Echoes of Sorrow (The Nightmare)

Somehow, the nightmares returned.

It’s been nearly four years since I had flashes in my mind of a life not my own… well, a death not my own. Torn apart and repurposed in a fashion I cannot even begin to describe other than horrifying, the nasty dream repeated itself over and over again… until one day, it just stopped. I was all the better for it, and I moved on with my life.

But now?

Bumping into Bobby Neptune may have been the worst decision I ever made in my life, let alone my career. I’m well-versed in all the multiverse shenanigans by now, but something about his confused face, realizing I wasn’t the Kenny Freeman he knew… that may have reopened an old wound. Those echoes of sorrow, of absolute torture, have started reverberating in the back of my mind, managed to dislodge itself from repression.

I don’t know if there could’ve been a worse time for it to happen, either. Because now I get to deal with all that and one of the biggest opportunities of my career, all in one weekend. Well ain’t that just a son of a--

“Kenny!”

Freeman is startled by the shout emanating from his pal Randall Schwartz, blinking twice before closing a notebook that he was scribbling in. The Entertainer steps up to his friend, staring at Kenny with a raised eyebrow.

“Writing in yer diary again, are we?”

This gets a scowl from Freeman, who firmly sets the notebook beside him.

“It’s a journal, you dick,” he replies, still giving Schwartz a furrowed brow as he goes to pull out his phone from his pocket. “Those damn nightmares have been springing up again, so I’m doing what my old therapist said and making a log of what I remember.”

“Damn, it must be nice to remember your dreams,” Randall says curtly. “I usually knock out so hard and fast I don’t even know time has passed ‘til I check. Speaking of checking things…”

He motions toward the phone in Kenny’s hand.

“What’s the scoop, bud?”

Kenny looks down at his phone, spotting the notification of a new email. One glance at the subject line gives him enough detail to relay to his pal as he puts the phone back in his pocket, opting to wait until later to read it in full.

“Update on the search for Jack,” he says with a nod. “I’ll give it a look in a bit, but uh…”

Kenny looks at The Entertainer with a confused look.

“...you need something?”

Randall takes a moment to process the question, and as though a lightbulb has gone off in his head he nods in response.

“Right, I wanted to talk to you about this Culture Shock situation. First of all…”

He motions to the wall beside them, prompting Kenny to turn his head and gaze out into what appears to be a void. In the blink of an eye, we come to realize that the Masters of the Moscowverse are still trapped in a comic strip, which suddenly explains a lot and nothing all at the same time. The surroundings finally start to become more clear, revealing all-white walls and flooring as Randall stares at his friend, seated upon an all-white chair.

“How the hell are we getting out of here, man? I’m tired, I want to sleep, and I miss my SleepNumber mattress.”

The conversation is interrupted by a loud, thunderous boom from outside whatever these two are stuck in. The pair turn to look into the abyss… only to see Alexei Ruslan’s face zoomed in, as though he is peeking into a different dimension. A dimension of sight and of sound, a… well, you know.

“Kenny? Randall?” the agent asks, his confused look amplified by the space-time distortion at play. “Am I… am I going insane?”

The Masters just stare blankly at each other for a moment, silently debating how to respond. They finally nod in agreement on the angle to take.

“No, but you do need a nap,” Kenny states with a smirk. “You’ve been working late again, haven’t you?”

“Well,” Ruslan replies, thinking it over. “Now you mention it, I have been working harder than usual, making sure Starshy Praporshchik’s team for Squad Goals doesn’t--hang on a second, something isn’t right.”

He squints his eyes, as if trying to get a closer look.

“You’re talking to me,” remarks Alexei, ever the keen observer of a situation. “How much of this is truly a dream?”

This gets a shout from both Masters simultaneously:

“Go to bed, Alexei!”

To which the agent is nearly aghast, shaking his head before disappearing from view. Suddenly, everything goes dark again.

“What the hell!?” exclaims Randall. “Who turned the lights out? Did someone forget to pay the light bill?”

He turns his attention to Kenny, furrowing his brow.

“Is this your deal, Freeman?”

Kenny shrugs as we get an alternate angle, revealing a sheet of paper tossed into the nearby garbage bin somewhere backstage at Arena Mexico… or maybe not, brother.

“Kenny!”

The shout startles Freeman awake, again, this time showing him in the Red Army locker room as Randall comes barging in through the doorway. Kenny is befuddled to see his friend approaching, but even more so that they’re not trapped in some comic-style hellscape.

“Writing in yer diary again, are we?” asks The Entertainer, pointing to the notebook on Kenny’s lap. Freeman sets that on the bench next to him, picking up the pen dropped upon the floor before finally responding.

“It’s a journal, you dick. I’ve been jotting down what I remember from my dreams since the nightmares have kicked in again.”

“Is it the clown?”

A look of horror grows on Kenny’s face at the mention of precisely the culprit.

“It is the clown!” he exclaims, the horror replaced with a slight sense of surprise bordering on happiness. “You remembered when we talked about this before, then?”

“Of course,” Randall replies with a nod. “You don’t forget a thing like dismemberment and being made into a toy. That shit’s weird, dawg.”

“Agreed,” remarks Freeman. “That’s what makes this thing with Bobby Neptune especially odd. We’ve bumped into ourselves before, but the Kenny this guy seems to remember? Never even heard of the dude once. No word on him from the Council, nothing from Aeon, just a whisper in the wind.”

Inexplicably, Randall starts waving his arms around, making some gesture with his hands that no one can quite put their finger on.

“What the hell are you doing?” asks Kenny, staring at his friend until Schwartz finally stops.

“Sorry, I was uh… feeling myself.”

Kenny just shakes his head, when suddenly he gets a ring coming from his phone. He pulls it out of his pocket, but unlike his previous viewing he is greeted with a different kind of message altogether. Randall leans over, reading said message out loud.

“You have been duly summoned for a hearing with the Council of Concerned Kennys, post-haste. Prepare to board.”

“Prepare to board?” Randall asks, looking mighty perplexed. “What, are they gonna beam us up like it’s Star Tr--”

Before he can even finish that sentence, a flash of light engulfs the locker room… and just as quickly, the light--and the Masters--disappear.

“They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.” - Oscar Wilde

The overbearing brightness impeding the vision of Kenny and Randall finally dissipates when the pair land on their feet on solid ground. Looking around bears little fruit for the Masters, firmly unfamiliar with their surroundings despite it appearing mostly normal. Perhaps the biggest reason for the confusion is the abundance of gravestones and other such markers across a great stretch of land… the telltale sign that the Masters have ended up in a cemetery.

“You’ve made it,” a voice echoes from the distance, drawing their attention to the arrival of a select number of the Council in question. The shortest of these, wearing a monocle, is revealed to be the owner of the voice as he steps up. “It is time to enlighten you on the situation you face.”

He begins to walk in front of the pair, motioning for them to follow. The Masters oblige, following the Councilmembers on their path through the cemetery. The sight is eerie enough on its own, without the added strangeness of nearly every tombstone reading “KENNY FREEMAN” as the group finally arrives at their destination. The monocled Kenny points to the grave marker on the ground, reading its inscription out loud.

“Kenny Freeman, Earth-15. Victim of the Toybox, unwilling basis for the Freeman Blaster invented by--”

“Say less,” remarks Earth-PRIME’s Kenny, shaking his head. “My emotions are on a teeter-totter right now, I dunno how much more I can take.”

“Why the hell are we here, anyway?” asks Randall. “Kenny’s got a match to get ready for, two in fact, and I have to get myself ready to be trapped in a damn space capsule on the first night of Culture Shock.”

He lets out a sigh after that last statement.

“At least it’s not another shark cage.”

“You’re here because the encounter with Bobby Neptune means we need to finally address this,” says the bespectacled Freeman, giving something of a glare at The Entertainer. “Because the fact is your friend is not the first Kenny that Aeon Khronos approached to intervene in the goings on within the Multiverse. Many of us have been asked to take on responsibilities we were never meant to hold. Most simply refused the call, others have died for it… but Earth-15’s Kenny saw his fate before Khronos could even get to him.”

He looks to Earth-PRIME’s Kenny.

“The truth is, you out of all of us were never meant to depart your realm. Aeon decided to drag you into this, so we have tried to course correct… to no avail. You stand here now, because you have to understand why you’ve been getting nightmares about another Kenny’s life and death. The echoes of his sorrow have rung through your mind for far too long, and it’s time to make them silent. Something pulled your paths together… and this battle you are about to embark on may help finally separate them once again.”

This draws a slow sigh of relief from Freeman.

“Thank goodness,” he says, wiping a bit of sweat from his forehead. “So you’re all gonna be at ringside to help me, right?”

“What?” asks Mr. Freeman in response, before shaking his head. “Oh, goodness no. This battle is yours and yours alone, I’m afraid… but we can offer some guidance. Come, let us leave this dreadful place.”

The pair nod in agreement before the group as a whole makes its exit from the grave. As a flash of light pulls them away from the cemetery, we are left lingering on the image of the grave marker below… before a bolt of lighting pierces the night sky, landing directly onto the plot of land. A small hole is blasted away from the ground, revealing a skeletal fist that shoots out.

To Be Continued.