Grim Gnome – DailyNightmare

(Male, 30’s) I was staying at someone’s summer home, a sprawling house with multple floors. It looked out on landscaped terraces leading down to a lake but there didn’t seem to be any way to get out of the place. I was trying to sleep but some one much younger than myself was practicing bass guitar in the room above so I got up and wandered the house.

On the main floor of the place was a laboratory, sort of an industrial waiting room where workers stood around waiting for the shift change. It wasn’t clear what they all did. They were bored twenty-somethings, leaning against the furniture and counters. One of them seemed to recognize me and we spoke amicably. Another worker was edgy, clearly a dangerous jerk. He carried a hypodermic needle with him that he threatened to jab into people, his thumb on the plunger. Sticking out of his upper arm were spare needles. He didn’t seem to notice or care that they were skewered into his flesh.

He tried to bully me the way thugs on a playground would. I wouldn’t have any of his stupid threats so he stabbed me four times with his hypodermic, each time injecting something into my arm near the wrist. I demanded to know what it was. He was coy. “It’s nothing yu need to worry about, old man. Just cholesterol.” I didn’t believe him. but he didn’t tell me anything more.

Then, the flesh around the holes began to swell up. The holes grew large something started to poke out of the hole. It looked like a bead, a shiny black bead but eventually, a centipede poked its head out of my arms and wriggled, trying to get free. It squirmed and squirmed and finally used its hundred of legs to pull itself out of my flesh.

It was just the first. Soon, dozens of centipedes, hairy ones with thousands of tiny legs crawled out of the wounds on my arms, one by one, dropping to the floor.
Just when the waves of insects seemed to be slowing down, another large bead appeared in the one of my arms. It was the staring black eye of a larger bug, and pushed its way out. It was larger, hairless, hard round segments and thousands of legs. They followed like the poison inside me was evolving different kinds of bugs. They streamed out of my hand and fell to the floor.

The thug with the hypodermic needles seemed to find this hilarious but I was worried what kind of creature would follow after the centipedes.

What creature would crawl out of my flesh next?

(Male, 30’s) I’ve been having trouble sleeping recently. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night worried about work or life. So when this dream started, it just felt like I’d woken up again. In the dream, I was in bed next to my wife and it was the middle of the night. What had woken me up was the sound of someone rummaging around in the kitchen which is just next our bedroom. It didn’t sound like whomever was out there cared or even knew there was anyone else alive in the house. It was the sound a leisurely ransack, knocking over a dish, banging into a pan. Why would someone break in to go through our housewares?

I was terrified to get up which is strange because I usually feel quite at home in my own house, even in the middle of the night. I looked to see if I could see the invader but the door to the bedroom was closed. It never gets closed. I thought, I should at least make some kind of noise so the invader knows there’s someone here. In the dream it was hard to move but I picked up a book and threw it at the door. It collided with the wall but made no appreciable sound. That should have been my clue that this was a dream. I picked up something else, a round tray and threw that. It also was silent. That should have been my other clue because that tray wouldn’t have even been in our bedroom.

Finally I decided to get up. My stirring woke my partner who was immediately concerned, mostly that I was awake yet again. I got up and opened the door. There was nothing. I went over to the kitchen. No one. I checked the back door and found it was unlocked, open. Outside was dark, but a clear empty dark. It was the Inky Blackness. I don’t know exactly what was so scary about it, but I was extremely glad there was a door between me and it.

I accused my wife of leaving the door open. We fought a bit then I looked at the door leading down to the basement. It too was dark. I turned the light switch on and it did no good. It was like a wall of darkness, of emptiness, hungry annihilating blackness. The Inky Blackness had gotten inside the house and had filled up the basement.

I finally woke up as I prepared to step into the basement, into that dark, just to see what was going on.