She drifts, the slow and steady voice of the European History teacher like a sleep metronome. Sleep's been elusive recently, and when it's come, it's been the sweaty, frenzied half-dreams of sweltering summer heat. Part of it's just the general anxiety of the place, but it's worse than that. It's the revelation that even her dorm isn't safe from intrusion and it's.... well, something else, a presence she swears she can feel breathing down her neck when she dances with sleep. The few hours of nap she's managed to catch have been in Revi's arms, when the girl's snuck over: strength in numbers. So, for maybe the first time in ever, she'd been relieved to be going to class. Class is a chance for rest, and maybe she'd catch a detention for it, but she's pretty damn sure no tentacled horror would have the balls to sneak in on a room full of a couple dozen students.

So, she drifts. Her head nods, rises, nods, rises, cheek set in palm, elbow set on desk. Her pencil falls from her loosening grip and it jolts her. Eyes dart the classroom, no one seems to notice, and sleep flirts with her again. There's a wash to the room, like the scene transitions on bad TV dramas set to excruciating slow-mo. Phantoms crawl through her vision as she slips out of it - those liminal ghosts you find just on the edges of sleep. A figure, flitting along the corner of her eyesight. He could be a man, but she's sure he's not. No, she looks into his eyes, violet and devoid, and she knows. It may as well be a costume hanging on a hook. But her eyes are locked on that one arm, slithering and knobbed and for some deep and irrational reason, absolutely terrifying. Each blink forces her to relocate her vision, until eyes slip closed and she gets a glimpse of the other side. There is cold granite, and there is fear, and in the last moment before consciousness overtakes her, she knows there is something terribly wrong. Eyes jolt, and she wants to say something, but she's too far gone. Words will not come. And her eyes sink closed, and her chin hits her chest.

((Dammit, this should be in the classrooms! I'll ask a moderator to move it))

As always, Icelus was planned to the hilt, and had this particular scheme formulated twenty steps ahead.

Whether or not he took into account the myriad of branching choices that could be made that would render all of his hours of meticulous forethought completely and hopelessly null is up for debate.

At the moment, though, all attention is focused on Elise. Her wavering gaze, the slip of her consciousness on the very brink of a sea of oblivion, her eventual submission to the unyielding bitch-queen that is sleep, all were visible to anyone taking a moment to look toward her desk in the classroom and see her descent to the Dreamscape. Of course, since no one was looking, and no one seemed to feel it necessary to wake her, the tenuous grip of sleep grew strong, enclosing her mind like corded iron and bringing her to rest in its darkly comforting depths.

Of course, this comfort did not last long. The second the girl entered R.E.M. sleep she would find herself rather uncomfortable (quite the contrary position). Her position on the damp stone floor, for one, was quite the contributor to her discomfort. Another would likely be the dank and stale air she breathed, as though a living being had not entered the chamber for eons, it wasn’t exactly pleasant. The most uncomfortable thing about the chamber, however, was the temperature. Not exactly warm, but not cold enough to cause one to shiver and generate some heat of their own, just about right to feel entirely too cold in one’s scanty school uniform and not have the initiative to really do anything about it.

The muffled sounds of shouting from somewhere outside of the darkened cave didn’t really help either.

She knows it's a dream, but she's not aware of it, if you catch the meaning. There's only that sick, sour feeling in her gut - that she knows she's at the mercy of her subconscious, that any moment could lurch her towards any number of terrifying self-revelations. So she tries to get her bearings. This is not the uniform she was wearing. Oh, no. The skirt barely covers her, a slim strip of rough wool that just rests on the upward curve of her round ass, the top tight like a second skin and tied off over the washboard flatness of her stomach. The cold stone is briefly lucid, mirrored, giving her a glimpse of herself: face made up with the over-enthusiasm of a high school girl eager to get laid, hair back in pigtails, candy pink lips wrapped around a lollipop, and she knows that taste. It tastes like girl, tastes like sex. "Ugh... What's your subconscious trying to tell you, girl...?" She looks like the kind of girl that would shoot amateur porn out of her bedroom. She rubs her forehead, and the mirror shimmers away, leaving near-seen sketches burnt into her mind. Goosebumps skitter up sensitive flesh, the damp, deep cool of the cavern leaving her skin tight, at attention. Shaky, she rises, first palms on the cold stone, then up, until she's on shaky, bare feet. Eyes skim her toes and she groans. The precise color of the polish is "Sex candy pink". How does she know this?

I get it... she mutters, but it's clear she doesn't. Her eyes dance through the dark, terrified, hoping to acclimate to the black and finding that eyes simply will not adjust. "We're in the deepest reaches of my mind. But come on, could we maybe be a little more imaginative with our allegory?" but her voice shakes, cracking and tremulous. Deep down, she knows there's something else. They can find her anywhere. Feet navigate the uneven stonework with caution, finding the level of each grip, toes wrapping around edges, slow and hesitant like a fawn just learning how to work its hooves. Each scream sends her heart jumping up her throat, but she keeps walking, letting the noise guide her.

“Come on, you fucking asshole, just give her back!” the shout resonates as a door; a literal door nonchalantly bolted to the wall of the cavern swings open.

The speaker is a devastatingly attractive woman that appears to be in her mid-twenties. Her flesh pale, it’s decorated with a number of twisting tribal tattoos in dark brown that cover her flat, slender belly and her shapely arms in sleeves, seemingly attaining a perfect physique without a modicum of exercise. She wears what must have been an incredibly expensive silken dress that amounts to not much more than a crossing of fabric across her perky chest and a floor-length skirt, both in a deep forest green that matches her long, luxurious hair. She wears a large, open pink flower with golden stamens in her hair, and ram’s horns curl out from above her pointed ears, terminating in points at roughly the same level as her chin.

“Sorry sweetie!” she says with a blush, glaring back at the other figure, the bare-chested malodorous and infuriatingly calm jester that haunted the morass that was her insomniac mind, “I’ll have you out in a sec!”

The door closes with a slam and the shouting begins anew.

“She hasn’t had a decent dream in, like, five goddamned weeks and the last dream she had was yours, a nightmare, so-fucking-what if you weren’t in it then, it doesn’t change anything! Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you get to push me around!”

The emotion seemed to literally sprint out of the air in morbid fear as the other being spoke, replacing the rage of the previous comments with an air of trepidation, “I’m not older. Don’t just say it like that. I’m three centuries older, that’s not exactly a piddling number.”

The slow declination in their voices seems to indicate that they’re walking away, leaving her alone in the darkness. Or, at least, in theory. She still can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched.

Welcome to Lewis Carroll's long-lost magnum opus: Alice's Adventures in Hell.

El's found her way to the shouts, lifted on tip toes, heels flat on cold stone, her neck arched, ear pressed to the wall to listen in, when a door comes flying open, immeasurably heavy, just a reflex away from cracking her right in her cute cheek. She stumbles backwards, spinning on the slick stonework to fall flat on her ass. Eyes roam the woman's body, mesmerized. It's not lesbian sluttiness, she tells herself. This girl is akin to godliness, a manifestation of the divine, or at least of revelation. But she doesn't entirely believe it herself. She's terrified. Terrified of the mystery play she's wrapping herself in, but even more terrified of being alone in this dank dungeon, desolate in the heart of the earth while her true body just wastes away. Terrified because this is not the rag-tag, schizophrenic quasi-identity of Dream-Elise. This is her flesh.

Back in the classroom, there's a sadistic twist to the teacher's lips. "Just let her sleep it off, students," he says. Face flat on the desktop, her eyelids twitch.

She races after them, feet stumbling over the rough, uneven stones, fingers tracing walls for stability. The angel has faded and she's left to dark, stumbling frantically in the wake of ghost-voices. There are eyes on her. Her body knows this, even if her mind is not aware, too frantic, too wound up in the search, desperate, so desperate.

She will not be left alone here.

“Hi there…” a delicate, feminine whisper at the back of her ear, leaving a little tickle and a lasting tingle of sensation as whatever made the noise disappeared, leaving an echoing giggle in the dark cavern and a profound sense of loneliness.

The darkness closed in on her, claustrophobic and impenetrable as the last vestiges of the voices left her alone, Icelus and his sister wandering off to trade more verbal blows and likely continue an enmity that would have those blows bordering on physical. The darkness of the cave, however, held its own surprises for Elise, as it should be remembered that she was still quite trapped in one of her own nightmares.

“Over here…” the voice again, this time with a teasing caress to the back of the girl’s knee.

Silence reigned for an uncomfortable five minutes, the heat in the cavern slowly rising and the area around her seeming to shrink in upon itself, the air now thick with an odd, moist haze, the girl able to taste the warm mist with every breath.

“You’re bad at this, aren’t you?” and with that, a shaft of light allows Elise to see the crimson-skinned face of a grinning, black-haired woman before she slipped into the darkness, yellow eyes reflecting the light for a moment before disappearing.

She nearly jumps out of her skin, feet actually leaving the floor. She spins in place, quick on her heels, but it's not enough to catch the intruder. Arms wrap around herself in the dark, that slow baking heat seeming so unnatural here in the bowels of the earth. The mist fills her lungs with weight, and her eyes grow more tense, still blind, but at that point where the brain tricks you into thinking you see images, and deep, gnawing at her belly, the truth that dreams are not like this. Sweat prickles underneath her skin, and then she gets goosed again. She slaps the back of her leg like a mosquito, circling slowly in place, eyes narrowed as she tries to set her eyes on the assailant.

"Yeah, well, we evolved our ways out of the caves. Deep sea vision isn't something we're supposed to be good at." The face flashes, a flash of primal mask, and with it, light. Hope. Because light has to have a source, whether it's electricity or a slit in the roof. And while she's not naive enough to think this place needs follow such rigid laws of physics, the basic principles don't change. "The fuck are you supposed to be? My White Rabbit?" But then it's gone. There's no fucking way she's letting that girl scamper away. So she darts, breaking into a manic run, cross country girl, feet trained for uneven surfaces, for running blind, just hoping the girl doesn't veer right, hoping a wall doesn't pop up out of nowhere.

“White Rabbit? Gosh, no, that would be silly, hehe,” the effeminate giggle again as the red-skinned girl steps back into the light. Her hair is long, framing her delicate features and she wears a tight black tank top with a short, black and pink skirt, little devil horns poking out from under her parted bangs.

“See, I’m a physical manifestation of your deep-seated psychological yearning for appreciation caused by confusion at your father’s resentment of you juxtaposed with the need you have to appear aloof and in-control despite this urge, shaped by the fact that the only outlet for this emotion happens to be the girls that surround you,” she said rapidly, giving a big toothy grin and taking Elise’s hands, “Now follow me!”

The girl put a sandaled foot on Elise’s torso and rolled back, tightening her grip on the girl’s wrists. A sickening feeling of falling entered her stomach, tumbling blindly through the darkness for what seems like ages, the air rushing past losing its humid quality and growing cold and dry again. Elise lands alone, on the ground in the middle of what would appear to be a European forest, the trees having long since shed their leaves and the sky dark with night.

“Me, on the other hand…”

The figure from the corners of her vision stood before her, the tall, slim man in the funeral garb, his left hand held behind his back, “I suppose you could call me the white rabbit, sure…”

"Oh," is her response, the stick from the lollipop dangling from the corner of her mouth. It really does make sense. She knows she should have something more to say, but all she can really think is Thank God I'm not alone again. She's just about to gather words again when the girl reaches for her. She doesn't resist, letting palms wrap around her wrists, so she doesn't see the kick coming, coiling over with the force, then the stomach dropping sensation of sudden gravity. She coils around the devil-girl, eyes closed, a-squirm as she tries to figure out a way for this not to hurt. Eyes open feet from the carpeted forest floor, widen, and she hits the thickly packed dirt with a thud, dead leaves fluttering up from the dirty ground around her.

"Hn..." At least this is a dream, so instead of snapping her neck, she just rises up like Wile E. Coyote. A groan. She shifts the lolli to the other corner of her mouth, eyes turned down as she dusts dirt off her knees. She doesn't notice the Rabbit at first, but then he talks, and he jumps. Eyes dart his way, fingers dart rapidly to the hem of her skirt, trying hopelessly to tug it down in a way that will make her look less like a street walker. It doesn't work. "Yeah. I guess so. Are you supposed to represent my Daddy Issues too?" A smack of the lollipop, thoughtful. Her voice milds slightly, eyes inquisitive. "What about the pretty girl with the tattoos? Was she supposed to be my sister?" She reminds El of her sister... Not that she has much memory to go on there, just sweetly glossed, filtered infant recollection

“No…” he says with a sigh, examining his fingernails apathetically as he waits for her to get to her feet, “No, not your Daddy Issues, I’m more my own person, really,” he shrugs, keeping his left hand tucked behind his back as he watches her.

“Nice outfit by the way,” he grins, giving a wolf-whistle as he begins to take a few steps forward, shoes crunching in the dirt of the path, “I mean, I picked it out myself, so I knew it would look pretty good, but still, you pull it off well,” holding his right hand in the air, waving it back and forth, somehow a clap rang out. The sound of one hand clapping, all because he refused to remove his left hand from behind his back.

“As for the girl, your sister? No, that’s Apnoea, my sister. She’s a cutie, no? Kind of pissed at me for a little bit, she really wanted to play with you, says you’ve got all kinds of fun fantasies. For the record, I was sincerely apologetic; you were double-booked. It happens sometimes, but she understood. As consolation I gave her Giger for the two nights in a row. I mean, she never gets that guy, happy as I’ve ever seen her,” he stretches, taking a few more steps forward, getting closer and closer now.

“You, though. Still didn’t forget about you. You’re probably in for quite the treat the next time you fall asleep, though now, now you’re all mine,” he grins, and there’s something in that grin that registers as the kind of grin that sinks ships and starts forest fires.

((Hehe... Lucky H.R.))

The gravity of the situation dawns on El quite rapidly. You don't stay at this school long and not expect the worst out of every person and object you see. It shouldn't surprise her that dreams aren't even safe, and it really doesn't. Her eyes are lowered, dark midnight thunder clouds, blue eyes stormy. "Oh. I see how it is." There's a loud crunch as she bites down on the lollipop. "Heeeeeere's Freeeeeddy! Is that it...?" Her eyes are studying the forest around him, skittering every few moments to his hidden hand. Is it a weakness, or a weapon? She keeps her legs together, arms folded neatly under her chest. It doesn't do much to hide the display, but at least it's a little start. "You're just another toothless, gumming monster too weak to hunt down real prey, aren't you?" She steps forward, teeth sharp, tight-pressed, nice and white. This is her dream. It belongs to her and there's no way he'll hijack it. "So you've got to take girls, strip them of any weapons, any ways to defend themselves, and isolate them, because you fucks are just too weak. You're just like those fat old English fucks who go chasing down foxes with guns and horses. What is this? Universal Monsters Retirement Home?" Her eyes are narrowed to slits, a foot in front of him, lifted to bare tip-toes to try and match eyes with him. Toes squirm in the dirt, skirt rising to reveal a stretch of smooth, cream white thigh.

He sighs, stopping and looking up to the sky with disappointment as she makes the Nightmare on Elm Street reference, his left hand finally falling free of his back. The tentacle-fingers squirmed of their own accord, making loops in the air as he shakes his head, “You had to do it, didn’t you? Thought it would be funny. Couldn’t have left it be? Couldn’t have given me a goddamn bit of credit?”

He shook his head again, looking to the ground and kicking the dust. The whole Nightmare on Elm Street series was a point of contention between Icelus and his brother, the former convinced that the latter inspired the promising series’ descent into slapstick and stupidity on purpose.

“Not your problem, I apologize," he sighs, rubbing the back of his head idly, “Anywho, well, where do you think you are? Honestly? We’re not on the island, that’s for sure. We’re in your head, in case you haven’t noticed. Let me reiterate with a more pertinent point. I’m not on the island. I’m everywhere. In everyone’s head. I get around to checking on, and hunting down, a good few. So, considering the fact that I handle myself like a gravel-eating-shit-miner for the large part of my job, I’m comfortable enough to not respond to taunts like that and I'd hate to see the psyche of the self-respecting monster unnerved by such a threat. Though, once more, with my job and all, I probably have. Ever take that into consideration? Monsters have some seriously fucked-up dreams. You want to deal with that every day?" he asked, tilting his head to the side

That doesn't phase her. Eyes are cold like ice, unceasing in their stare, unblinking. "And I'm, what, your nice cold beer after a long day's work? Nuh-uh. No way. You think being in my head makes any of this better? You think raping my mind is somehow preferable to raping my body?" A sneer. She's terrified, knees trembling, knuckles pressed into fists until sharp pink nails draw streaks of blood across her palms. Flesh rises with goose pimples from the November wind of the forest, a place like something out of a Frost poem. Long hair whips across her face. "I don't like my job and you don't like yours. I can respect that. I really, really, REALLY don't like my job, and yours, honestly, sounds pretty shit too. Sounds like a terrible gig. Sounds like you'd rather have your sister's job, and I can respect that. But, please, change me out of these silly fucking clothes, Sandman. We'll talk about it. We'll down nectar and ambrosia or whatever the fuck it is you dream-things drink. It'll be a grand old time. I'll hold your tentacle-hair back while you puke."

“I generally drink the tears of the innocent…” he trails off, looking thoughtfully in the distance with a faraway glimmer in his eye.

The silence holds sway for uncomfortable minutes before he bursts into laughter, “Nah, I’m just fucking with you, but that would be pretty cool, no?” The grin returns to his face, leaving with a sigh as he pushes his hair back with his normal hand, snapping his fingers as a clipboard appears in his hand.

“Alright, you see, you’re still not getting it. What I’m saying is that I don’t care if you’re easy prey. I long for easy prey. As I said before, my job sucks. So we’re clear on that. We’re crystal. My job sucks and you’re easy prey. Well done on that note,” he gives her a thumbs up, smiling as he brushes off his shirt, looking into a mirror he removes from between the two-halves of the button-down and checking his human face, never sure what to do with all of the goddamn stuff they have on it. Nose, mouth, it was all really confusing when you were just staring silently.

“What you’re not getting is the whole ‘cold beer after a job well done,’ thing. My job isn’t done. My job is never done. It never ends. I’m still on the clock. This is a nightmare, girlie, I am a nightmare, this is still my job, so it’s going to happen whether we barter or not. For the record, hell, I’d love to hang out and kick back a few with you, but I really enjoy the tension I get during the whole rigamarole.”

He takes a pen from his pocket and scratches a name off of the list on the clipboard, snapping his fingers again as it disappears, tossing the mirror over his shoulder and cracking the knuckles on his normal hand, “Now, shall we?”

That drinking from the tears of the innocent? She just stares at him like he's retarded. She's heard that sort of baroque bravado from half the monsters in this place. It doesn't impress her. Instead, her eyes are roaming for the forest. They move to read his face, just waiting for her moment to cut and run. This is her dream. If anyone knows a way out of it, it should be her.

In the clasroom, a small puddle of drool forms under her face. A couple girls point and snigger.

"So what you're telling me is, you're a pencil pusher. You're a wage slave. They work your fingers (the few you've got) to the bone, just riding you like a tired old mule 'til you drop dead and they find someone else to replace you." The sticky, used lollipop stick rolls across her knuckles, turning over and over again, hypnotic. Fingers make fists in the dirt. Die Hard, baby, and she'd be surprised if she didn't have to run over glass to get away. But she's sick of these monsters. She will do anything.

And while he's preening in the mirror, she makes her move, stick flicked in the air, a long, lazy spiral over the top of his hand-mirror. She swivels, cat-quick. Feet beat the ground, catching purchase on the slick leaves like the land is her own. It is, and she knows every inch. On intuition, she runs, a quick and fluid dodge around the large tree in her way. No luxury of looking behind her, just ahead, watching nothing but trusting the instinct of her mind, her feet. Smooth, lean leg muscles piston like a jungle cat, breeze lifting skirt, flashing the small triangle of red cloth over her round buttocks, sweat-damp top clinging to pinkened, freckled skin.