Sweet Nightmares
This short story takes place in the universe of the horror video game Little Nightmares, after the events of the first game. While based on a horror game, this is a wholesome romance story with no horror elements. It can be enjoyed without having played the game, but I highly recommend it (it's great for both horror fans and loli/shota lovers). I may write additional chapters to this story in the future, depending on whether I have ideas for a continuation.
The tall man found the little girl on the beach.
She had been hiding under a tarp on a boat which had washed ashore during a storm. She was wearing nothing but an old yellow raincoat, and shivered in her sleep as she sheltered herself from the roaring oceanic winds. Many things came ashore on this beach, things from faraway places, which the tall man salvaged during his evening strolls. But these things were plastic, driftwood, and glass – never alive. The seagulls and crabs that once inhabited this place were long gone. Yet here was a child, a human child, all by herself.
The tall man observed the child’s sleeping body. Her skin was unnaturally pale, and her arms unnaturally thin. Strands of black hair slithered out from beneath her hood, where her face was hidden by shadows. The tall man was wearing his usual tattered overcoat and plaid scarf, with a pair of black leather gloves.
He knew he couldn’t leave the child here. He didn’t know where she’d come from, but she would not be safe on this beach. There were worse things out here than the storm.
The tall man gently scooped up the child in his arms. She was as light as a pillow, and barely stirred as he held her. He could feel the faint warmth of her body through the thick layers of her raincoat. The tall man turned and began to walk, his boots softly pressing into the wet sand.
There was nothing else around them but the jagged rocks, and the infinite black ocean beyond. This island was hundreds of kilometers from the mainland, far north of the fallen cities, isolated from the rest of the world. It was a lonesome place. For this child to have ended up here, she had to have drifted very far. She must have been running, but from what, the tall man dared not say. Only fear could drive someone to brave these seas, fear of something far worse than water and clouds.
The tall man carried the girl to a wooden boardwalk. The planks were bombarded by the tall waves, the salty spray crashing high into the air. The tall man shielded the girl with his back, though he felt the cold seeping through his coat to his skin. The storm was getting worse. He pressed on, his feet clattering on the boardwalk until he reached the bridge, and crossed it to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse was located on a rocky outcropping high above the raging seas. It towered beneath the rumbling clouds, yet the light that once shined within was dark, as it had been for many years. The tall man carried the girl up several flights of wet stone stairs, taking care not to accidentally slip as he went. When he reached the top, he arrived at the front porch of an old manor house, next to the lighthouse. The awning above the porch shielded them from the rain as the tall man reached into his pocket, producing a silver key. He put the key into the lock, twisted the knob, and swung open the door.
The inside of the house was dark. The tall man shuffled into the living room, placing the child on a tattered couch. He reached into his pocket again and pulled out a lighter, igniting a candle and placing it on a nearby nightstand. The dancing orange light of the candle illuminated the rest of the room. The windows were fogged and covered in precipitation. An empty furnace lay across the room. There was a television in the corner, but its screen was shattered. Some of the light spread into the next room, where the kitchen and dining room resided. The tall man sat down in a armchair next to the furnace, leaning forward and observing the child quietly. He watched her little chest rise and fall with great interest.
A few minutes later, the child woke up.
She was frightened at first. She had found herself in an unfamiliar place. When she saw the tall man watching her, she immediately leapt from the couch and sprinted away, her bare feet making a pitter-patter sound as she disappeared into the house. When the tall man found her, she was hiding the dining room, beneath the table. She observed him warily, but he made no move to harm her. He smiled at her, but the child only stared back as if this was an expression she had never seen, one she was unfamiliar with.
The tall man moved his hand toward her, but the little girl sprinted off again. When she vanished into the dark, the tall man frowned after her and sighed. It had been so long since he’d met another human. Perhaps he had forgotten what it meant to be human in all that time. He could tell that the child had been through much, and had probably learned to distrust others. Like a stray cat, she feared things which were larger than herself. He wondered what sort of things she had met to give her such a fear.
It took him longer to find her this time. She had ascended the flight of stairs to the pitch-dark upper floor. The tall man strode through the upstairs hallway, lighting the candles on the walls as he went. He gazed into the study, observing the shelves of books describing things that no longer were. He peeked into the empty rooms, where ruined clothes and old documents were strewn across the floor, but still there was no sign of her. Eventually, he reached the door to his own bedroom at the end of the hall, which he found slightly ajar. He grasped the knob, pulling the door open.
The tall man’s bedroom was one of the few clean rooms in the house. There was little there but the bed, and his dresser across from it, and a small desk with a typewriter. When the candlelight flooded into the room, it illuminated the tiny silhouette of the child, hiding on the corner of the bed. The sight of the tall man caused her to recoil, but he raised his hand in a gesture of reassurance. He wasn’t sure if she understood his intention, but she didn’t run away. She never took her eyes off of him as he strolled into the room, and delicately sat down on the bed next to her.
For a few minutes, neither of them made a sound. There was only the distant rumbling of the storm as it beat against the walls of the house, shaking its ancient foundations. The tall man slowly slid closer, but the girl remained motionless, watching him like prey watching its predator. Then, very slowly, the man reached over and pulled back her hood. She flinched as her head was revealed to him.
Her long black hair was wild and unkempt. Her bangs hung in front of her pale face, where the tall man could make out the tiny lumps of her nose and lips. When she looked at him, he caught a glimpse of her eyes, which were as dark as the black ocean outside. They were sullen, perhaps from exhaustion. He supposed she was probably about nine years old. The top of her head barely reached his chest. Though her body was dirtied and tainted by the hardships of her life, the tall man could tell she was delicately beautiful.
“Are you by yourself?” he asked her softly.
The nameless child did not answer.
The tall man glanced out the window. He could faintly make out the outlines of the jagged rocks on the shoreline through the foggy glass. Beyond those rocks, there was no shelter, no safe place. The island was vast, but there was nothing else here but ruined shacks and docks. The town lay on the eastern shoreline, but he would not take her there. No one who ventured there ever returned.
“You may stay here, if you like.”
The child looked at him again. He could sense her distrust, her wariness. Yet she could sense the sincerity of his words, the honest kindness in his heart. Though in truth, the tall man was not kind, or so he believed. He was lonely. He craved companionship, someone else to share in his exile. Perhaps that was a selfish feeling, but he was also a practical man, and knew the child had nowhere to go. He would let her leave if she desired, but she would not last long in the wasteland beyond.
The girl sat up slowly, and then suddenly ran off into the hall again. The tall man gazed disappointedly after her. But then the girl stopped, halfway down the hall, and looked back at him. It was as if she’d been expecting him to chase after her, to attack or grab her. But he just stayed there on the bed, watching her in the faint light. Slowly, the girl pattered back to him, standing in his doorway and watching him. She pulled her hood back over her head shyly, and stared for a long time at the tall man’s eyes.
Then, in a gesture so faint as to be almost unnoticeable, the child nodded.
~
The tall man and the little girl began living together. At first, it was an uneasy relationship. The child did not trust him, and there were times when he was certain she would run away. But he gave her food, and he gave her a place to sleep. That alone did much to build the trust between them.
In the mornings and evenings, they ate together from the food he kept in his pantry, though he soon learned to lock the door to keep her from sneakily acquiring snacks at night. She had been terribly malnourished, and devoured the food within moments of him serving it, but gradually became more patient with her eating habits. He enjoyed making different meals for her. Mashed potatoes and peas proved a favorite, and he made it for her regularly, enjoyed the way her stoic face lit up when the food reached her mouth. How long had it been since she last ate like this, he wondered? Perhaps she had never eaten like this at all.
The child took an interest in many of the items he kept in this house. Most of them were not his; they had been here when he first found this abandoned place. There were pocket watches and rusted motors in the office, and cat toys in a bin in the kitchen. The lighthouse had many old devices stored within, but the man did not permit the child to go in there, due to the proliferation of shattered glass and sharp objects. But the object the child loved most was a music box that the tall man found in the attic. It played an eerie song, yet one that seemed to mesmerize and comfort her. She kept it with her all the time, cherishing it like a dear friend. He wished he could give her a stuffed animal, or something else children enjoyed that could comfort her sleep, but the one who had once lived in this place had not kept such items.
At first, the tall man had the child sleep by herself in his bed, since it was the only usable one in the house. He slept downstairs on the couch, though this was dreadfully uncomfortable, and more often than not he awoke in the morning aching from lack of sleep. Then one day while he was taking a nap in his bed, he awoke to find her curled up next to him, napping soundly alongside him. That was when they began sleeping in the bed together. She did not mind. She hardly moved when she slept, and was no bother to him. Before long, he had begun to wrap his arms around her beneath the blankets, and she nuzzled under his chin.
One day, since she had never given him her name, he began to call her Six. He was not sure why he called her this. The name came to him as a dream does, in the back of his mind.
Like a flower after a long winter, Six slowly began to open up to the tall man. When she trusted him enough to do so, he led Six to the upstairs bathroom and took of her yellow raincoat, then proceeded to remove her tattered shirt and pull down her undergarments. The sight of the pale naked child before him made his heart ache. Her ribs protruded against her skin, and her arms and legs were so thin they looked like they could snap like a twig.
The tall man ran the cold water of the bathtub and placed Six inside. She shivered, but did not protest. She permitted him to stroke her body, his large hands running up and down her smooth skin, stroking her shoulders and buttocks. She made no expression all the while, but the tall man had to wonder if she had ever once felt the touch of another person like this. Had she once had parents, or was she an orphan from birth, a stray child in an unwelcoming world? Did she wake up one day in a dark place, and find her way through untold nightmares to reach this place?
The tall man dressed Six in his own clothes, as he had no clothes to give her. The shirt was far too large, so she did not wear pants. He hung her garments on a clothesline which ran across the kitchen counter, and the two of them sat in front of the furnace in the living room, warming their bodies while the clothes dried. Six spread her legs, allowing the warmth to seep under the shirt she wore to the bare spot between her legs. The man found himself arching his neck to gaze at her little vagina, which seemed to bloom red on her pale skin as it warmed up. Six touched it gingerly, then noticed him staring at her, and moved her hand away. She didn’t seem ashamed, but he wondered if she was more conscious of him than he realized.
The tall man took great care of her. Six gave him a reason to wake up in the morning, and slowly eroded the existential dread that had molded his heart for so long. He wanted to make her happy, to make her feel warm and safe and loved. He loved her, he was certain. It was not hard; he would have loved any living thing which came to him with innocence and want. He washed her regularly and cut her dark hair, which went down to her shoulders. She would rarely let it dry properly, so it was often unruly and disheveled, but he found that to be one of the many cute things about her. He liked her silent energy, her stoic and innocent gaze, her beautiful and haunting black eyes. He adored every inch of her.
The tall man made clothes for Six. One of the former inhabitants of this house had been a seamstress, or so it would seem from the tailoring room upstairs. The dresses she made were for women, but the books in the study taught the tall man all he needed to know. He created a dress for Six, using fabrics he’d procured from the closets and attic. He had to take her measurements using a tape measure, and so brought her to the seamstress’s room to strip her again for the procedure. Six flinched when the cold metal touched her nude body, but patiently waited as the tall man drew it across her shoulders, and then her hips, and then up and down the length of her body. The tape measure clung to her buttcrack as he pulled it from her head to the ground. He thought he saw goosebumps on her arms and legs when he finished, and she put her clothes back on.
When he finished the dress, the tall man washed Six’s body and did her hair, then slid the dress over her head. It was simple and black, covered in makeshift patchwork and sewing errors, but all that mattered was that she had something to wear. She seemed happy with it, so he made more – a white dress, and a dark blue one. He also made undergarments and socks. Shoes were another story, but thankfully, they had no need to leave this house. He only left for his evening strolls, which he kept very brief, so he was never away from her for too long. He would not take her with him. It was too dangerous.
How long had it been since he’d last felt this way, felt such warmth and attachment to another person? He remembered when he had run away, when he turned away from the screens that had captivated so many others, the signal that stole the faces of everyone he knew. He ran as far as he could, until he found this place, cut off from the world and the monsters that lived in it. He thought he would live out the rest of his life alone. But Six had changed all that. Maybe this child was a gift, one last ounce of goodness in a world long dead. She was the company he’d longed for, and he was the gentle love that she had needed all her life.
Here in this house far from the nightmares, they were safe, and they were together.
~
Six had bad dreams sometimes. She so rarely made a sound, and he sometimes thought she couldn’t understand him at all. But when the nightmares came, she tossed and turned and moaned and winced and cried. She made noises he could not quite define. Sometimes, when they slept alongside each other, he thought he could sense her dreams, feel them drifting into his own. He saw long arms and long necks, heard the sounds of smashing pianos and television static. When this happened, sometimes the storms would grow angrier outside, and the candles in the house would flicker, and the wind against the walls would pound harder. The tall man could tell there was something about this girl that he did not know, a dark thing swirling inside of her, or perhaps one that had followed her here. But when he stroked her hair, the wind would die down, and her voice gradually sank until she slept soundly again, like it never happened at all.
One of these nights, he though he heard her whisper a name in her sleep, but he couldn’t make out what it was. It was the only time he saw her cry, but it was just the hint of a tear on her closed black eyelashes.
She permitted him to touch her often, and soon became needy for it. Her initial wariness became a catlike yearning, and she would often sit in his presence in the anticipation that he would run his hands across her head and cheeks, caressing every inch of her body. She was like a perfect doll to him. He enjoyed undressing her in the bathroom, running his coarse fingers across every inch of her perfectly soft skin, from the soles of her feet to the rubbery skin behind her ears. To make it more comfortable for her, he began heating the water in the tub beforehand. The sweet burning of the hot water against her cold skin was bliss to Six’s little body, and she was often reluctant to leave the bath until the water had gotten completely cold.
The tall man liked to sit in the armchair with Six in his lap. Sometimes he would read her books from the study, but sometimes he just stroked her hair, enjoying the feeling of her warmth as she affectionately leaned against him. One day, he ventured to pull back her bangs and kiss her large forehead. The day after, he kissed her cheek, and when she did not resist, he kissed the other one and then her neck. The compulsion to share every inch of his burning love with her was overwhelming. The day after that, he kissed her arms and then her legs. Both were softer and thicker now that she was better fed. Six seemed to like it, because when the following day came, she waited expectantly on the tall man’s armchair for the kisses to come.
Six didn’t seem to understand these affectionate gestures at first, but the more they carried on, the more she seemed to like it. What Six enjoyed most was to have her skin teased in every place, whether by fingers or lips. She liked it when he scratched her back and nape when they were in bed, and she liked it when she ran his hand up and down her leg while they were sitting together. Six soon discovered that the tall man would give her the nice feelings whenever she wanted it, and become bolder with requesting it. She would wordlessly point to a part of her body, and he would obediently begin running his hands across it, licking and nibbling the skin of the desired area. She tasted so sweet.
One night, the tall man lay in bed with Six, the two of them facing the window with the blue light of the moon shining in. Her tiny back was pressed against his chest, and his hand was on her bare leg. She wore nothing but her usual undergarments, a loose shirt and cotton panties he’d sewn for her. The man lowered his head to hers, and whispered a low breath into her ear:
“I love you, Six.”
Then he placed his mouth on top of her ear, and began to nibble. Six flinched, her legs stretching out and then curling up, but all that came out of her mouth was a little wince of surprise. The tall man licked the inside of her ear, then kissed beneath it. His hands slid up her bent leg and into her crotch, pressing softly against her hidden vagina. He felt the softness of her labia through the thin fabric. Six slid back ever so slightly. Her leg opened and then shut to welcome his fingers, and soon he was masturbating her. This went on for a few minutes, until the man’s own internal libido grew too strong to proceed, and he let her go. Six breathed heavily for a few minutes after, but the tall man never saw her face to observe what she was feeling.
Then they both fell asleep, under the blanketing light of the moon.
~
It wasn’t long after that when Six began to hunger for the tall man.
Her hunger was something he had not expected. She had always been a voracious eater, but this hunger was physical, a sexual hunger that charged through her tiny body. Whereas he had spent so long tasting her, it was now her turn to taste him. When they sat in the armchair together, she would straddle her legs over his lap and nibble all over his neck and face with great urgency, all while he drowned in the pleasure of her tiny wet kisses. A few times it was almost painful as she nearly bit into him, but she didn’t seem to want to hurt him. This little animal was an enigma, yet she loved him as much as he loved her.
They began taking baths together, sharing the narrow porcelain space and the water as Six clung to him, her slippery butt rubbing over the surface of his penis. When they got out of the bath, they sat by the furnace in their towels to dry off. Six boldly spread her legs across the floor, having grown addicted to the farm feeling of the heat against her kitty. The tall man watched her lie back on the carpet and arch her legs like a cat stretching out, her pink nipples poking out as the towel fell from her navel. When she saw him, they stared at each other for a few moments, before the tall man walked over and picked her up.
He set her down on the armchair, then got on his knees on the floor, and brought his face into her vagina. He could feel the heat from the furnace that had lingered on her pink skin. He licked tentatively at first, but soon was overwhelmed with the hunger for her flesh. He buried his nose into her labia and began boldly eating her out. The hot, dry skin slowly became wetter. Six didn’t make a sound at first, only bobbing her waist up and down and staring at the top of his head. Then he licked her clitoris, and she quietly squeaked. Soundlessly, the tall man continued to feed on her wetness, relishing in the obvious pleasure of her movements, the way she pushed harder against him in want. Her craving for sexual pleasure was strong. These little moments after their baths became routine.
He taught her to give him blowjobs not long after. She was dying to eat him too, so he told her he could give her something of his to consume. They did it in the bathroom, with him sitting on the side of the tub and her innocently caressing his long member up and down, feeling its rough contours. She didn’t seem to get it at first, but had no fear of the object, and within moments had begun to lick and nibble as she always did. Her little tongue made his whole body tingle with arousal. He felt her soft breath as she opened her mouth over the top, sucking dutifully to make the good stuff come out.
When it finally did, it bubbled up like a geyser and drooled down the sides. She tasted it hesitantly, and then took a second sip. A moment later, she dragged her tongue from the root upward, gathering a long string of semen that pooled in her little mouth. As soon as she swallowed it, she went for the rest, hardly stopping for a moment to breathe. The tall man had never seen her like this. She drank vigorously, almost violently, craving every last molecule of his substance. When it all ran dry, she began sucking the tip again, wanting more to come out. It was only then that he had to stop her, practically prying her little head off of his penis.
Six licked her lips, and gazed at him hungrily from behind her wet bangs. He could tell she wasn’t nearly satisfied. She wanted more. So much more.
Her hunger had found its perfect taste.