In the next room, Divi sat up in his bed flushed with cold sweat. Gasping for air, he looked around, trying to convince himself to wake up, looking through the shadows for Tris' reassuring figure.

But he wasn't there.

All there were are nothing but monstrous shadows, giant hands like withering branches trying to grab him and the worms – he could feel them crawling all over his body, nipping at his skin, chewing through his flesh, squirming...whispering...

Divi fought the tears threatening to blur his vision and clog his throat. His breathing was heavy and he shut his eyes tight, repeatedly telling himself it's just a dream, but whenever he looked around again the creatures just seemed to be getting closer, huddling around him and grabbing his clothes.

Stricken with terror and blinded by tears, the frightened child stumbled out of the bed and hurried to the door, feeling around for the cold handle while the ghouls were breathing down his back. He could feel them tugging at him, trying to drag him back to bed and back to sleep before he can reach out for help.

By some way of miracle he managed to get out, but couldn't tell where he was running nor where he should or wants to go; looking over his shoulder, he saw the horrors crawling out of the room to hunt him down.

Divi tried to run faster, but after a few steps he bumped into something in the dark that made him stop in his place – not one of the walls, but slightly softer.

A sharp intake of air saturated with the smell of charcoal burned his airways, but he could tell immediately who this was, even before looking up through the darkness and meeting the predatory-like golden eyes, glaring down at him, looming menacingly.

The kid thought his heart was about to burst when Vince turned around and away from him; he felt as if the floor fell from under his feet and the ceiling stretched up high, encasing him like an animal in a cage with the rest of the monsters.

“Don't go!” he called out, voice chocked and broken., reaching out to try and stop him “The creatures! T-they-!”

A sharp pain struck through Divi's face, abruptly cutting his stream of hysterical cries. His little body collapsed to the floor, and the whispers were silenced.

Hesitant, he turned to look at Vince as he flipped up the light switch, flooding the room with yellow, comforting light.

“What's with you, little shit?!” he growled at the frightened child, somewhat taken aback as well by the sudden encounter.

Divi's breathes were short and quick, and a mixture of pain and panic adorned his face as he held his hand to it. “I-I....T-the creatures...” he could hardly find his voice in the face of the fire-breather's fury.

“What creatures?!” Vince looked around, even spinning once in his place. “There's nothing here! Only one 'creature', and I don't think the faceless guy bothers you too much!”

“Wh-where-?

“Where who? Tris?! Sleeping!” he barked and approached the kid, making him scramble back.

“Sleeping? But....t-the-”

“The nightmares? You're worried about the nightmares catching him?” the performer ground his teeth, waiting for the kid to admit his fears, clenching his hands seeing him nod. “Well, guess what? He wants to see them! And it's your fault, because you wouldn't stop talking about them!”

“N-no...They'll hurt him.” Divi mumbled and turned around, feet losing traction on the dusty floor as he tried to take off running to the other bedroom. “Tri-!”

“C'mere!” Vince grabbed the kid by the collar of his shirt, dragging him back before he could make two steps in that direction. “They won't hurt him!” he roared, livid, and turned Divi to face him again. “They can't hurt him, and they can't hurt you either! You can't keep running away from that stupid overactive imagination of yours!”

“But I-”

“No!”

“They-”

“Enough!”

“It's not-”

“STOP!”

Divi finally fell silent after not being able to get a single word in. He felt a lump in his throat, slowly squeezing its way to his eyes. His vision became blurry again and breathing became harder as he noticed his face was getting wet.

“What're you-? Oh, no. Come on, don't do that!” Vince huffed and put Divi back on his feet, watching him teeter as his dampened skin lost color within seconds.

He cursed under his breath and scratched the back of his neck, unsure what to do now that the kid was quiet, but crying.

“Hey...Hey!” he raised his voice again to grab the kid's attention, enough to even stop his whimpering. Vince walked to the kitchen to get some paper towels and returned to give them to the kid to wipe his face. “Enough of that, alright?”

“W-with what?” Divi held back the tears as best as he could, rubbing his eye.

“This, all the creatures, and nightmares, and...” Vince tried pointed to somewhere in particular, but ended up gesturing at the entire living space. “Just...Stop.”

“B-but I...I don't know h-how to make them stop...” Divi mumbled as the tears welled up in his eyes again, and he quickly brought the paper towel to his face.

Vince tried to keep himself cool and collected. “Just remember that they aren't real.” All this dealing with dreams and imaginary fiends has stretched his patience to a limit.

“But they-”

“Look real, I know.” he cut the kid off again and knelt in front of him. “Look...Maybe Tris can't dream, but I can, and I've had my fair share of nightmares. You understand?”

Divi nodded slowly, fingers gently tightening around the moist paper until they made holes in it.

“It really is all in your head, and the more you're afraid of them, the more real they seem.” It took every ounce of self control Vince had to keep his voice leveled. “But they can't hurt you, even if you think you feel like they're grabbing onto you, or something.”

“But I saw...” Divi's voice trailed off upon seeing Vince rolling his eyes, huffing. “I mean...They were here when I woke up...”

“Sometimes...” Vince stopped, trying to recall when was the last time he went through something similar. “Sometime we are still a little bit inside of the dream when we wake up. That's probably what happened to you. You thought you were awake, and you were actually still asleep. Alright?”

Divi nodded quietly, forcing the lump back down his throat.

“Good.”Vince sighed and stood back up, but before he could rush the kid back to bed, the little one suddenly stepped closer and threw his arms around his waist, hugging him tightly. Slightly appalled by the initial, sudden show of affection and tried to pry the kid away from him at first, until he remembered what Tris had told him several months before about the fire tricks.

Looking down at Divi, he eventually stopped resisting and lowered his posture a little to hug him back.

Surprisingly, Tris' theory worked, and Divi almost immediately let go of him, smiling a little before he turned to go back to his own room.

Vince's eyes followed until the kid got to his room. He then shot a glance at Tris' door too, where he was exploring the wonders of sleep.

Staying in this place has only gotten weirder by the day for him the more time has passed, so much that he considered rejoining a traveling circus again. He abandoned the thought, however, upon realizing that both his roommates just might get lost in their own minds if he wasn't around...

But why did he even care?

Let them die, he thought while walking back to his room.

He recalled the absolute loathing sensation he felt for the kid when Tris first brought him, still unconscious, out of nowhere. Trying to think back, he couldn't even fathom why he felt this way.

Sure, one could argue he just doesn't like kids. Years of circus performances would have the disdain of those disrespectful, snot-nosed brats rooted in you.

But something changed now. Where did he get such strength to patiently talk to the kid?

From the second Divi stormed out, Vince knew that if one slap across the face won't do the job, a second one will. So what made him calmly talk him through it?

He threw himself on the bed, his frustrated grunt accompanied by the screams of the rustic bed springs. The idea of him softening up to the kid when he started crying was unbearable, and he hoped it'd go away once he wakes up. He never thought something this silly could get to him.

But, Vince wondered as his eyes slowly closed shut, maybe now all the yammering about sleep and dreams will finally stop.

When Tris woke up his body felt rigid, and he found himself wriggling in his place, as if shedding a cocoon, to regain motor function and sit up, putting his feet on the floor.

He had no way of telling how long it has been, and him being covered with dust wasn't very reassuring. By the blackened sky, it was only apparent that it was either late at night, or just before dawn.

A quick glance at his coat calmed him down, seeing that it was much cleaner compared to him, suggesting that it was just the dust from the bed that stuck to him.

While getting up and wearing his coat, his thoughts trailed back to the interesting ordeal he went through. In fact, he felt like it wasn't over.

He didn't see the nightmares, as Divi depicted them. Instead he just saw some brief flashes at the beginning, each too short to actually pick up something out of them. Nothing more than mixed blotches of colors that he couldn't interpret in any way.

Each coming flash almost completely erased any trace of the flashes before, making it harder to piece them together.

At some point another element presented itself – sound. Voices.

While Tris was certain he did the best he could to block out and surrounding sounds, one persistent tune dropped into his mind and wouldn't fade away. It wasn't really a tune, rather a cringe-inducing sound, jarring, like fingernails on a chalkboard – only they were both made of metal.

The mere thought of the sound made him feel uncomfortable, and even more when he realized he was still hearing it, here and there, even with no two metallic materials rubbing against each other in sight.

Whenever he looked around to search, it sounded like the sound came from somewhere else, like something's grinding at the back of his head. He even reached to the back of neck, feeling around and releasing a sigh of relief when he felt nothing unusual.

After searching to no avail. Tris decided to ignore the voices the best he could, hoping some routine distraction will drown it down.

Once properly dressed, Tris walked out and looked at the two adjacent doors. Divi was still asleep, and according to the ash-stained coat and black hat, it appeared that Vince was also at home, most likely sleeping off another nightly gig.

Feeling at ease that the two are sleeping soundly, Tris went to the kitchen to prepare a light breakfast, this time preparing a plate for Vince two. While he didn't share Divi's affinity to vegetables, Tris thought he'd appreciate the gesture.

The next few days went by similar to each other.

Divi's fears have slowly faded away, and from one day to another he became more and more active. Tris kept a record in his journal, marking that things are back to normal.

At least, that was on Divi's end.

As Tris stopped hearing the scratching noises over time and almost forgot about it for some reason, he noticed a new abnormality – Vince's fatigue has been steadily increasing, despite his sleeping habit seemingly remaining unchanged.

It was almost as if the more energetic Divi became, the more exhausted Vince was, until he hardly ever left his room other than when leaving for work, after spending most if not all of this time – as far as Tris could tell – sleeping in.

Within days it became so bad that he wouldn't even reach his room, and crash on the couch. He began looking paler, and his eyes became bloodshot.

Divi took upon himself to ask Vince several times if he was sick, to which Vince answered that he doesn't get sick, just tired.

Sickness was a novelty to Tris, as he couldn't recall coming across such a state before, not in person and not with any of his partners while still on the road show. He couldn't tell how Divi knew about this, but according to the kid it is a state in which the body doesn't function as it should, 'for all sorts of reasons', as he briefly explained.

It appeared that he, too, had a pretty vague idea about this, but it did help Tris understand why the kid wondered about Vince's health and tried to find some sort of cause.

His efforts were in vain, however, as the fire-breather simply insisted on being left alone, and that he already took some days off so he can properly rest.

Unable to really do anything against it, both Divi and Tris decided to just let him be.

Maybe some time to recompose was truly in order for him to be back to his old self.