Chapter 108: No bad dreams in my presence

Jocelyne ran. She ran and ran and ran. Still, she knew that thing was behind her. She didn't know where she was, she didn't know how she got there. The world around her looked like an alien plain. The sky was coal black, ash dominated the landscape, it was terribly cold, and nowhere she could see any trace of green. The monstrous skeletons of crumbling houses appeared everywhere in her field of vision, surrounded by a light smoke-like mist that made her cough every time she breathed. Running as fast as she could she reached a pile of rubbish and she hid behind her. The thing that was chasing her didn't seem to notice and it continued in her path. Its horrible call made the girl's blood run cold. "Baby... where are you...?" Its voice sounded soft, but Jocelyne didn't budge an inch. She knew it was a sham and that in reality the thing wasn't sweet at all. The sky thundered and rain began to fall, but it wasn't ordinary rain. It was black, oily rain, like oil. As soon as it touched the ground things began to emerge. Jocelyne recoiled and only survival instinct kept her from screaming. They were insects. Nasty, disgusting insects. They looked like a hideous fusion of cockroaches, spiders and centipedes, but that wasn't the worst part; no, the worst part was that they were mechanical, composed entirely of plastic and metal. From their mouths flowed disgusting sewage and their eyes shone like hideous lanterns. They lunged at her and started biting her; she could only tear them from her flesh and fling them away. Every time she was bitten she felt excruciating pain and whole chunks of her flesh were ripped away. "No, no... that's not good..." Jocelyne froze and glanced up at the top of the trash pile. There was the creature, in all its grandeur, illuminated from behind by a light that seemed to be even more powerful than the sun, but which, unlike sunlight, wasn't good but malignant, cruel, the bearer of death. The creature jumped off and it reached her. Jocelyne tried in vain to get up but her fear had paralyzed her legs. She crawled a few yards, then the creature grabbed her shoulders. "Come on... I just want to help you... it would be a shame if your pretty face was ruined by this crap, right?" The creature's claws began to tear apart the insects one by one and every time they touched her skin it healed. Still, Jocelyne would much rather be bitten by those monstrosities again than let that thing touch her. "See? I can take care of you" the creature said when it had finished removing even the last insect. "I can take care of every part of you..." A flash of death-pale light illuminated the creature, and Jocelyne was finally able to look at it. It was at least two meters tall and it had the body of a man, but the hands ended in long claws that moved continuously as if they were worms that wanted to grab her. And the head... the head was not something describable. It looked like the fusion between the head of a pig and that of a wolf, yet for a few moments it also resembled a normal human head, as if the monster was trying to deceive it with an illusion. "There's no point in running away from me, Jocelyne. I love you. I'll treat you right" it said, and again its voice became sweet as honey, but Jocelyne sensed that it was false, deceitful. "Marry me, Jocelyne. Become mine" The girl reacted immediately to those words and pushed it away. "Leave me alone!" she yelled. "Why? You know that's the way things are supposed to be. If it's not me it will be someone else" the creature retorted. "This is your duty. Your duty to your family. Or do you really think a woman will ever be accepted as head of the family? We both know your father is just deluded. By rejecting this reality, you will only endanger him. You will endanger I endanger your family. You will endanger everyone you care about. You know that it is, you know that we are the ones who rule this world. You can't escape your destiny forever" The creature extended its hideous fingers reaching out and clawing at her, as if it were a hideous caricature of a gentleman. "Come with me. I can make you happy. Let's get married. No more freedom! No more pathetic dreams of success and glory! It's time to wake up and do your duty!" "No! Don't come near to me!" Jocelyne screamed, and her hand grabbed a nearby metal pipe and slammed it into the creature's face. The monster let out a howl, a hideous sound like a chain rattling on iron. Jocelyne scrambled to her feet and she tried to run, but the creature's clawed hand grabbed her shoulder and knocked her to the ground. Now the monster was angry. Saliva dripped from its teeth that burned her skin every time it touched her and its eyes glowed like embers. "I tried to be nice to you! Maybe you didn't quite understand: your will isn't my problem! You will be mine, with or without your consent!" Jocelyne tried in vain to free herself, but the fingers of the creature held her and dug into her skin as if they were daggers. The monster's face was getting closer and closer to hers and she could now smell its breath, which was a strange mixture of the smell of a smokestack, an incinerator and a decomposing corpse. "Why can't I be myself? Why do I have to submit to what others want from me? Why does the world allow this!?" she screamed. Angry tears streamed down her cheeks as she cursed the world and its injustice. Everything was taken away from her, her freedom, her future... everything turned to ashes because she couldn't rebel against the creature that was above her... "Don't worry. I'll be quick..." the creature growled. "And remember, you'd better give me a male heir..." "Please... someone..." she pleaded. She hated being so weak, she hated having to beg for help, but she couldn't do anything else. And then, something changed. Suddenly the creature's weight was no longer on her, and the monster's howl of pain echoed across the plain. Jocelyne felt its clawed hands being torn away from her flesh and even the monstrous insects surrounding her squeaked in fear. She looked up and saw the creature in the jaws of a giant. Jocelyne's heart filled with hope: "It's you!" It was the spinosaurus. The animal that had come to her rescue one time had now come again, and it was chewing the hideous creature in its jaws with fury. When it had reduced the monster to a sieve, it spat it out in disgust and rolled it away. Jocelyne got up and ran towards the spinosaurus. The dinosaur ducked and grunted. Jocelyne tried to stroke it, but the spinosaurus moved away. Then, suddenly, the animal spoke: "Do you still need me? Why didn't you stop him yourself?" Jocelyne felt no surprise at this strange phenomenon, but rather her heart filled with shame. "I... I couldn't... he..." "Why couldn't you? Did you even try?" the spinosaurus asked her. He looked angry. "When are you going to stop being so weak? Being so scared? Bring up the courage, damn it! Learn to say no, and if those bastards still won't listen to you, then show them who's the strongest!" Jocelyne drew back. She cringed under the spinosaurus' gaze. "But I'm not stronger than them!" "Only as long as you keep believing it" the spinosaurus said. "If you're the first to not believe you can say no, then don't expect the rest of the world to listen. I can't protect you forever and I'm tired now. The world suffers from people like them, you suffer from their fault, so why do you keep letting them use you like this? Fight seriously! Use whatever weapons you have and stop them, before it's too late!" Suddenly the rubble behind them exploded and the hideous shape of the creature emerged from the ashes, completely chewed up and mashed up, but it didn't seem to care. "You again?" it hissed at the spinosaurus. "How many more times do you want to protect her? You know you can't win. You can't beat us! You can kill us as many times as you want, but we are millions! We rule the world! We are eternal!" The spinosaurus didn't answer; it just charged and slashed at the creature with its claws. The monster was thrown off again and this time its body shattered into a thousand pieces. But it wasn't over. Pale lightning illuminated the plain showing the thousands of insects born of the black rain that swarmed towards the remains of the creature. They came out of the earth, out of the crumbling buildings, out of the rubbish. They came together and merged to form the shapes of other creatures. Thousands and thousands of copies of the creature were created by the fusion of the insects, and then coalesced to form the body of a huge carcharodontosaurus, not a normal carcharodontosaurus, but a skeletal and pitch-colored one, which seemed unable to move without the help of the thousands of bodies that made it up. The spinosaurus and the hideous beast collided. The ground shook and the sky split with thunder as the two creatures fought furiously. Claws, bites, kicks and blows dominated the scene for several minutes. The monstrous carcharodontosaurus was strong, but under the blows of the spinosaurus it fell to the ground; the spinosaurus grabbed it by the neck and broke it. But the monster's body split back into the humanoid creatures, and then they merged again. They formed two figures, two monstrous torvosaurs skeletal and dark like their former form. The two attacked together, but once again the spinosaurus got the better of them and drove them back. Jocelyne momentarily felt hope flare up in her heart again. Maybe, she thought, maybe the spinosaurus could win. It could defeat the injustice of the world. It could stop all that... it could... But then something happened. The creatures stopped gathering and vanished one by one, until only the original remained. The latter looked at the spinosaurus, then burst out laughing. "You're strong, we admit it, but you can't win! Let us show you the power of humanity!" And suddenly the whole area seemed to turn against the spinosaurus. Oil, coal, poison gas and oil emerged from the ground and stuck against the dinosaur's body, while the air suddenly became hot and the humidity in the air vanished. The spinosaurus roared and struggled to free itself, but not even his strength could match the power the creature had unleashed. Very soon his body began to change, he became thinner and more skeletal in a clear sign of malnutrition, his eyes and skin hardened as if they had not been moisturized for months, and pieces of plastic began to emerge from his mouth which quickly they choked him. After several minutes of agony, the spinosaurus collapsed to the ground and never moved again. Jocelyne stood still. Her brain had gone blank. She couldn't process what he was seeing. Her legs moved mechanically and carried her close to the spinosaurus' head. Its lifeless eyes were still staring at her, and within them Jocelyne could glimpse a kind of reproach, as if it were scolding her for what had happened. "No..." she finally whispered, then started to shake him. "No! Get up! The battle isn't over, you can still win! Please... you... you can't..." A flash of lightning illuminated a silhouette behind the spinosaurus' head. The creature had approached and was watching her, and it was grinning as it did that. "What a fool!" it laughed. "He may have been the strongest in the world, but he could never win against us! He threw away his life for nothing!" Jocelyne wasn't listening the monster. She kept shaking the dead and mangled body of the spinosaurus, hoping in vain that the light would rekindle in its eyes. "Please... you have to get up! It can't end like this! It can't... it can't..." she couldn't hold on any longer: she fell to her knees and she screamed, and tears began to flow down her face. Without any restraint the creature climbed onto the spinosaurus' body and glared down at it. "This idiot really believed that you would one day try to attack me... and instead look at you, you are crying! This stupid dinosaur sacrificed himself to save nothing but a pathetic woman!". The creature jumped off, landing next to her: "Your weakness cost you everything, this whole world and your own freedom, brat" Jocelyne felt enveloped by something. She looked frantically down and saw golden chains moving like snakes, wrapping around her arms, legs, feet and hands. Padlocks made of diamonds and rubies closed the chains, and a magnificent wedding dress that seemed to be made of silver and the purest silk took the place of her clothes. "Now, stop fighting. Become mine, little Jocelyne" The girl could no longer move. The chains dragged her towards the creature, who stroked her right cheek with its claws, making her eyes water even more. Jocelyne couldn't resist anymore: she opened her mouth and her scream resounded everywhere. "SOMEONE HELP ME!" Suddenly, time froze. It took Jocelyne a moment before she realized that the world around her had stopped moving. Then, quickly, everything vanished. The creature, the dead body of the spinosaurus, the insects, the golden chains, the whole ruined landscape, even the sky: all disappeared, replaced by total nothingness. Jocelyne looked around her, trying to notice something, but there was no detail to tell her what was going on. Still, for the first time, she wasn't scared. She felt extraordinarily... good, as if all negative emotion had been banished from that place. The cold and fear had given way to a flat calm and a warm warmth that enveloped her as if it were a maternal embrace. And then, a voice. "No bad dreams in my presence"