Page 17 of The Nightmare's Kiss

“Yup. I’m sure you can imagine.” I roll my eyes and suck a breath through my teeth.

“Not sure I want to.”

We share another laugh; I press a hand to my mouth in an attempt to muffle the sound and avoid Ethan’s ire. When I realize Ezra is doing the same, it sends us both into near hysterics. When lunch is over, I’m relieved to feel I have something akin to a friend here—but when I return to the observation room, it’s just me and the Nightmare, once again.

The Nightmare is waiting when I fall asleep. I’m curled up beneath the covers, glaring up at it while it stands at the foot of the bed.

Though his form bleeds around the edges like a blurry photograph, he holds one shape, and looks even more humanoid this time, so much so that I find myself mentally usinghiminstead ofitbecause there is a clear masculinity to his shape. His build is lean rather than bulky, but he still has broad shoulders and a tapered torso that makes me think of defined muscles. And his face is getting clearer too. Moonlight illuminates sharp features and dark eyes that watch me unblinkingly.

The atmosphere is different from the other nightmares I’ve had. It doesn’t feel like he’s trying to frighten me. He stands still at the end of my bed, keeping his distance, almost like he’s tryingnotto scare me.

Instead, he’s looking at me like he’s trying to figure me out.

I stare back, studying him too. And the more I do, the more I sense a strange allure to his inky darkness.

It’s probably a screwed-up thing to think about, especially after the terror of my last nightmare. He’s a figure made of pure shadow, with sharp teeth and sharper claws.Anda dream figment of the creature I’m studying at work in my daytime hours. I wonder what this says about my psyche. Is it a manifestation of the guilt I’m feeling? Is my brain picking up on the Nightmare’s more human characteristics and creating a dream version of him that I can relate to?

Then again, I’ve always been the kind of freak who is weirdly turned on by monster movies. Maybe it’s nothing deeper than that. And either way, so what?

This is just a dream. It’s not like it matters. Nobody will judge me for whatever happens in my own mind. So what if I’m thinking about those huge hands and that long tongue from my last dream? The way he changed shapes and all of the possibilities that could entail?

I flush as my mind wanders down a dirty path, and the way the Nightmare tilts his head in scrutiny makes me feel like he can sense my thoughts. His form flickers, and then he’s abruptly closer to me, sitting on the edge of my bed rather than standing alongside it. I swallow hard, fighting back a pulse of mingled fear and desire, and pull the blankets tighter. This seems like a good dream, not a nightmare, but I still feel vulnerable.

“Mara,” the Nightmare says, like he’s trying it out. His voice is low and smooth, with a whispery quality that makes me shiver in a not-entirely-unpleasant way. Christ, what is wrong with me?

“X-13,” I say in return, barely a whisper. But it sounds strange, wrong. I bite my lip. “Nightmare?” I try, but that doesn’t feel right either. “Do you have a name?” I ask, finally.

“Many,” he responds, but doesn’t offer any.

I sit up in bed. This close, with moonlight streaming through the window, I can make out more of his features. The curve of a shapely nose, and prominent cheekbones; eyes framed by thick lashes, and full lips; all formed by a strange sort of darkness that shimmers faintly where the light hits it. Shadowy tendrils with the texture of hair drift across his forehead and cheeks, floating as if stirred by a nonexistent wind. Everything about his features is a little too sharp to feel properly human—not even counting the claws and the teeth—and his form is still too long, lean and wispy and ethereal. Something is a littleoffin a way that’s unsettling to the eye, but he’s eerily beautiful in its own way. I find myself studying his face, wondering at the texture of his hair.

Of course my dreams would make the Nightmare hot. Blurring the monster that occupies most of my waking hours and all of my repressed, lonely desires into one. I bite back a laugh at the absurdity of my own brain. But if my mind wants to offer up weird, horny fantasies instead of nightmares, well, I’ll happily take it. And it isjusta dream, after all.

Emboldened, I sit up and reach out to touch the Nightmare’s arm. He stays still as my fingers reach his shadowy “skin.” I expect them to pass through like he’s nothing more than smoke or find a chilling cold. Instead he’s velvety soft, and warm, and solid. When I don’t pull away, he mirrors my motions with his other arm, touching me the same way I’m touching him. Though it’s still impossible to read his shadowy features, I feel like he’s experiencing the same fascination as I am. Like my human body is as interesting to him as his shadowy one is to me. His fingers drift up over the slope of my shoulder, to the curve of my neck, and I find myself leaning back to expose the column of my throat to him—

I wake with a gasp and stare up at the ceiling for a few seconds as the dream lingers in my mind…along with a pulsing ache between my thighs. But close on its heels comes a sense of crawling shame. How sexually frustrated do I have to be in order to dream about my monstrous lab subject? Pretty damn frustrated. It must be my mind, full of buzzing hormones and boredom, convoluting my boring days with all of that monster smut I read as a teenager.

I stretch out in bed and let out an embarrassed chuckle at myself. But…as shameful as it is, waking up hasn’t gotten rid of that throbbing need that the dream awakened in me. I’m a little bit terrified of heading into work horny and having to look the creature who inspired my weird, sexy fantasy in the eye. So, after carefully listening and determining my parents must have already left the house, I dip my hand into my sweatpants for some much-needed self-care, and grind against my own fingers until I find my gasping relief.

11

Chapter Eleven

Despite mythoroughattempts to sate the feelings that inspired that dream last night, I still can’t shake the memory of it as I sit in the lab later that morning. I chew my lip, drum my pen against the desk, and stare at the Nightmare behind the glass. He—it, I tell myself—isn’t holding a humanoid form today but remaining a sort of amorphous cloud of darkness, drifting through the cell. But sometimes, as he—it—shifts, I swear I catch a glimpse of that humanoid form again.

Doubt creeps in. Maybe Ihavebeen reading into the subject’s behavior. Maybe my mind is mixing up the real Nightmare, who only takes a human form to imitate me, with the made-up figure in my stress dreams.

Dr. Wright warned me to focus on concrete evidence rather than attempts to understand. Maybe this is what she meant. Maybe this is a test of my ability to think rationally. This subject is not human, or close to it. It’s just a shadow. A shadow who can nod or shake its head, but that doesn’t reallymeananything. It’s not the sort of evidence that will convince anyone, and I shouldn’t be letting it convinceme. If that dream last night proved anything, it’s that I’m letting myself sink a little too deep into this. I’m well aware of my tendency to get a little obsessed with things sometimes. I did it when I started investigating the Facility, and I’m doing it again now.

Yet even as I throw myself into my daily tasks, I find my mind drifting. Doubt and suspicion wage a war in the back of my mind no matter how hard I try to focus. If I try to talk to Dr. Wright about this and I’m wrong, it will be humiliating. But if I’m right… If I’m right, then keeping an intelligent being trapped here and running these mind-numbing experiments on it iscruel.I’mbored of this, and I’ve only been here for a few days.

And what if they ask me to use that awful Sound 3 and it has a negative reaction again? Even if it possesses nothing more than animal intelligence, I don’t think I could bring myself to knowingly hurt the Nightmare. I could always lie and make up notes, but I still don’t know exactly how much I’m being observed while working. I’ve been able to justify my little experiments, but a straight-up lie would definitely get me in trouble.

I groan, leaning back in my chair and brushing my hair out of my face. I stare through the panel at the Nightmare and try to think clearly, without giving in to self-doubt or the lingering, uncomfortable feelings of that weirdly horny dream. I need to think logically about this. I need to think like a scientist running an experiment. This is all a muddled mess, but one thing is clear to me: if I’m going to prove—even to myself—that this thing is really intelligent, then I need to find a way to communicate with the Nightmare. Really communicate in a way that will let it answer with more thanyesorno.

I spend the rest of the day experimenting with different ways to talk through the glass barrier. I grab my lunch to go—like the mysterious other woman, who I only occasionally encounter for a few seconds at a time before she rushes off—with an apology to Ezra. I scarf it down at my desk as quickly as I can, and then it’s back to work.

At first, I try to speak through the intercom or hold up paper with words. The subject’s behavior seems to change when I make attempts, growing either agitated or excited, but it doesn’t speak back to me in a way I can interpret. It does, however, gradually shift into a more humanoid form. Like it’stryingto find a shape that will allow it to interact with me more easily. After a couple of hours, I note with amazement that its shape is becoming more solid and more detailed. Facial features emerge from what was once only a blank mask. Soft tendrils like hair float around its head.

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