𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐘

Trigger warning, this post may contain: implied child endangerment, mental health issues, intense violence, minor amounts of body horror, occult topics, minor implications of gore.

——

It started with a scream that no one heard. The boy’s bedroom was empty when his mother checked…window cracked, air cold, pillow wet with dew. No struggle. No blood. Just a single tooth left on the windowsill, wrapped in silk. And in the mirror: a second reflection. The news wouldn’t catch it. Not yet. But Dominick Vittoria would. Because the dream had already started to rot.

———

He stood in the alley behind the boy’s house, beneath a flickering streetlamp that hummed like it ed lullabies. His coat was soaked from the fog. His boots crushed something soft…chalk drawings on pavement, scrawled with stars and teeth. Dominick lit a cigarette that didn’t burn. Smoke spiraled sideways, curling into symbols that vanished before they were read. “It’s her.” The Monstrosity stirred beneath his ribs. “She’s close.” He pulled out the tooth. It was still warm. Not with blood—but with meaning. Dreamstuff crystallized in enamel. A fragment of a child’s soul, memory hardened by belief. He held it to his temple. And stepped sideways.

——

The world blinked. Concrete melted into cloud. The alley grew teeth. A playground unfolded like a flower blooming in reverse. Dominick stood in the Dreamprint…the psychic echo of the boy’s last nightmare. The slide wept milk. The swing set spun on its own. And in the sandbox sat a figure made of porcelain and shadows, humming a lullaby that bent the air around it. “Hush now, little one… dreams aren’t meant to stay…”Dominick drew his knife. Not steel—intention. A sliver of his vow, honed to kill things that shouldn’t exist. “Tooth Fairy,” he said. She turned. Her Mask smiled. A doll’s face cracked at the edges. Her eyes were the color of old secrets. “Have we met?” she whispered, voice lined with velvet and knives. “I forget everyone I don’t love.” “Then this.” He stepped forward. Knife in hand.

——

The Tooth Fairy rose without rising. One moment she sat in the sand like a cradled child, The next—She unfolded. Lanky limbs clothed in muslin and night, a neck that bent wrong, a spine that whispered lullabies. Her Mask gleamed under phantom moonlight: smooth porcelain, cracked wide at the mouth. “You shouldn’t be here, Dominick Vittoria,” she said, voice syrupy slow. “This dream is already dead.” Dominick gritted his teeth. The Monstrosity coiled in his gut like a serpent smelling blood. “Not yet,” he said. “As long as I’m standing.” She giggled…high, metallic. From the sandbox, something began to crawl out. A doll stitched from molars and finger-paint. It hissed like steam escaping a child’s scream. “You’re always standing, Dominick,” the Tooth Fairy crooned. “But what are you protecting, really?” She stepped forward. Every footfall grew roots. Memory bloomed beneath her—scraps of dreams she’d harvested: a boy’s first bike, a girl’s laughter at the sea, the smell of cinnamon from a grandmother long gone. All rotting. Dominick’s hand clenched tighter around his knife. Not steel. Not iron. This was a Conviction Blade, shaped from a promise he’d carved into his own Mask. “You harvest children. You turn their dreams into corpses.” He spoke, “I end things like you.” Her Mask twitched. “You don’t end things,” she whispered. “You forget them. That’s worse.” And then—she moved.

——

She was fast. Too fast. Her form blurred, unraveling like thread pulled from a scream. She split into three versions of herself at different dream-states. The first had a nurses silhouette, scalpels fused into her fingers like sharp claws. The second looked like a skipping little girl, but with eyes made out of teeth. The third and final towered above the jungle gym, a queen like figure cloaked in lullabies. Each of them lunged.

——

Dominick whispered his Trigger. The Monstrosity snapped awake. His body warped—longer arms, eyes like broken clock faces, a coat that tore itself into shadowy tentacles. When the Mask took hold, the world shuddered. “Devour. Protect. .” The playground SCREAMED. He struck the Child first—flickering in mid-skip—his bladed right arm cleaving her in half with a howl of rusted music. Memories spilled out: a teddy bear. A dead dog. A birthday with no candles. She shattered like glass. The Nurse lunged, trying to inject him with a syringe full of forgetting. He caught her arm—snapped it backward—stabbed his blade through her apron of night. She bled fog and nursery rhymes. Gone. Only the Queen remained. She floated above the merry-go-round, her Mask now full of cracks. But her voice, her voice—still soft. “You can’t save them all.” Dominick leapt. His Mask howled. His knife burned with names, every child he’d saved, and every one he hadn’t. He drove the blade into her chest. “I don’t have to. I just have to stop you.”

——

The Queen screamed, but not in pain. In joy. She crumbled in his arms like ash made of lullabies, whispering as she vanished: “He’s almost ready… The Child of Sleep…Teeth enough… For God.” Dominick landed hard in the sand, breathing smoke and guilt. The playground began to dissolve. The dream-print faded. He was alone. Or so he thought.

——

Behind him, a soft voice: “Mr. Vittoria?” A boy stood in the fog. Eyes wide. Gap-toothed. Clutching a teddy bear with a stitched-up smile. “You came back.” Dominick nodded. “It’s time for you go to bed little one” he spoke softy, the Monstrosity vanishing away, leaving only the man Dominick Vittoria. He held the boys hand and stepped sideways again, transporting the boy to his bedroom. “It’s alright child, she will never harm you ever again” he said with a smile, tucking the child in and using some latent Dreamstuff to put him fast asleep, the boys face an ear to ear smile. He soon stepped sideways again, leaving the boy to rest.

——

Dominick sat at the edge of a crumbling rooftop in the waking world, fog curling around his boots like tired ghosts. The city of Cradle pulsed dimly—a neon heartbeat in a sleepless body. His coat was still soaked in dream-dew. His hand still clutched the boy’s tooth. It hummed now. Low. Like a buried engine. Or a nursery rhyme spoken backwards. He closed his eyes. Let it speak.

——

FLASH. A dozen voices screamed in unison. A white hallway. Doors with no handles. Children behind glass, their faces blank—mouths open in perfect circles. And something stirring in the center room. Something vast. A shape not meant to be born. A Child, tall as a cathedral. Skin stitched from lullabies and guilt. Its mouth was sealed shut by golden thread. But its eyes… Its eyes were made from a thousand teeth.

——

Dominick gasped. The Monstrosity bucked inside his chest, claws scraping his ribs. Not out of hunger—but fear. “What the hell was that…” The whisper came from within. Not the Monstrosity. Not the tooth. A memory. The Tooth Fairy’s final words echoed again: He’s almost ready… Teeth enough… For God…

——

Dominick puts it together. She wasn’t killing children for pleasure. She was feeding something. Each tooth wasn’t just a dream fragment, it was a memory made real. Belief, potential, identity. All fed into a single construct: the Child of Sleep. A dream-born god, stitched together from the memories of the forgotten. If it wakes, it could rewrite reality itself. Not just dreams. History. Causality. Self.

——

Dominick rose, heart pounding like war drums in his chest. His Mask twitched, shifting subtly, frowning. He looked out across the city. Children still slept in their beds. Not knowing how close they were to being rewritten. Unborn. Uned. And someone—someTHING—was still out there, finishing what the Tooth Fairy started. He whispered to the Monstrosity: “We have to find the others.” The Mask didn’t answer. But it didn’t fight him either. Far below, in a puddle that hadn’t been there a moment ago, the water shimmered with dreamstuff. Reflected in it: a crib, a mobile of spinning knives, and a lullaby sung in a voice made of static. “Soon,” said the puddle “He will be born.”

——

TO BE CONTINUED…