The Tree [closed]

[johnny_truant]

[cw: violent transformation-style body horror in the last paragraph]


This again.

Johnny dreams, as vividly as ever, of a house. In the dream, it's his house, he's lived in it all his life, but for some reason he can't remember where any of the rooms are. He's stuck ascending a staircase, passing by more and more doors that lead into empty, identical spaces. Two windows each. Hard wood floors. Nothing on the white walls. Everything is deadly, ghostly silent.

He climbs. Now there are no doors, only doorways, empty gaps in the wall. He can't avoid looking at those gaping, mocking rooms. Each one the same. Its windows laughing at him. He's making no progress, not really. Anyway there's no way to mark it. He can't see the bottom. He can't see the top.

Something's different. This room is distinct. It's the same as all the others except it has something growing up in the middle of its floor, impossibly, wrongly: a lamp post, such that one would see on an old Victorian road. Johnny presses onward, shaken.

The next room is worse. There's no wood floor: instead there's water. Perfectly still, a reflecting pool, stopping at the edge of the threshold without a barrier to contain it.

These deviations continue as Johnny climbs the stairs, faster and faster, heart pounding, losing himself slowly to the crawling darkness. If he looks behind him, he knows he'll see it, the beast, the minotaur, whatever it is. He can practically feel it breathing down his neck, and oh god, he's so terrified, his lungs are on fire, his legs aren't working right, but he has to keep moving.

He staggers and trips suddenly, that sickening lurch in his gut, jerking his body but not enough to wake him. He strikes his head on the step above, curls over, feeling the pain acutely, spreading through him.

His fingers come away bloody, but there's something else wrong, something that shouldn't be there. He touches the cut again. Something's protruding from it, spreading out from the wound. Oh god, oh fuck, what is that? He can feel it growing, extending, tangling into his hair, and it feels like rough wood, like a tree. It's a tree, growing from the open wound, he's been broken open and now he's exposed, now it's free and it is going to overtake him. He seizes up with panic, tearing at the roots as they coil around his face, his neck, down to his shoulders and the rest of him. He can't break the branches, they're too, too strong, and he knows it would hurt just as much, like cracking his own bones. He screams, raw and afraid, as the tree engulfs him.

Comments

[theoldgirl]

Usually, the TARDIS doesn't concern herself much with nightmares, since they're a normal mental state in humans and if she tried to soothe every bad dream in the telepathic current, she'd be here all night. But this one is radiating pain and terror far out into the current, prompting her to take a concerned closer look.

When she recognizes the dreaming mind, her concern magnifies and she rushes forward without hesitations. For an awful moment, she is afraid that this might be Zagreus' doing, that he's torturing the boy and she will have to engage with his noxious horrific mind to rout him out. But a quick survey finds no sign of another presence - this is entirely Johnny's own horror.

So reassured, she lets her influence wash over him like a cleansing flood, sweeping away panic and distress with calm, all-encompassing safety. It's difficult for her to make precise changes in human minds, so she hasn't yet affected what he's doing to himself, what he sees himself as, but she wants to help with that too. So she manifests at his side, illuminating the darkness with her presence alone.

"John?," she says to draw his attention, still concerned by the persistent sense of invasion and violent alteration he continues to experience. In some small, half-realized way it's an uncomfortably familiar feeling, but she doesn't linger on that fact, instead grabbing one of his frantic arms. As she does so, she pushes forward the knowledge that she's touching skin and flesh, rather than bark. "John, you are safe, you aren't changing. Listen to me."