With a deep breath, Kiki steadied her shaking hands and reminded herself why she was here. It wasn’t even like it was that bad. When going to a collector’s house, one can of course expect a bit of eccentricity. When the woman is a collector of such dark and disturbing things as nightmares, it is reasonable to expect that the house will match the dark and disturbing qualities of the deals that take place within. Knowing all of this, Kiki had prepared herself for a dungeon all painted black with red blood dripping down the walls. She had envisioned all manner of torture devices and screaming and though of ways to cope with the most unlikely of scenarios. But it had not been enough. The house that she now found herself in was so much worse.
“Ohmygosh, hi!” someone squealed from the doorway.
The woman’s attire matched her décor, all pastel pinks and blues. Her hair (surely that couldn’t be her real hair?) looked like a mountain of cotton candy perched atop her head, all poofs and swirls, with little shimmering butterfly clips throughout. The knee length dress she wore was somehow a continuation of the cotton candy, and worked as camouflage against the wallpaper of the room.
Kiki couldn’t help but imagine a puffy plush unicorn puking rainbow pastel cuteness all over the place, which put her in her own personal hell. But she still did her best to plaster on a smile before responding with a much more demure greeting of her own. She tried not to let her fear show in her eyes, worried that this woman might sense her weakness.
“I’m Margaret, but you already knew that!”
Kiki did, in fact, already know that. Somehow she had expected Margaret Beauchamp, renowned collector of only the most terrifying and heart-wrenching nightmares, to have a slightly different personality. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Kiki was prepared to literally beg if it came to that.
“So, what do you have for me?”
Kiki cleared her throat. Then she cleared it again. She opened her mouth to answer, but everything had suddenly gone very dry. And was it getting hot? She felt a bead of sweat form on her temple.
“It’s ok, we’re all friends here!”
That did not make Kiki feel better. But she was here for a reason, so she dug deep to find the strength to continue.
“It’s about my sister.”
A slight flush brushed Margaret’s cheeks beneath the shimmering stars that were stickered there. If Kiki didn’t know better, she’d say the woman looked aroused.
“Dreams about loved ones are always so delicious,” Margaret purred.
Kiki was taken aback. Had she not come to the right house? Was there a miscommunication somewhere along the line? It would explain the pink everywhere.
“Ummm…” she faltered. How to explain? “I’m really sorry. There must have been some mistake. I’m selling—”
“No!” Margaret’s voice was sharp, sharper than Kiki had imagined it could be, and then a flip switched and she was back to her high-pitched cutesy facade. “No, I only deal in the worst sort of dreams. Luckily, dreams about loved ones tend to be particularly…” she daintily cleared her throat before continuing, “painful.”
Kiki’s mouth hung open. This woman was talking about her traumas as if they were some kind of delicacy. But then, to her, they might be. The day her sister died held nothing but pain for Kiki, it was why she had decided to come here in the first place, but far be it for her to dictate how others amused themselves. She just wanted the nightmares to end.
“What’s the process?” Kiki asked.
Margaret straightened, suddenly all smiles, and began an in-depth explanation delivered in her childish sounding voice. First, Kiki would be given a tea to help her sleep and bring on her dream. Then, she’d be put into the chamber and connected to some electric nodes (“oh, don’t make such a face, they don’t hurt!”). The dream, or nightmare rather, would be shown on a screen and the collector (“that’s me, of course!”) would cut out the parts that she wanted to keep. Payment would be determined by calculating the length of dream by subject matter. With the last, a rate sheet was flourished. Kiki felt her eyes widen despite herself.
The amounts listed were more than double even her most outlandish estimations. She was hoping to have enough to help pay her rent for a few months, but with the sums listed she would be able to buy herself an apartment.
“Now, of course, the trade off,” Margaret continued. “Anything I take will become my property. Not yours. It will belong to me and you will be stripped of it entirely. No more dreams, no more emotions, no more memories.”
Kiki nodded her head before she even realized what she was doing. But yes, this was what she wanted. Dreams of watching her sister die haunted her every single night. Losing those AND getting paid for it seemed too good to be true, but nightmare collectors were quite rare. She was lucky, in a way, to have a tragedy that warranted being in this situation. Most people had to be content with therapy, no matter how slow and ineffective it turned out to be.
After skimming through a few fairly standard legal papers and agreeing to the procedure, Kiki had been brought to a pastel purple room with a fluffy white bed covered by fluffy white pillows. There was a fuzzy robe and a nightgown that she was expected to wear, and a steaming cup of tea on a delicate porcelain table next to an overstuffed purple settee. After hastily gulping the tea, she felt as if she were floating on a cloud at sunset. Again, not what she had been expecting, but she wasn’t going to complain. It was comforting, in a way, to be in a room so devoid of nightmares.
The electric nodes were shaped like little sheep, and the attendant who stuck them to her skin asked her to count them while she laid back on the bed. So she did, and then she woke up. That was it. It was all so normal—until it wasn’t.
After dressing and exiting her room, Kiki had expected to see Margaret, but instead was only met with another attendant. Fine, her business with the collector was finished. As they passed through hallway after hallway on the way out of the labyrinth of a house, Kiki heard crying, no sobbing, that was growing louder. It sounded like Margaret, and she wanted to stop and investigate the hallway where the cries came from, but the attendant who was ushering her away kept a steady pace. The sobs were abating when Kiki heard Margaret’s voice, now hoarse from crying, shout, “This is exquisite!”
Kiki couldn’t help but stop in her tracks and the woman guiding her had to slow down and call her name to get her attention.
“What was that all about?” Kiki asked.
The woman glanced about furtively and, noticing the thud of additional footsteps, motioned to Kiki to follow. When they were at the entrance of the home and nobody else was within earshot, she finally answered in hushed tones.
“After the accident, this is the only way that Mrs. Beauchamp can feel. By borrowing emotions from others. She wants to experience sadness from everything that she lost.”
Kiki knew what it was like to experience great loss, didn’t she? So she left it alone and didn’t try any further questions, simply gathered her belongings and left out the same door she had come in through. The funds were already being wired to her account, and should be available by the next day.
It was mid-morning by the time Kiki returned to her apartment. She had left the day before, arriving at the collector’s house close to 6pm. All she had eaten since then were some cookies and the sleeping tea, the taste of which still seemed to coat her tongue. First, she needed to brush her teeth and shower to erase the taste of the night before. Then, she would get some food in her system.
While she lathered the shampoo into her hair, Kiki couldn’t help but notice how much gunk there was on her scalp, or how oily her hair had become. When had this happened? She washed it twice, and would have put some oils in it, but she was out of everything except some dollar-store conditioner that she couldn’t even remember buying.
Towelling off was a bit of a hassle, as she had no clean towels and the one hanging up smelled of damp, but she did her best. Rummaging in her closet revealed only a few clean dresses, no clean socks or underwear. She took out a frilly, cutesy pink number, but that sparked thoughts of Margaret from the night before. Why did she even have a dress like that? Instead, she switched it out for a somber, black piece. Again, not something that she could remember buying, but at least it was clean.
After eating, the first thing she would do was laundry, Kiki promised herself as she walked to the kitchen. But looking through the fridge held the same problems as trying to do anything else in this apartment—it was empty save for a few moldy pieces of what she assumed had once been bagged vegetables. Even the ketchup bottle was empty.
A chirp from her phone distracted her for a moment, and she went to check what the notification was. There were two messages. The first was from her best friend, Alice. “How are you doing? I’m coming over this afternoon to check on you.”
Kiki was a bit confused, did her friend think that she would need to be checked on after visiting the nightmare collector? And then she looked around her kitchen. The sink was full of plates and the floor had stains on it, like she hadn’t cleaned anything in months. Even the windows were dull with grime and covered with curtains so no light got through.
She responded, “You don’t have to. Would tomorrow work better?”
Dots appeared immediately, and Alice’s reply came just a few seconds later. “No, I’m coming today.”
Alice wasn’t normally so abrupt. Kiki didn’t think she’d be able to change her friend’s mind, so instead, she’d need to change her apartment. The windows she fixed first, opening them to let some fresh air into her stale rooms. She couldn’t have friends over when her apartment was in this state. She’d need to speed clean, which meant that she’d also need to run out for food. And some snacks for hosting. And cleaning supplies, was she really out of dish soap?
Remembering her lack of funds, she checked her phone for that second notification, hoping… And it was from the bank. The money had transferred. She briefly considered hiring a maid now that she could definitely afford it, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. Nobody would be able to get here soon enough. She’d just go splurge on all of the essentials and re-start her apartment.
Alice showed up when she was finished with the kitchen, in the middle of multiple loads of laundry, and about halfway through a thorough cleaning of the bathroom. She still had the black dress on, although she was hoping that her sweats would be dry soon and she could don something a bit more appropriate for toilet scrubbing.
“Normally I’m the one doing all of this,” Alice joked as she walked in.
Kiki threw her an irritated look, and then asked, “since when do you clean my place? And since when do you just announce you’re coming over on a random Tuesday?”
“Since you stopped doing anything for yourself!” Her friend sounded defensive and frustrated, using a tone that Kiki had rarely heard from her. She instantly felt ashamed. Alice had texted that she was coming to check on her. They cared for each other, she knew that. Her friend was clearly trying to help, but help with what?
“I’m sorry,” Alice said. “You’re still hurting. I don’t know anything about the grief process.”
Kiki couldn’t help her confusion. Did Alice really think that losing a nightmare would require grieving?
“I… I think I’m ok,” she responded.
“Clearly you’re not.” Kiki tried to object to that, but Alice continued, speaking over her. “You don’t clean anything in this place for months, you barely shower or eat, and then suddenly you’re up and about, cleaning and shopping, all while wearing the dress you bought for your sister’s funeral?”
“I have a sister?” Kiki asked.
Horror shone in Alice’s eyes as she whispered, “Had. You had a sister.”
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