Page 8 of Precipitous Nightmare's Valentine Dream

“Need to get to work. On a time limit here.”

She tapped her left wrist with her right hand, a mockery of checking a watch when few wore watches any longer, then bolted for the door.

Precipitous might have been offended if the Dream weren’t so obviously nervous. As things stood, he barely registered that she was leaving before she was out the door. By the time he made it into the hallway, his Dream girl had dissipated into the night.

He didn’t worry, though. He knew how to find her.

Precipitous wound the sands of Nightmare around his body to create a garment that clung to his mortal-appearing form, making certain to include a small pocket in his creation, a slip of fabric above his heart. And into that pocket, he tucked a small toothpick umbrella he’d swiped from the bedroom floor of a woman named Melanie Cross.

Chapter 7

The Circus Macabre

Precipitous Nightmare

Precipitous Nightmare strode across the dusty field where the Circus Macabre had settled. The circus moved constantly, but he’d always been able to locate it no matter where it landed. Part of being an original creation of the Nightmare Realm, he supposed. While lesser creatures might struggle to find their way through the ever-changing landscape of their world once they moved beyond their assigned sections, Precipitous felt the shape of this place in his very bones.

Halting at the red and white striped big top, he considered whether to shrink himself to fit through the folded-back fabric doorway or demand that those he’d come to see find some way to accommodate him. Remaining in his most expansive, terrifying form typically served him best while roaming the various sub-levels of the Nightmare Realm. No one messed with a 12-foot tall, sharp-fanged, powerfully muscled Night Terror who could as easily crush most creatures with a careless footstep as tear them apart limb by limb. Today, though, being the most frightening thing for miles around might not be the wisest plan.

“You’ve finally come for advice, then!”

The Crone called from a doorway of a nearby tent, her scattered visage excitedly flipping between frightened expressions. Precipitous gave her a slow, laborious nod of greeting. The circus was not her usual haunt, but who knew where the Crone wandered or why she might choose to stop in any particular place.

“Not from you, oh witchy one,” he responded, voice gravelly and low.

A young woman with dark hair tied back in a long ponytail and layers of red and purple scarves adorning her shoulders and skirt popped out of the tent and pushed the Crone aside.

“Hush, grandmother,” the new arrival said before turning her attention toward Precipitous. The older woman dismissed them both, locked arms with a passing contortionist, and began to twist the man’s crooked limbs into knots. Shaking her head, the dark-haired woman addressed the Night Terror. “And you, you big showoff. Shrink down to something reasonable before you crush someone. I won’t give you a reading like this and you know it.”

She gave an exasperated harrumph and turned on her booted heel to swoop back into her tent.

“Madame Effulgent,” he called out to the annoyed beauty, and she waved to indicate he should follow. “I would speak with you of love.”

Effulgent Nightmare scoffed at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush on me, Preci. That would be incredibly awkward, even here in the land of Nightmares. And stop calling me by that impossible name.”

“Fine.” Precipitous gathered the sands of Nightmare and compacted his form into that which might pass for almost human. “Effie. And obviously, my queries involve another.”

He trailed behind her, dodging a troupe of snapping dwarves in motley colors that tumbled past leaving sharp red smears along the dusty beige ground, and entered Madame Effulgent Nightmare’s domain.

“Sit,” she instructed him, pouring them each a cup of tea before settling into a tall wooden chair behind a large sphere of crystal. Inside the glass, aerialists fell from dizzying heights as clowns with jagged teeth tore into the belly of a screaming child. Of course Effie spied on everyone in the Circus as they practiced for the night’s entertainment. He’d have expected no less of her.

Precipitous took a seat on the small stool opposite Effie, barely fitting even when almost human-sized, and sipped at the hot tea. The cup felt tiny in his hands.

“They’ve given you your own tent now,” he observed. “You must have done some grand deed to warrant a domain of your own in the Circus Macabre.”

Effie shuffled a deck of tarot cards as she watched him with a shrewd expression. That was how this would go, then. No small talk. No casual reconnecting after so much time apart.

“So, she’s a DayDream,” Effie said with a slow shake of her head. “Only you, Preci, would get involved with one of them.”

For a moment, Precipitous startled, but he caught himself before asking how she knew. This was Effie the Magnificent, after all. Purveyor of fortunes. Seer of destinies. The fortune teller who imparted the worst news in your dreams and hid the deepest of secrets behind her benignly lovely visage.

The last woman anyone wanted to ask for advice — and the only one who truly knew all things past and future. For how could one impart the terror of prophecy if one did not already know what horrors lingered on the horizon?

Effie also happened to be Precipitous’ cousin, if such things had meaning in Nightmare.

“I did not mean to…”

The wave of Effie’s hand cut off everything he’d been prepared to explain.

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