The Barrel

What happened a few days ago?
No, seriously, what the hell happened?
When I fell asleep, I dreamed of The Grotesque.
"Do you want to know what happened?" The clown asked me.
"I can tell you." The Ringmaster said.
"We can help you." The audience said in unison. I was the spectacle. The freak. Caged for everyone to look at. I slammed on the cage bars, tried to open the cage, and they laughed. They all laughed at me.
"Tell me." My voice sounded inhuman, and I realized that all they heard was barking. My arms were shortened and growing hair. My head was changing in a very painful manner. I was a dog, and they were laughing at my barking.
Mistress appeared from the crowd, oddly enough, grinning with her usual painted smile. No Grotesque face for her. "Is this him?" Her voice had a twinge of playful sarcasm.
"Indeed it is, milady!" The Ringmaster, and he was Sol. She walked up to my cage and kicked it, rattling the bars.
"So very fitting for a dog like you, running around everywhere and barking in my name all the time." She grabbed my cage and threw it across the ring with surprising strength, and it shattered on top of me. I leaped up and ran awkwardly around the ring away from Mistress and Sol, one who possessed a leash and the other possessed a muzzle. I felt my transforming human again as I left the ring. I was human outside the tent, and there was the Screaming Tower.
I ran up the stairs, up to the top, which, in this case, was the 31st floor. I had my knife and my flamethrower. I got out onto the window ledge. I didn't know we had windows. Oh, right, a dream.
A crowd of Dolls formed at the bottom.
"We're all your friends, if you'll just come on down and talk to us, Daniel!" Elise yelled up at me.
"You must be joking!" I yelled back, and almost jumped. Then she was out on the window ledge with me, Mistress was. Grabbing at me, trying to reach me while holding onto the side of the Tower. The Patchwork Vultures were circling.
"I'm gonna wish you had jumped!" She screamed at me, the sweat(?) pouring down her face melted her painted face, leaving a faceless wooden mannequin scrambling for me with claws and teeth that weren't there. I grabbed my flamethrower and lit her ablaze.
 Her burning corpse let go and began to fall, the clothes and little paint still there charring and flying around. She grabbed my ankle with one of her hands. I quickly lifted up my ankle and with my free hand, cut through the blackening wood of her wrist and removing it completely, burning hair, charred clothing, and blazing body, dropped to the ground, hitting the ground with a satisfying smush. Her hand, undamaged, still was on my ankle. I grabbed it off and lifted it up to throw it down, and the hand, still moving, grabbed my neck on the way up, tried to strangle me. I knew what I had to do. She wasn't dead. Mistress was still living, dammit.
I grabbed my flamethrower and threw it down at the crowd. Then my knife, so it would hopefully hit the Flamethrower in the right place and explode. And it did. BOOM. The explosion shook the ground and the Tower, killing many members of the crowd. Then I did it. I took her with me. I took a running jump.
I fell and the ground turned to glass, the hand melting away around my neck. There was a beautiful woman lying on the other side of the glass. "Come to mother, you horrible son." She whispered quietly, though it rang through my head louder than the burning wreckage. I smashed through the glass, and embraced her.
My eyelids flew open. The clock read 1:00PM. The calender said July 29th. I had been asleep for over a day.
I stood up, my legs shaky and wobbly from not being used. The Tower looked better than ever, once I got out of my room. I went outside before anything. No burns. No charred Mistress. It was all a dream. I went back inside, shaking my head. I went inside, to her room. She was lying crosswise her chair, filing her wooden nails idly. "Well, look who decided to open his eyes." She shifted into a sitting position. "You look awful. You been attacked by The Grotesque or something?" I nodded slowly. "Well, Elise and Luna are assassinating someone, and Sylvia and Sol are having sex somewhere or something. So you can talk to Cat for therapy." She went back to her lying position. "Go ahead now, go." She motioned for me to leave, and I did.
It didn't take me long to find Cat. She was having a catnap on her bed. I sat in a chair in the corner until then, reading a book I had randomly picked up. Well, I read the title before chucking it in the trash. "A Tale Of Two Cities" freaking hate that book.
She woke up and stretched. "Yawwwnn....wah! Mister Thompson!" She sprang up and bowed in front of me. "What can I do for you, sir?"
"Calm down." I replied. "I'm not your superior, and just Daniel will do just fine. But if you want to do anything, I would suggest putting on some clothes. You're down to your underwear and cat headband at the moment." I sighed. She seemed pretty ditzy. After she got dressed, the two of us sat on her bed and I told her about my dream, and it felt pretty good to get it all off my chest, even though her eyes glassed over at about the part where I turned into a dog.
Either way, she told me what she thought about it (I'm not telling you that, that's a bit private and philosophical, so shut up, don't even bother asking) and then she hugged me and bade me farewell.
It was 9:00PM at that point. I had been speaking with her for seven hours. I went to the kitchen and heated up some queso and had Nachos for dinner. Then I went to bed. Elise isn't back, so I WOULD be sleeping alone. If Cat hadn't offered to sleep with me tonight. She's good for snuggling. I hope Elise won't be mad, though.
~Thompson out.