Chapter 4: A Taste of Power

Chapter 4: A Taste of Power

Leo was ripped from the cold, silent kitchen by the violent force of his own gasp. He shot upright in bed, drenched in a sweat so chilling it felt like ice water. The sheets were twisted around his legs, a flimsy trap. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the sudden, overwhelming silence of his own room.

The dream was still branded on the inside of his eyelids: the lifeless grey light, the unnatural weight of the knife, the dull thud as the blade met wood. And the sight of his own severed finger, lying pale and still on the butcher's block.

A sob of pure terror clawed its way up his throat. It was real. It had to be. He could still feel the phantom sensation of the parting, the cold finality of the cut.

With a trembling, hesitant motion, he brought his left hand up in front of his face. The weak orange glow of his rocket ship nightlight cast long shadows across his knuckles. He held his breath, his eyes wide with dread, fully expecting to see a bloody stump, a horrifying wound that would prove his sanity had finally, irrevocably shattered.

But it was whole.

His index finger was there, perfectly intact. He saw the little constellation of freckles, the slightly dirty nail. He touched it with the thumb of his right hand. The skin was warm, the bone beneath solid. He bent it, then straightened it. It moved without pain, without even a phantom ache. All five fingers were present and accounted for.

A wave of dizzying relief washed over him, so potent it almost made him sick. It was just a dream. A nightmare. The most vivid, terrifying nightmare of his life, but a dream nonetheless. His parents were right. Dr. Evans was right. Something was wrong inside his head.

He fell back against his pillows, his limbs feeling heavy and weak. He let out a shaky breath, the last remnants of the dream's horror dissolving like mist. He was safe. It wasn't real.

And then his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room. He looked towards the corner.

It was a reflex, a habit ingrained by weeks of terror. He expected to see the Smiler in its usual place between the bookshelf and the closet. He expected to see that grotesque, predatory grin that had stretched wider with every tear he shed. He steeled himself for the familiar jolt of fear, the tightening in his gut.

But the grin wasn't there.

Leo froze. The absence of that one feature was more shocking than its presence had ever been. The shadow-boy was still there, a solid patch of darkness against the wall, but its face—if it could be called a face—was a blank, featureless void. The carved-in smile that had been its defining, tormenting characteristic was completely gone.

For a moment, Leo could only stare, his mind refusing to process what he was seeing. Then he noticed the posture. The Smiler wasn't standing tall and imperious as it usually did. It was hunched slightly, its form seeming to waver at the edges, less solid than he'd ever seen it.

And its arms... its shadowy right arm was wrapped around its left, clutching it tight to its chest. It was a gesture of undeniable, universal pain. It was the way he himself had held his arm after falling off his bike last summer.

The pieces clicked into place in Leo's mind with the force of a physical blow. A cold, electric thrill shot down his spine, obliterating the last traces of relief.

In the dream, I stood in the kitchen. I took my mother's sharpest knife. I placed my left hand on the cutting board. I cut off my index finger.

He looked at his own perfect, unharmed left hand. Then he looked back at the shadow, huddled in the corner, clutching its own left hand in agony.

The dream wasn't just a dream. And it wasn't him it had harmed.

The logic was impossible, a violation of every rule of reality he had ever known. But the proof was there, silent and irrefutable, in the corner of his room. The sterile, lifeless dream world was a battleground, a place where he could reach across the veil and touch his tormentor. Where he could hurt it.

The roaring ocean of fear that had been his constant companion for weeks did not disappear. But for the first time, something else rose from its depths. It was a feeling he had never experienced before, something cold and sharp and dangerous. It wasn't happiness or relief. It was power. It was the feeling of a mouse, cornered by a cat, suddenly discovering it had fangs of its own.

He was still watching the Smiler, his breathing evening out, his heartbeat slowing to a steady, deliberate rhythm. The creature hadn't moved. Its hollow, empty eyes were fixed on him, but the usual predatory hunger was gone. Now, they seemed to hold something akin to shocked disbelief.

A cold, deliberate thought formed in Leo's mind. An experiment.

Slowly, never taking his eyes off the shadow, he raised his left hand again. He extended his index finger—the one he had sacrificed in the dream—and deliberately, pointedly, wiggled it back and forth.

The reaction was instantaneous and violent.

The Smiler flinched as if struck. Its entire form shuddered, a ripple of pure blackness, and it let out a silent, psychic scream that echoed in Leo's mind not as sound, but as a wave of pure, undiluted agony. It clutched its wounded hand even tighter, its hunched form curling in on itself.

Leo lowered his hand, the cold feeling inside him solidifying into a grim, unshakeable certainty.

He was no longer just the victim. He was no longer the powerless child weeping into his pillow. The ten-foot cage was still there, but he had just found a key. Or rather, a knife.

He looked at his own hands, no longer seeing them as the helpless appendages of a seven-year-old boy. He saw them as tools. Weapons. He looked at the Smiler, no longer seeing an unstoppable monster. He saw a target.

The nightly descent into sleep, once a thing to be dreaded, had just become an appointment he was desperate to keep. The Butcher's Dream wasn't over. It had only just begun.