Welcome to my Nightmare,By Hugin and Munnin“We shall be monsters.”FrankThe writing of Frankenstein was only the beginning in more ways than we ever could've imagined.Percy Shelly, reincarnatedPrologueThe best day of my life was when my brother killed me. I suppose I should sort of back track and expin that one, shouldn't I? Leave it to me to botch up telling a story in the very first line, but then again I was never that good at talking to people, or expressing myself. I guess my writing shouldn't be any different. There were so many things in life I couldn't handle. Guess there is no way to pretty that up or to make it look less damaged than it is. Don't think I don't know that I'm damaged, because I do. I'm damaged and so is my brother. He's just way more functional. Well as long as you consider killing people functional...which I do because he's never had problems fitting into basic society the way I always have. I mean he at least held down a job.I never could for long, though I did try. I'd be able to do my work, but if something happened that I didn't know precisely how to deal with, my mind would just lock up, freeze up and in essence shut down which made me useless. Later I'd be embarrassed, mortified even, but I always knew I'd not be able to do better next time, because I just couldn't. I'd not know how to cope next time any better. Nothing had changed, and being aware of this made me fear most interaction in the outside world.It's nice when unwanted children are adopted by kind happy families. That isn't always the case, though. Sometimes very bad people adopt children instead. This was something that I had a very hard time understanding when I was little myself. I struggled with the frustrating puzzle nearly every day starting from the time I was actually able to think deeply about the things I didn't understand. Perhaps around the age of four or so I suppose. I didn't understand why bad angry evil people wanted to adopt children, and I didn't understand why they were allowed to.The answers are now pretty simple. Bad angry evil people want children because children are smaller and weaker than they are. In essence, they provide them with someone to hurt. Someone against whom they can always win. They are allowed to adopt because wards of the state are unwanted mouths that need feeding, so the state is gd to hand them off to anyone who wants them and doesn't have a criminal record. Well at least that's how it was in the early nineteen-forties anyway. Now things have become more civilized, or at least more complicated.Did I figure these things out when I grew up like normal people do? I don't think so. I don't remember thinking about any of it until after my brother killed me and I became so much more than I was previously! Becoming more gave me the reassurance that there were good things in store for us after all. Magnificent wonderful things, and that we should have them, my brother and I. Thinking of all the things we should have led to the fact that I was only having to think about them and to get them, because we hadn't had them before. Ever really. And so naturally thinking about what we didn't have led me to specute about why. To try to understand why, and as you can see I think I've done pretty well. I've even begun to understand why my brother and I are the way we are as adults. Well I suppose I understand him more.He was always the strong one. He never had the problems I did where he got too afraid or couldn't handle things. He took care of me and took a lot of hurt on all levels doing it. I love him for that more than words can ever say. I respect him and idolize him. That's why I dress just like he does except instead of pants I wear a skirt in the same shade of brown that goes well past my knees. I'm too shy to wear sexy things. I'd feel silly, but I don't feel right wearing pants either. I am a girl and girls should wear skirts or dresses. At least this was the case in the nineteen-forties when we were growing up, and I never saw a reason to change.Anyway, back to my brother, because he's the one who really counts. He really can't abide misbehaving or bad children and teenagers because he never feels that any of them get what's coming to them for their actions. Instead innocent children and teenagers who didn't do anything get all the abuse and trouble. During his adult life and now that he's more, he uses his abilities to even things out some on that count. At first I thought it was because he was striving to punish himself for being bad when he gave those children and teenagers theirs. I believed that he felt he...perhaps we maybe deserved it, and that so did they, but after thinking about it a little longer...harder, I see that it's the other way around. We didn't deserve it at all, but if he thinks they do, it always had to gall seeing them get away with everything while we were beaten and terrorized for doing nothing but taking up a little space and trying to do our best in an unknown and unfriendly situation. I'm still working on sorting out some aspects of my own shortcomings. Thinking about them isn't usually productive but I still try sometimes. I'm usually pretty busy, though. Now that I've become more, I've actually got a job that I can hold down, and I work a lot. No more melting down when presented with a situation that I don't know exactly how to handle. No more freezing wordlessly when anyone in said situation tries to speak to me. I lost so many jobs at both high and low end department stores and various grocery stores because I just couldn't handle things. I lost more jobs than I can count, and even thinking about them now makes a small part of me want to go and hide under a bed, waiting for it all to go away.What made me such a dysfunctional adult? My childhood of course. I guess it's a cop out to bme it all on my childhood. That's not really completely how I feel anyway. It's partly my childhood but a big part of it is how I reacted to my childhood while experiencing it. The things I learned...and didn't learn.When we were almost 4 years old my brother and I were adopted by a grim faced man by the name of Mr. Underwood. He remained Mr. Underwood for the entire time we lived with him, until we were 18. Never Father. He drank all the time, including the first night that he brought us home with him. The more he drank, the angrier and consequently more evil he became.The only redeeming quality the man had was that he was not sexually abusive. He was plenty friendly with his fists, though, and he'd hit us for just about anything when he was drunk. And hitting us never made him feel better. It never served to calm him down. In fact, it usually got him worked up into a frenzy of rage instead. That was when I learned to run from him. And I was very fast. Even faster than my brother. I was small and fast so I would use my speed to get away from him and my small size to get into small pces that he couldn't reach to keep away until he passed out. The great thing about that was if I managed to distract him by running and keep him frustrated that he couldn't get to me to beat me into being sorry, it kept him away from my brother. At those times neither of us would get hurt, and I'd eventually tire Mr. Underwood down so that he'd pass out. Then my brother and I had peace for a little while. We were completely free while he slept and nursed his hang-overs as long as we were very quiet and kept out of his sight as much as possible which we were more than happy to do.Things went on pretty much the same with the 3 of us for several years. Until I was too old to hide in small spaces that Mr. Underwood couldn't reach into. I was still fast enough to tire him down most of the time, but the few times he did manage to hit me my brother would jump in to protect me and end up getting beaten up really bad. Mr. Underwood could hit me hard, but he hit my brother even harder. As though he could use his fists to empty all the rage in the world out onto my brother.I would scream and cry at first, but it did no good. Mr. Underwood would either ugh and hit my brother harder or just ignore me. The only one my screams got to was my brother. So that I wouldn't make things even harder for him, I learned to watch his beatings in horrified silence, a desperate fist pressed to my mouth to keep my screams in. The sight of that hurt me more than Mr. Underwood's fists ever could,and it did something even worse. It made me feel helpless. I never got over feeling helpless until after my brother killed me.When we were kids, we talked about running away a lot, but my brother was afraid that he'd not be able to take care of us. He said we were too young to get hired anywhere, and he was right. He was worried we'd go hungry, and though he said he didn't mind that for himself, he refused to allow me to go without eating, and having a warm bed to sleep in. He said that he bet there were worse men than Mr. Underwood out there and that it was likely just our luck they'd get us if we ran away. I believe he was right. Especially after watching the news every day and seeing all the awful things that people do to one another for no good reason! Of course we preferred cartoons to the news, but Mr. Underwood insisted on watching the news daily, and he insisted it was one reason he drank. I wondered if so why he just didn't watch it, but even then I knew better than to ask.For my brother, worse than Mr. Underwood's drunken beatings was how upset I'd be for him when he got hit. He'd pretend it didn't hurt for my benefit, but I never believed him. I knew it hurt. Then one day I did believe. One day during one of the beatings, my brother started ughing. He told Mr. Underwood that he'd gotten so used to the pain that it didn't hurt anymore. Then something very strange happened. Mr. Underwood stopped hitting my brother and his mouth worked silently for a moment while his eyes bulged and his face became very red. Then he just walked out and left us alone.We could hardly believe our good fortune. It felt for a little while like we'd actually won! That maybe now that it didn't hurt my brother any more he'd finally leave us alone! And my brother told me that it really was all true! That today it just hadn't hurt. He said it was like the pain just didn't exist for him anymore and that he felt super strong inside even when Mr. Underwood tried to hit him as hard as he could. I was in awe of my brother for that even if I couldn't fathom how he managed it.Our triumph was short lived, however. Mr. Underwood had smmed around the house for a few hours, then left. When he returned less than an hour ter, I didn't think we'd won any longer because he carried a whip with him. He was so angry his eyes were practically glowing! He started hitting my brother with it right away. The sound of it striking the skin of his arms nearly made me sick. I tried to get in the way, to stupidly hit Mr. Underwood I suppose, to do anything to stop him hitting my brother, but my brother just ughed and grabbed the end of the whip. He yanked it out of Mr. Underwood's hands. I thought then that he'd use it on the evil old man, but he didn't. Instead he started hitting himself with it and smiling at Mr. Underwood with this challenge in his eyes. You see I didn't think we'd won anymore, but my brother still did. He began whipping himself and ughing. He asked Mr. Underwood if that was the way he'd pnned to do it and just like earlier, Mr. Underwood's mouth worked without words and his face became very red.That was when he finally left us alone for good. We were 16 years old. I was horrified that my brother had truly learned to accept pain so well and overwhelmingly proud of his strength at the same time. Strength and bravery that I knew I'd never have. I knew this about myself, but my brother never seemed to see it. He never thought less of me because I couldn't handle things the way he could. He never made me feel like a burden, and he never made me feel unloved. For this I'd have done anything for him. I'd have killed Mr. Underwood if he'd asked me to, but he never asked me to do anything.We left Mr. Underwood's 'care' a few days before we turned 18. We stole money from him while he was in the shower and used it to rent a hotel room in the next town. On our 18th birthday we both applied for our first jobs. We were legal then, so he'd not be able to have the authorities track us down and bring us back the way he'd promised to do if we ever ran away. My brother got a job in a lumber yard and I got one in a grocery store. Though we were free of Mr. Underwood, life wasn't easy for me because it was very hard to function at work. Interacting with people was difficult to say the least. In school I got away with being quiet and keeping to myself when not able to be under my brother's protection. He and I stuck together when we could, not finding any common ground with the other students. I suppose we knew how different we were and that we'd never fit in with them or rete to anything they were saying or doing.I did have to interact at work, though. I tried to get away with not directly addressing the customers, but it didn't always work. When I was forced to interact, I always felt like a deer trapped in the gre of a car's headlights. For that reason, I always did a bad job of it. If someone wanted to return an item at the store, I panicked and froze up. My mind went numb and I just shut down. It was definitely not my choice to do so! At the time I never understood why it was so difficult to handle situations, to even talk to people, but now I understand. I was so frightened of punishment. Of something being unfairly made my fault, then someone bigger than me making me sorry for it. You might think that it's insane to confuse merely being questioned about a product at the register by a customer at the local grocery store and being beaten for nothing by an abuser as a child. Emotional triggers are built on the smallest associations, though. Apparently I associated attention being drawn to me in any way as a danger because the only time I got it as a child was when I was being unfairly beaten.So even though we were out from under Mr. Underwood's roof, the damage done to us there would st forever. I never forgot how my brother overcame him, though, and I strongly believe that it's the main reason we are where we are today, with the jobs and abilities we now have. Because of my brother's ability to transform pain into something to ugh about, he gained the attention of some very important beings. We were not to know this for fourteen years, though. That ability of my brother's to transform something that was happening into something else entirely was a very powerful one. He didn't think much of it at the time, and he didn't have to use it again but it still remained there inside of him already developed and just waiting until he became more.He became more when he was burned to death. Those people who killed him called it justice, but they could never understand. I suppose, thinking about it, they wouldn't care to understand either. I'm the only one who ever cared about my brother, and I guess it's enough for him that I understand. You see, we lived in a neighborhood full of bad kids. They were rude, mean, disrespectful little trouble makers and I'm actually under exaggerating it. Now my brother had always functioned far better in the day to day world than I did. He could talk to people and handle basic situations just fine where I melted and shut down. Living around all those little brats was just too much for him, though. This was because he had a weakness too, but his wasn't social like mine. His was in not being able to tolerate little brats getting away with everything they shouldn't have while we'd gotten beaten for nothing. It was almost like some twisted cosmic test too, now that I think about it, for there were so many kids, and all of them horrid!They threw rocks at people all the time and ughed with glee when one would actually make someone bleed or break a car window. Once they even broke the living room window of the 2 bedroom apartment we shared! When my brother spoke to their parents about it, insisting that they teach their children not to be little demon brats, they said that he was over reacting and that accidents happened! When I even spoke up to point out that the children had ughed about it, the parents still weren't moved. They shrugged it off, saying something about kids being kids. After that the precious darlings only got worse.That was when my brother started taking them into the old boiler room and killing them. He just couldn't handle the fact that they got away with being so horrid. There was no Mr. Underwood to give them what they really deserved. Hell their parents didn't even reprimand them much for their constant terrorizing of the neighborhood. Some would say that killing them was going more than a little too far. Perhaps it was. I don't know. Perhaps the little monsters would've grown out of their wickedness as they grew up. Or perhaps it would've only gotten worse because their parents didn't see the need to curve their behavior in the slightest. Perhaps as a result those little monsters would've grown up into big killers or rapists or at the very least Mr. Underwoods.When my brother was actually accused of killing the children, he denied it and of course I believed him. Even then he never confessed to me, still protecting me as he always had. When they put him on trial and he won, I was over joyed and began believing that perhaps there was justice after all. That was until they burned him alive. No, the parents didn't do a thing about what their bad children did, but they certainly killed my brother for killing the little monsters. As you can see, they weren't very fair minded people.The police contacted me with the news. I could see it on the parents' faces when they looked at me. The police were calling it an accident, but those parents didn't look surprised or shocked. They looked grimly knowing mixed with a bit of smug. To add to that one of them cornered me ter. He was one of the very cops that gave me the news of my brother's death. He let me know that they all knew what my brother had been up to. I was shocked and confused. I asked what he'd been up to and he told me. He also assured me that were any more of their brats to vanish I would soon follow my brother into a fiery death.Then he showed me the burned remains of the strangest glove I'd ever seen. It had long sharp knives attached to all four of the fingers. The cop shook it at me with hate in his eyes, expining that my brother had used it to kill their children. I couldn't understand why he'd need to make such a glove to do that, so I didn't believe him. I didn't have the energy to disbelieve fully either. I didn't care, and just wanted him to go away. It was all too much.I was too shocked and grief stricken to react. My brother's sudden death was enough to make my world crumble so their threats didn't mean anything to me. I was more shaken by the fact that my brother had been killing anyone and I had not known about it! We told each other everything, but he'd not told me anything about that. The thing was I even understood. I understood exactly why he'd done it. He'd done it because he just couldn't handle them not being punished for what they'd done after we'd gotten constantly punished as children for doing no wrong at all. It was just too much for him to take. And losing him was too much for me to take.I fell apart. I mean really fell apart! I couldn't handle going to work or even leaving the apartment we'd shared. I was so terrified of life without my brother and so hurt by the loss of him. It was worse than losing part of myself. I wasn't even really thinking during the few days after my brother's death, just feeling. I was drowning in feelings of loss, misery and terror. I knew I'd be lost without him and had no idea how to carry on. I never considered killing myself, because, again, I just wasn't thinking. I suppose I maybe lost my mind a little...or a lot. I don't really know how to gauge such things. Considering the fact that without him I'd be a living broken down wreck it was a good thing that he killed me in my sleep on the 3rd night.He didn't JUST kill me. We had a conversation first. Well at first I just cried and clung to him and he told me it was going to be alright. He wore the same outfit he had gone to work in the st day I'd seen him alive, and that old brown hat he loved so much because he said it was comfortable and kept his eyes shaded from the sun. He was badly burned from the fire, but he assured me when I asked that it didn't hurt at all. Crying and ughing at the same time I said that he'd always been able to handle pain far better than I ever had. I think I realized I wasn't dreaming a normal dream when he said he had some extraordinary things to expin to me. He then proceeded to tell me about the dream demons who had intercepted him when he'd been dying in the fire. It was that mental ability to transform things that he'd developed all those years ago during Mr. Underwood's beatings that had gotten their attention.They told him that he had rare abilities and they offered him a type of immortality and immeasurable power if he guarded their dream gates. The power of dreams is the ability when dreaming to transform anything into anything else. As my brother had apparently developed the ability to even do this, to an extent when awake, he was very special. To guard the dream gates from those potential intruders that the demons did not wish to know their location, one must be able to hide the gates themselves at will. To make them appear elsewhere or to make them appear as something else entirely. This was to be my brother's task, and he wanted to bring me in on it all. He thought that I could learn this same form of dream transformation. He believed that, like him, I'd developed the skill because of what we'd gone through with Mr. Underwood. He expined that I could transform reality as he did to escape pain. We'd escaped it once when we were 18, and had at st gotten away from Mr. Underwood. He instructed me on how to escape the pain of this separation and join him. We were always twins together looking out for one another. He expined that he was going to kill me and that I should ride the pain out and transform it into a sort of rainbow of opportunity that I would ride into the realm of dreams and into my new life...my new power. He said that this act of transformation would allow me to open fully to the powers that he was sure I had. Needless to say this was a lot for me to take in.As I stood staring at him, disbelieving that I could ever do what he could, he did it. He extended his hand toward my belly. The hand sporting his famous glove of knives. When the knives met my stomach, he didn't stop. He ran me through and drew me completely into the dream world with him. Somehow though the knives impaled me, and hurt like hell, I did not scream. I was able to focus on doing what my brother was so certain that I could. I flowed with it with the intention of transforming the pain that felt as if it was ripping me apart into a rainbow. And I did! The rainbow was actually real! It was all full of color, and I drew power from the fact of its existence. I really saw the rainbow, so I could do this. I flung my leg over it like it was a horse, though it wasn't at all shaped like a horse. I clung to it with my hands too and rode it. It took me up and forward...across I suppose, though across what I don't know. Perhaps nothing. I was more focused on going, not so much on where. For an instant I thought I saw a strange and otherworldly face directly in front of me. A face that was not my brother's. It had gray eyes that somehow gave me strength and power like some sort of gift. It was exhirating and I took what was offered. I guess I also trusted that I would go toward where I was supposed to be with my brother.I think it only took a few seconds. Half a minute at most. Then the rainbow was suddenly gone and I was standing and my brother was hugging me tightly in his arms. They felt very solid as did the ground under my feet. This was all real and he was alive and with me. Everything was going to be alright. I stood in what looked like a diner style restaurant. Other than the two of us, there was no one else in sight. My brother waved a hand casually at one of the tables and it was suddenly full of breakfast food that smelled mouth-wateringly delicious. He saw the surprise and wonder on my face and ughed, telling me that in the realm of dreams we could make anything we could imagine a reality. I was of course overjoyed more than words could say to hear that, but there was even more. We could also watch how other people created reality when they were here by watching their dreams, and even entering them if we wished.When I asked him why we'd do such a thing, he expined that it was the best way to learn how the realm worked. He said something about there being more, but that it didn't matter now. He said he'd tell me ter. I didn't pursue the topic, as there was so much to think about that it hardly seemed to matter at the moment.

  A childhood of abuse had opened something in our minds and allowed us a hold on this power. Years of Underwood had become a tool that we could use. It wasn't all for nothing. Whatever this grand adventure was, I was more than ready for it with my twin brother at my side, never to be taken away again. At st we had a pce that was all ours, completely in our control. Other people came here when they slept, but we somehow lived here now, forever! It was all so much to take in and so astonishingly wonderful at once. There wasn't much time to marvel over it at first, though. My brother was quick to expin that the dream demons would expect us to work for our keep by guarding the dream gates as well as patrolling for anyone trying to tamper with dreams that had no business doing so. Those who had no right to tamper with dreams included anyone who did not live here. The only ones who lived here were the dream demons, my brother, and now me. Before we could do this, however, we had to fully acclimate to the dream realm, learning its ins and outs and how it worked as well as how to work it ourselves. My brother had spent the past 3 days doing this, and he'd come to get me as soon as he'd been allowed to do so. Now I had to catch up, and he was to be my instructor.Before we got started, though, he was expected to present me to the dream demons themselves. I was to meet my future boss in particur.