I promise you won't be gone for long.

Kavinsky doesn't know what the fuck that means. But he wakes up remembering those words in a bed that isn't his. That's not even that weird, but as he gets up and looks around, he's increasingly aware that nothing here is familiar.

He leaves the house and finds himself in a place that's like the Stephen King version of Henrietta or some shit and he actually laughs. What the fuck kind of shit is this? He feels like he's still dreaming, but he doesn't think he is?

Is he?

He's woken up into dreams before but this--this isn't anything he's constructed. Nothing he would make.

He rolls his shoulders, then starts laughing, right there in the street.

A. Kavinsky is drawn to the flames like a goddamn moth. He could never leave fire alone and so he appears out of the dark to take a seat in the circle around the flames. People are roasting marshmallows and shit and for a moment, it feels like something from home. Significantly less booze, but whatever. He can vibe with this. He's kind of zoned out when someone passes him a s'more.

It tastes like Nutella and it's actually pretty fucking good, giving him weird flashbacks to a childhood that, ostensibly, isn't that far behind him. But it feels like something out of his reach. He stares off at the fire as he eats, listening to stories intently even if he isn't always looking at the storyteller.

When he finishes his s'more, he feels compelled to start talking. He doesn't even really think about it, it's not a decision he makes.

"What do you do when the nightmare doesn't end when you wake up?" he asks, getting into storytelling mode. He doesn't talk about this shit. "I have this dream sometimes and something fucked up is trying to get me. It wants to rip me up, just shred me and leave me bleeding. As soon as it gets me in the dream, I wake up and sometimes I swear to fuck it's still there with me. And I can't move."

B. Kavinsky stumbles away from the fire on legs that fell asleep forever ago. Pins and needles shoot over his nerves as he regains feeling in too-long inactive limbs. As soon as he's out of the light he feels that creeping kind of paranoia any body gets when it's being followed. He slides his cigarette case out and shakes it a few times before he pops it open. He slides one between his lips and snaps it shut again as he walks, just looking for something to do with his hands as he tries to shrug off that feeling. After he gets it lit, he looks back over his shoulder, but there's nothing fucking there except dark and the increasingly distant point of light and life that is the fire.

But as he walks, he keeps seeing shit. Flutters of wings and flashes of metal. Creeping dark that clouds the periphery of his vision. He can't have brought anything here. He isn't asleep, he didn't fall asleep.

"What the fuck," he breathes.

C. There is something following him. It's been following him for two nights now, ever since the fucking bonfire, and he keeps fucking seeing it, but never head on. What the actual fuck. He's not even on any shit that would make him hallucinate. He's walking quick down a sidewalk, trying to lose whatever it is that keeps creeping on him.

When he snaps, he grabs someone and looks behind back over his shoulder.

"Can you fucking see it?"

It is a mess of feathers, razor-sharp beaks, and roiling darkness that seems to refuse to hold a discernible shape. Can you see it? Or is it still all in Kavinsky's head?

[Find Kavinsky around town. Throw anything at him, positive or negative. If you wanna talk PM or hit me at givemedragons!]