FicWad

Half a dozen grasping hands fell on Benzedrine as he ran. Determined not to stop, he shrugged off his tailcoat leaving his reflections behind. As he reached the exit to the Hall of Mirrors he was stopped by two more versions of himself, blocking the doorway. One was tall and wiry, the other reminding him of the shape of an hourglass. Knowing he had only seconds to escape before the others caught up with him, he pulled back his arm and swung it as hard as he could into the abdomen of the hourglass-shaped reflection. Regretting it instantly, Benzedrine crumpled to the floor, gasping for breath and clutching his stomach while the reflection remained unhurt.

“Ha, ha! Poor Silas! Didn't you realise you were only going to hurt yourself? These are just reflections, what you do to them, you do to yourself,” Nightmare Sandman's voice cackled around the room.

Benzedrine hadn't even fully recovered before he saw his reflections standing over him looking down with vacant expressions.

“No!” he cried as he tried to push himself up.

Reaching down, the reflections grasped his legs, arms and back and lifted him from the floor to waist height. Writhing desperately in their grip, Benzedrine looked behind him as best as he was able and saw to his horror that they were carrying him toward a mirror still standing against the wall. Unlike the other mirrors it was quite ornate and edged in gold.

“Not just an ordinary mirror for you, my dear brother. No, for you, something special. Trapped for eternity behind cold glass, I think that's good enough a punishment, don't you?” the voice now sounded harsh and unyielding.
“I haven't done anything to you! Please, let me go!”

The room suddenly darkened as in a whirl of his sheer coat, Nightmare Sandman appeared in the room, leaning menacingly over Benzedrine.

“You've done nothing to me?” he shrieked; the sound painful to Benzedrine's ears. “This much hate doesn't make itself, dear brother!”
“You're not my brother! You're just a nightmare!” Benzedrine yelled back. “Just like this, nightmares are never what you want! You're not what he wants!”
“If I'm not what he wants, why does he let me exist? He doesn't have to. Besides, just because I'm your nightmare, does that really make me his? No, I'm his dream, that's why he lets me live, because this is what he truly wants.”
“Please let me go,” Benzedrine begged.
“You're willing to risk death over imprisonment?” Nightmare Sandman smiled broadly, drawing a fearful grimace from Benzedrine at the sight of it. “Drop him.”

Instantly, at his word, the reflections released their grip on Benzedrine, allowing him to drop painfully to the floor, hurting all the more because of the bruising he had already sustained. As the initial pain subsided, he looked up to see that all the reflections and even Nightmare Sandman had disappeared and he was alone in the room. In front of him was a door that he knew would open out into the Play Room - a gigantic area full of tradition Victorian-style amusements. Standing and edging towards the door, he tried to keep his heart from racing as he wondered what cruel twists Nightmare Sandman had waiting for him on the other side. With a great deal of nervous trepidation, he pushed the door.

*

Patrick had stepped through the void first, followed by Joe and Andy then finally, to close it behind him, Mr Sandman.

“How did you get here before us?” Patrick asked Mr Sandman as Donnie lowered him to his feet and prepared to catch Joe. “You did that last time too. And you had time to change your clothes.”
“I know a shortcut,” Sandman replied simply but avoiding any useful answer.
“Pete!” Joe cried. “Good to see you, man! You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm fine,” he replied slapping Joe's shoulder before pulling him into a hug. “Boy, am I glad to see you guys! It's been pretty crazy down here.”

Behind them another short huffing sound signalled the arrival of Andy.

“How did he…” Andy began, pointing at Sandman who was now staring intently at something in the forest.
“A shortcut, he said,” Patrick explained with a shrug.

Within moments, Sandman was racing into the forest without a word to the others. On his heels in a moment was Donnie. Glancing urgently to Joe and Andy, Patrick led the race to keep up. Only a couple of hundred yards away, Sandman had stopped and Donnie had placed an arm on his shoulders - was he consoling him?

“What's wrong?” Patrick asked urgently as the four musicians caught up to the unnaturally fast Sandman and Donnie.

Mr Sandman turned holding a canary-yellow hat with matching ostrich feather tucked into the band on the left-hand side.

“His hat,” Sandman whispered miserably. “Do you have any idea how bad things must have been that he lost this?”
“Some,” Patrick nodded sincerely.
“I just don't understand why he came here! He has no powers in the Dream World, he can't defend himself!”
“That might be my fault,” Joe admitted looking guiltily at the floor.
“How could it be your fault?” Pete asked. “You weren't even here.”
“Let him answer,” Sandman demanded, trying hard to keep the volume of his voice from rising.
“It wasn't intentional, we didn't know it was dangerous,” Andy leapt in before Joe could continue.
“What happened?” Patrick asked, placing a calming hand on Mr Sandman's chest.
“We left the studio to talk to Dr Benzedrine, but he was terrified of me. He thought I was my character from the video. I didn't know why he should be scared, but I thought I could use it to our advantage and I asked him to get you both back.”
“That's not your fault, Joe,” Patrick insisted.
“That's not all, he wouldn't just do what you said, no matter who you are. What else aren't you telling us?”

It all seemed to happen in slow motion. Even as Joe began his reply, Mr Sandman regretted asking the question. The hand over his mouth on realisation of what Joe was about to say soon moved with the other, both arms extended waving, begging him not to say the word.

“I said if he managed it, I'd give him some luck.”

The sudden wind that whipped up around the trees was potentially dangerous. Low-lying branches swung with a couple of near misses, while debris, stones and fallen twigs were thrown into the air. Diving for cover, all four musicians wondered what on earth was happening. Mr Sandman's reaction told them it was something to with what Joe had said but they had no idea what. It was all over in seconds, but it left everyone exhausted. One by one, the friends rose to their feet and as they did, they noticed another man. Dressed from head to toe in orange, with a large orange flower pinned to his shirt and a hat, smaller even than a paper cup, perched ridiculously on his head above his right eye. He was Mr H Shoe Crab - The Luckiest Man Alive and, of course, he looked exactly like Joe.

“Who did it? Who said `luck'?” he asked immediately.
“Er… it was me,” Joe replied hesitantly, worried about what was going to happen. It was only now that they began to notice that neither Mr Sandman nor Donnie were in sight.
“You?” Mr Crab replied with some hesitance. “Who are you?”
“I'm kind of you… but in…” Joe was at a loss to know how to refer to home.
“Normal World,” Pete offered, having heard The Guv'nor's Aide refer to it.
“Thank you!” he cried finally relaxing and smiling. “You freed me!”
“Freed you?” Joe asked perplexed. “What from?”
“Three rulers before the current was a man called Owen. He was… he was a cruel unstable man who wanted to control everyone and everything. My gifts of luck and chance went against everything he wanted to achieve - absolute power. No one could do or think anything that wasn't approved by him. And me? Well I refused to be cowed. But then, I didn't know what he was capable of. The then Mr Sandman and he got together to create a prison for me outside of the real world. But even in dreams, there has to be a way out and for me that was the word `luck'. But, by then, everyone was under his control, either by benefitting from him or being just too scared of him to defy him. He banned the word from being spoken. People began referring to it as `The L Word' and he managed to convince generations that to use it would release some sort of monster, plague or disaster on the world. He had me trapped and as time passed, I lost hope of ever being released - certainly no one from Carousel was ever going to say it.
“You said generations passed during one ruler?” Patrick asked with uncertainty.
“All rulers,” Mr Crab replied with a nod. “They live for centuries, it's thought that the best way to maintain peace is to have consistency.”
“Except, when you get a bad one?” Joe countered.
Mr Crab shrugged philosophically. “Luck comes in two types. Probably another reason he wanted rid of me - in case I sent him bad luck.”
“You can do that?” Andy stepped forward.
“I can,” Mr Crab nodded. “But I don't - there's enough bad without making more, don't you think?”

A round of nods and murmurs of agreement followed after which Mr Crab addressed the air.

“You can come out now, Mr Sandman. I know you're here and Donnie too, if you don't mind.”

Gingerly and clearly terrified, Mr Sandman rose from behind a fallen tree trunk and Donnie stepped from behind a nearby tree.

“I'm not the monster I've been painted and you're not the man who imprisoned me, even if you do have his job. You have nothing to fear from me, only something to gain.”

Mr Sandman edged forward slowly.

“Do you know where your brother is?”
“No,” Sandman replied, his voice just above a whisper. “Just that he's been taken by an escaped nightmare.”
“Escaped nightmare?” Mr Crab shook his head. “Does your father know you allow your nightmares to run wild in the forest?”
“No!” Sandman paled. “I didn't think it would do any harm, there're only five of them.”
“And all of them yours.”

It wasn't a question, but Mr Sandman nodded anyway.

“All of them?” Donnie asked incredulously.
“He never came here! He was safe from them!” Sandman cried.
“Well, he isn't now is he?” Donnie yelled in return.
“I can take you to him,” Mr Crab announced. “As luck would have it, I know exactly where he is.”
“Is he okay?” Sandman asked urgently.
“He's… alive,” Mr Crab answered carefully.

Sandman's brow creased and he appeared almost on the verge of tears.

“Can you take all of us?” Patrick stepped forward.

Mr Crab looked around. “Six of you? Is that all?”

Earlier, six of them had seemed like good odds, but now, the revelation that five Nightmare Sandmen existed, all with powers they neither understood nor could come close to matching, made them feel severely outnumbered.

“I… I understand if you don't want to go any further… now you know,” Sandman lowered his head.
“Is there anything else we don't know?” Patrick asked sternly.
“No, that's everything,” he sighed. “But, it's a nightmare, so normal Nightmare Rules apply.”
“What are normal Nightmare Rules?” Pete poked him in the chest forcing him to look up.
“You don't know? I thought everyone knew!”
“They're not from here, remember!” Donnie snapped, still angry that the existence of all five nightmares had been kept from him.
“There aren't many, they're more like non-rules than anything. Scenes will shift unexpectedly, things and even people may not be what or who you expect and normal physical rules may not apply.”
“Like what?” Pete pressed.
“You know, flying, feeling like you're running in treacle or things moving further away without actually moving.”
“That's it?”
“One last thing, and it's very important, the more you want something, the less likely it is you'll get it.”
“So, you mean the more Benzedrine wants to escape the harder it'll be for him?”
Sandman nodded. “If I don't help him, he'll never get out.”

Pete turned to look at his bandmates. One look told him all he needed to know.

“You mean, if we don't help him?”