Mr. Sandman
Page 4
Dream Lord lifts his hypnogogic whistle to his mouth, and blows into it, producing a high-pitched whine.
Page 20 panel 5
The Dream Lord glares at the Stranger as the wall behind him bursts inward, and a troop of nightmare demons comes charging into the room. The demons are repulsive, squirming and hopping and slobbering, obviously ready to viciously attack.
Dream Lord: As you can see, they're a sociable bunch. They'd like to get to know you better...
Page 20 panel 6
A long panel showing the army of dream beasts swooping and tumbling past the Dream Lord, flashing fangs and claws and about to pounce on the Stranger.
Dream Lord: ...sort of on a first-come, first-served basis.
Stranger: Ha ha! Well, I'll be! If I didn't know better, I would swear you're threatening me with nightmare beasts!
Page 20 panel 7
The Stranger snaps his fingers at the onrushing horde.
Stranger: "E" for effort, Kubla, but really, you know what they say...
Page 21 (7 panels)
Page 21 panel 1
Stranger: ...You just can't find good help anymore!
The creatures stop in their tracks and whirl around to face the Dream Lord.
Page 21 panel 2
Shocked, the Dream Lord is beaten to the floor by the creatures as they fly across the room and attack him instead of the Stranger.
Dream Lord: No!! Get off!! Aaarrgh! Get off me!
Page 21 panel 3
Dream Lord: Get away!
He flings them away and disintegrates them all with a flare of energy.
(His nose is still long)
Dream Lord: I don't know how you did that, but the game is over!
Page 21 panel 4
Dream Lord: Now, you will burn at my hands!
The Dream Lord gestures, and the dining hall disappears. He and the Stranger are suddenly floating in a hell-like environment, surrounded by leaping flames, volcanoes, and fireballs.
Stranger: Such histrionics, Kubla! Haven't you gotten it through your thick skull yet? None of this is necessary! I'm impervious!
Page 21 panel 5
The Dream Lord gestures again, and the environment changes again. This time, the two men are standing in a prehistoric jungle, and a Tyrannosaurus is trying to snap up the Stranger in its jaws.
Dream Lord: You are nothing in my land! Less than nothing! I will obliterate you!
Stranger: Ho hum. They say that the smallest dogs always bark loudest, don't they? Give it up, twinkle toes.
Page 21 panel 6
Dream Lord: You will suffer!
Stranger: Oh, Kubla, your food chain is all wrong! I am not your prey! You remind me of a rabbit threatening a tiger!
The Stranger waves his arm, and the Tyrannosaurus topples dead to the ground.
Page 21 panel 7
Stranger: Unfortunately, it is most likely you who will suffer. Even now, your gilded seams are splitting, your merry paradise deflating like a stuck balloon! You can't even keep your own mind together, can you?
Dream Lord: No more! I'll destroy you!
Again, the environment has changed, this time to an area of deep space filled with plummeting meteors and fiery comets.
Page 22 (8 panels)
Page 22 panel 1
The Dream Lord gestures, and the men are surrounded by deep blue ocean.
Dream Lord: Drown, you bastard! Die!
Stranger: Sorry to disappoint you, Kubla, but I simply cannot comply. In fact, as much as I'm enjoying myself, I'm afraid it is now I who must call a halt to this game...
Page 22 panel 2
Stranger: ...like so.
The Stranger raises one arm high in the air, energy springs from his fingertips, and suddenly, the environment changes again, this time under his control. Now, the men stand on a barren gray plain, surrounded by dead bodies dressed in military uniforms from many wars in different ages.
Dream Lord: What did you do? I'm the only one with power like that!
Page 22 panel 3
Stranger: Obviously, Kubla, you've been reading the tabloids too long. Welcome! I have prepared this place just for you!
Dream Lord (stunned, looking around the plain): My...All these bodies...
Page 22 panel 4
Stranger: Yes, they are quite dead, aren't they? Why don't you introduce yourself, and mingle a little? You'll be seeing quite a lot of them from now on.
Dream Lord: Where...are we?
Page 22 panel 5
Stranger: Well, it's certainly not a campground, is it? Welcome to Waterloo, Kubla...and Gallipoli, and the Little Big Horn, and Masada and Bataan. Welcome to your new home sweet home.
The Stranger gestures around him and smiles broadly.
Page 22 panel 6
The Dream Lord suddenly leaps at the Stranger, flailing helplessly with rage.
Dream Lord: Nooo!! I'm the Dream Lord!
Stranger: So you keep telling me. I must admit, though, that I'm disillusioned to see you reduced so soon to animal violence.
Page 22 panel 7
The Stranger repels the Dream Lord's blows, then grabs him by the throat and chokes him mercilessly.
Stranger: It simply takes my breath away.
Page 22 panel 8
The Stranger lifts the Dream Lord, by the throat, high above him.
Stranger: I would have thought you were above such behavior.
Page 23 (8 panels)
Page 23 panel 1
The Stranger hurls the Dream Lord onto a pile of bloody bodies. At this point, Dream Lord is reduced to a whimpering shell.
Dream Lord: Unhh! Help! Bogg, Gorr...help me!
Stranger: Shut down the telegraph, Adams. Your S.O.S. is useless. All your little creatures are gone now, chasing their tails in doggie heaven. That screaming will just put nodes on your vocal cords.
Page 23 panel 2
Stranger (kicking Dream Lord hard in the stomach as he lies on top of the bodies): My my...will you just look at yourself? You're a bloody mess. What will your friends think, hmm?
Page 23 panel 3
The Stranger kicks Dream Lord again, harder, in the face.
Stranger: You are mighty, aren't you, Kubla? A mighty hero, a great warrior! More like a mannequin, I'd say. A scarecrow, a façade, a crumbling storefront about to be demolished!
Page 23 panel 4
The Stranger stands above the Dream Lord, mocking him and laughing cruelly.
Narrator: The man in my dream beat me and kicked me. I tried to fight back, I tried...but he was just too strong.
Stranger: You know, Kubla, I'm glad we got together. it was nice to chat and gossip for a change, and the dinner was superb. All told, I would much rather break filet mignon instead of bread at a last supper.
Dream Lord: Who...who are you?
Page 23 panel 5
Stranger: Don't you recognize me, Adams? I'm flabbergasted! After all we've been through together? This is inexcusable!
Dream Lord: I've...never seen you before...in my life!
Page 23 panel 6
Stranger: Oh, you've seen me. I am your nastiest dream, Adams, your most awful nightmare! I have come to life to devour you!
Dream Lord: Impossible! The Dream Lord doesn't dream!
Page 23 panel 7
Stranger: Wrong! False! Go directly to jail! I am your dream, Adams! I am your Bogeyman! You have tried to forget me, to exile my memory as you set up your cotton candy kingdom in dreamland! But you could not...you never will!
Page 23 panel 8
Stranger: I have returned to make you atone for what you did. Your crimes are atrocious, unforgivable, demanding only one penance, one possible penalty! You stupid little fish...I have come to kill you!
Narrator: He insulted me. He threw accusations at me, and I could not deny them.
Page 24 (9 panels)
Page 24 panel 1
Stranger (as he again kicks Dream Lord in the face): And now, I really must be
going. Time waits for no man, and all that. I do hate to cut this short, but I can tarry with you no longer.
Narrator: The man had to leave.
Page 24 panel 2
Stranger (as he draws a long, bloody sword from the scabbard of a dead soldier at his feet): Thank you for all your hospitality, Kubla. I did enjoy myself, but I'm afraid we will not do it again in the future.
Page 24 panel 3
The Dream Lord cringes as the Stranger approaches him with the blade.
Dream Lord: No...no, please don't! Don't kill me!
Page 24 panel 4
Closeup of the Stranger's sinister face.
Stranger: What was that?
Page 24 panel 5
Dream Lord (with tears in his eyes): I...I said...please don't...kill me!
Page 24 panel 6
Stranger: Say "pretty please."
Page 24 panel 7
Dream Lord: P-pretty please...
Page 24 panel 8
Stranger: Go to hell.
He plunges the sword into the Dream Lord's chest.
Page 24 panel 9
The Stranger waves to Dream Lord and disappears.
Stranger: And with that, I bid you "Goodnight, sweet prince." Happy dreams!
Narrator: The man killed me, then left. He vanished into thin air.
Page 25 (1 panel)
Page 25 panel 1
Full-page splash panel, showing the Dream Lord sprawled lifelessly on the heap of dead bodies on the desolate plain. The sword is stuck in his bloody chest.
Narrator (in box at top of page): When I woke up this morning, I thought about the dream I had, and wondered what it meant. I thought about all the horrible people, and the lousy things that kept happening to me. The more I thought it over, the more sense the dream made.
Narrator (at bottom of page): I think it was a sign. I think I will kill myself.
Continued....
END OF PART ONE
Part II: Long Night's Journey Into Death
Page 1 (5 panels)
This page will consist of a series of small panels within a large splash panel.
Page 1 panel 1
Quote: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow/Out of this stony rubbish?"
Closeup of the sword that was plunged into the Dream Lord's chest in the last chapter, surrounded by a bloody stain where it punctured his heart.
Page 1 panel 2
Quote: "Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only! A heap of broken images, where the sun beats..."
Medium shot of the Dream Lord, from the waist up; he is lying, exhausted, suffering, and near death, amid the twisted and decaying bodies of thousands of unknown soldiers. The Dream Lord is still dying on the endless battlefield where the Bogeyman defeated and stabbed him. This panel should be drawn at an angle, or upside-down.
Page 1 panel 3
Quote: "....And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief! And the dry stone no sound of water! Only there is shadow under this red rock..."
A wider shot of the Dream Lord's sprawled body atop the limitless stretch of corpses, with a dead, scraggly tree needling up from the rubble near him.
Page 1 panel 4
Quote: "Come in under the shadow of this red rock! And I will show you something different from either! Your shadow at morning striding behind you! Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you."
Closeup of the Dream Lord's shocked, mesmerized face; he still wears his mask, but the long nose given him by the Bogeyman is now gone.
Page 1 panel 5
(The splash panel)
Quote:
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
—from 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot
This final line is at the bottom of the splash panel. The panel itself is a wide view of the sprawled, agonized Dream Lord among the corpses and destruction. The scene is suffused with a harsh, orange light, like that from a desert sun.
Page 2 (10 panels)
Page 2 panel 1
Flashback image of the Bogeyman, from the last chapter.
Bogeyman: You stupid little fish...I have come to kill you!
Page 2 panel 2
Profile of the Dream Lord, still lying on the ground with the sword protruding from his chest.
Narrator: Death comes slowly in a dream. Time bends, distends, curls in upon itself like an armadillo. Facing a final precipice, minds retreat to safer ground.
Page 2 panel 3
Another flashback of the threatening Bogeyman
Bogeyman: I am your nastiest dream, Adams, your most awful nightmare! I have come to life to devour you!
Page 2 panel 4
Narrator: The borders of delusion and reality, already smoky from sleep, disappear. Logic and sensation spiral into the sky like kites.
The Dream Lord tilts his head back and looks up at the gray sky of the massacre plain.
Page 2 panel 5
Another flashback: the Dream Lord's memory is beginning to drift aimlessly back and forth.
Bogeyman: Say "pretty please."
Page 2 panel 6
Wide shot of vultures circling over the Dream Lord, winged silhouettes in the blazing orange sun.
Dream Lord (in a whisper): Pretty please.
Narrator: The sharp edge of extinction is muffled. Explosions become kisses. The frigid, sudden dives flow into sensuous ballet.
Page 2 panel 7
Bogeyman (in flashback): Go to hell.
Page 2 panel 8
Narrator: Death in a dream is kind.
Dream Lord (his face contorted and crying, tears running down into his ears): Leave me...alone... (His voice is broken, failing) ...please..
Page 2 panel 9
Narrator: There are, of course...
Bogeyman (louder, more of a closeup): Go to hell!
Page 2 panel 10
Narrator: ...certain exceptions.
Dream Lord (writhing and whimpering): No no no no no...
Page 3 (8 panels)
Page 3 panel 1
Closeup of the Bogeyman's screaming mouth.
Bogeyman: Go to Hell!
Page 3 panel 2
There is a memory image of a short, fat girl in her early 20's, yelling at the Dream Lord.
Girl: Go to hell, Emmett! You bastard!
Dream Lord (his monologue in a narrative box): Who is she?
Page 3 panel 3
Wider shot of the heavy girl, her face now turned away and hidden in her hand. She is sitting at a kitchen table, dressed in a bathrobe, holding a cup of hot coffee which spills onto the floor as it tilts in her shaky hand.