*GORE*

In the darkness, you did your best to look toward where the voice came from. You could just make our some very pale skin and a white jacket, but besides that, just a voice and a rough, leathery hand.

"That's good, doll. Now, I'm gonna take my hand off your mouth, and I'm gonna put a knife on your neck. You're gonna stand up, and you're gonna let me walk you out of this room and out of your house. If you try to pull any shit, you die. I don't care about you."

Your eyes widened more than you thought possible, and all you could do was nod again. This man was going to kill you if you did anything else, right? What's the use of fighting just now?

You could almost hear his grin when he took his hand off your mouth. True to his word, you felt a cold, sharp thing dig into your neck – just enough to scare you, not enough to break the skin. You moved the blankets off of yourself very slowly and moved your legs so that you were sitting on your bed. You held your breath the entire time, but the man moved his knife rather fluidly with you and managed to not cut you, as far as you could tell.

You shifted your weight to your feet and, still very slowly, stood up. The man shifted with you.

"I need to be behind you," he growled in your ear rather roughly, and roughly pulled you forward by the shoulder. He shoved his way behind you and kept his hand on your shoulder and knife on your neck. "Can't have you getting out of hand, sunshine."

You could've laughed at the nickname if you weren't in the current situation.

"Let's get going, I don't have all fucking night." He shoved you forward rather roughly, and you stumbled. His knife nicked your throat, and he pulled it away almost immediately. You managed to step out of his grip and run out of the room.

"Hey! Get back here, sweetheart!" His tone was playful, like he wanted you to run away from him.

Is this a game to him?

You didn't have time to focus on what he wanted, though. All you could think of now was just getting to your parents' room and waking them up and calling the police and does dad have a gun and it's just a little farther---

You burst into your parents room and turned on the lights to find a nightmare, the sight of which immediately made you vomit.

Your mother had been dismembered and turned into some kind of sick experiment. She was splayed on the bed like a doll on a table. Her arms and legs had been sawed off, and sewn back on with legs where arms should be and arms where legs should be. Her hair had been ripped out, if the bloody chunks of skin at the ends meant anything, and what looked like a wig had been put in its place. Her skin had been carved with designs that would have been pretty. There was a flower blooming from her bellybutton and a dreamcatcher hanging from between her breasts.

You only screamed when you saw that she was still breathing.

You tried to run to her, but you were stopped by an arm that shot out and caught you by the neck. You fell backward, struggling for breath.

"And who do you think you are, trying to ruin my art like that?"

You turned around to see another nightmare, but this one was walking.

His face was the first thing you noticed. His twisted grin bared the sharpest teeth you'd ever seen and the most gnarled, unnatural lips you'd ever seen. His nose was a cone with a black and white spiral down the length of it. His skin was a pale, bright white. His eyes were dark enough to be black holes, and the whites were yellowed like he'd spent too much of his life drinking. He was dressed in what would've been a rather fun clown jumpsuit, if it had any color, with striped socks, arm-length gloves, and a pair of loose gray pants and black suspenders. His torso was wrapped with some kind of fabric, and on his shoulders were a pair of the fluffiest, most feathery shoulder pads you'd ever seen. You barely even noticed that he was drenched in blood.

He coughed out a demented laugh at you. "Like what you see?" He asked, gesturing over to your mother. You didn't look.

"A friend of mine suggested I do art to have fun, but paper and pencils weren't really reactive enough. The reds are never quite as vibrant as I want them to be, you know? This one here is one of my best pieces. I'm happy you had a chance to see, especially after the failure I made of the last one. And boy did he put up a fight! My lines were all jagged, I just had to throw him away!"

His sincerity was nauseating.

Then came another laugh from behind you.

"What did I say to you, princess?" He yanked you back by the hair and put his lips right up to your ear. "If you fuck up that bad one last time, I don't care how much he wants you, you're fucking dead. Let's go."

He dragged you by the hair to the staircase, and all you could do was crawl with him. When he reached the stairs, he threw you down and let your head slam against the floor. As soon as your hands went to cradle your forehead, he kicked you by the ribs down the stairs.

As you tumbled down, you could feel multiple bruises forming. When you reached the bottom, the light fixture above you was dancing in circles. You heard the man stomping down the stairs, muttering obscenities under his breath. When he made it to you, he rolled you over with his foot and grabbed you by the ankle and arm. He threw you over his head and onto his shoulders like you were a sack of flour.

"Don't you dare fuck up this jacket. It's new."