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Description
Being always on the search of an excuse to draw monsters, I tried to submit an entry for Deviantart and Fangoria's #dahorrorchallenge . Here's the Nightmare.

The Nightmare is sluggish in appearance, just like solidified lava. It changes form, so that one may be deceived into thinking it disappeared while it's just hiding. That's why, when it attacks, it often goes forward with no obstacles on its path. It bears an upside-down, extinguished torch in its hand, for it saps life from everything it touches. When it spots its prey, it poisons them sneakily, spreading numbness in their limbs and brain. As the prey diligently waits for their fate, it engulfs them in its depths, dark and mesmerizing as an amethyst geode.
As the Nightmare closes upon the victim, they solve into cold crystals, not a cry or a sigh to be heard. They don't even keep the will to see the surface anymore, nor the slight remembrance of a world outside the Nightmare.
In the endless belly of the Nightmare, every light slowly fade.

If you ever see the Nightmare, it will chase you forever.

Once I had this unsettling dream of me running away from a sort of, I guess, witch of the depths. The thing that definitely sold the 'unsettling' part was that whatever she touched crumbled and died. I had this nightmare as a child, but I never completely forgot neither the dream nor the sense of anxiety and danger I felt for the whole day after. Now, many years and some unpleasant vicissitudes later, I think I'd better describe this sombre creature still lurking through some corners of my mind.
I think my nightmare could be some sort of 'disease of numbness', that sense of doom and paralysis that was described as the capital sin of sloth and nowadays can be sometimes associated with clinical depression. I've experienced this kind of feeling more than once, expecially after some critical periods of my experience in the EMS, and I honestly think it's the thing I fear most on earth, more than actual pain or sadness - which, at least, is still an emotion, a proof you're alive. Everything is better than that anticipated and invincible sense of death.

Hope you liked the little story I made for this, and also hope I made it actually comprehensible, for it's quite important for me. Also, sorry if I've been a little chatty.

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Fun fact #1 - yes, I liked the shape of the 'schythe' and that's the main reason it's here.
Fun fact #2 - this is actually a double faced nightmare, because it features a bonus and more down-to-earth phobia of mine: scorpions' tails. I can't help it, I h a t e them. Making the top of the creature headpiece-crown was quite a self-violence, but f o r s c i e n c e...

Description
Being always on the search of an excuse to draw monsters, I tried to submit an entry for Deviantart and Fangoria's #dahorrorchallenge . Here's the Nightmare.

The Nightmare is sluggish in appearance, just like solidified lava. It changes form, so that one may be deceived into thinking it disappeared while it's just hiding. That's why, when it attacks, it often goes forward with no obstacles on its path. It bears an upside-down, extinguished torch in its hand, for it saps life from everything it touches. When it spots its prey, it poisons them sneakily, spreading numbness in their limbs and brain. As the prey diligently waits for their fate, it engulfs them in its depths, dark and mesmerizing as an amethyst geode.
As the Nightmare closes upon the victim, they solve into cold crystals, not a cry or a sigh to be heard. They don't even keep the will to see the surface anymore, nor the slight remembrance of a world outside the Nightmare.
In the endless belly of the Nightmare, every light slowly fade.

If you ever see the Nightmare, it will chase you forever.

Once I had this unsettling dream of me running away from a sort of, I guess, witch of the depths. The thing that definitely sold the 'unsettling' part was that whatever she touched crumbled and died. I had this nightmare as a child, but I never completely forgot neither the dream nor the sense of anxiety and danger I felt for the whole day after. Now, many years and some unpleasant vicissitudes later, I think I'd better describe this sombre creature still lurking through some corners of my mind.
I think my nightmare could be some sort of 'disease of numbness', that sense of doom and paralysis that was described as the capital sin of sloth and nowadays can be sometimes associated with clinical depression. I've experienced this kind of feeling more than once, expecially after some critical periods of my experience in the EMS, and I honestly think it's the thing I fear most on earth, more than actual pain or sadness - which, at least, is still an emotion, a proof you're alive. Everything is better than that anticipated and invincible sense of death.

Hope you liked the little story I made for this, and also hope I made it actually comprehensible, for it's quite important for me. Also, sorry if I've been a little chatty.

---

Fun fact #1 - yes, I liked the shape of the 'schythe' and that's the main reason it's here.
Fun fact #2 - this is actually a double faced nightmare, because it features a bonus and more down-to-earth phobia of mine: scorpions' tails. I can't help it, I h a t e them. Making the top of the creature headpiece-crown was quite a self-violence, but f o r s c i e n c e...