible shift in his demeanor. “They seek the Eye of the Sandman, Morpheus, the one who weaves dreams intoexistence,” he declares gravely. “But they pursue you for a different reason.”

A surge of confusion and frustration courses through me. “Of course,” I mutter, rolling my eyes with exasperation and disbelief. “And here, I thought it was my sparkling personality.”

I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’ve been a magnet for the creepy things of the world since I was practically conceived. In my blood. Literally.

Nyxion says nothing but I sense his muscles hardening beneath his robe. How much of him is bone vs. flesh?

He regards me with an intensity that curdles my blood. “You possess a vitality, a rare passion in this realm,” he explains cryptically. “It is both your strength and your vulnerability.”

I don’t like vulnerability. I’m a master seeker of the thrills and chills. I’d rather get trapped inside a mirror than have a long look in it. Especially one of those haunted carnival ones that warps your body.

Or meet my evil twin.

I laugh maniacally inside my mind. I’ve already met my evil twin. She lives on the wild left side of my body. Signed and sealed there forever.

“So…” I rub my arms for warmth while eyeing him. “Are you going to tell me what this place really is and who you are? Am I in Purgatory?”

He chuckles darkly, which only twists knots in my stomach. “You are not that fortunate, Zenya.”

I freeze, all my limbs locking up. “Am I…dead?”

Now, there’s a hint of a smile.

“Not yet.”

Not yet. Lovely. “This night just keeps getting weirder.” My snarky internal voice is a meager defense against the overwhelming strangeness of this dark realm.

“Fitting for a strange girl, don’t you think?”

I scrunch my brows, remembering how Zenya means “stranger”. I think I like ‘little killer’ more.

“Perhaps I shouldshowyou instead oftellyou,” he says right before lifting his bony hand to something behind me.

When I turn around, all the breath in my lungs withers. It’s made of bones. But it’s the shape of it. A rectangular frame with two vertical posts and a horizontal crossbeam connecting them at the top. A set of small stairs rises to the platform. No, not a platform.

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