The X-Men characters, and all other recognizable characters are copyright to Marvel Entertainment Group. This work of FanFiction is not meant to infringe on that copyright or defame Marvel Comics or the X-Men and related characters in any way.
Copyright: This work of FanFiction and the original characters described within are the intellectual property of K-NICE and her IRL persona. No copying, distributing or editing of this material is permitted without the express permission of the creator, K-Nice, under United States copyright law. Relax, I won't sue you. I'll just ask my Cousin Tony to choke you with his dreds.
This goes out to QueenB and Kristina for making me think about Psylocke. This is set after the Crimson Dawn and Angel's transformation.Disturbing imagary dead ahead.Self-mutilation is bad (as if you didn't know that).
© K-Nice 1999
Nightmares: Psylocke
by K-Nice
Ants.
There are ants in her bed.
She can feel their little legs brushing against her skin. She had played with an ant on occasion as a child and remembers thrilling to the tickling of those little limbs. Now, she jumps and twitches as they wriggle across her epidermis.
Maybe they aren't ants. They could be Nannites, or bees or little tiny aliens from the Microverse..
She kicks at the covers until her legs are free. She has to get them off.
NOW!
She leaps out of bed, moving in frantic, jerky movements.
First she shakes her clothes, lifting her nighty away from her honey colored skin. The ants seem to drip from her body.
A moan issues forth from her throat that makes her teeth vibrate.
She rips the clothes from her body, hands clawing at the sheer, loose silk, tearing the fabric.
Her body is covered by a writhing black mass. She sets into her skin, sweeping the insects away, heedless of the scratches she leaves on her skin. Yet there are still more. They are crawling back up her legs as fast as she pushs them to the floor.
She rubs her arms furiously then brushs at her legs. She tries to walk to the bathroom this way, but it gives her the appearance of a person stamping their feet to keep warm. She continues onward but makes slow progress.
She can feel them at the nape of her neck, climbing into her hair. She has a quick flash of the word "Lice" and she shakes her head violently. They fall from her hair like ink, trickling into her face. She smacks her own face to shake them off and grips the sides of her hair, knotting it with her fingers.
Lice are dirty, bad, nasty, filth. Her mother warned her about playing with a little girl they saw in town one day. 'Come, love. She might have lice.' This she recalls and in a flash has the solution.
She will cut off her hair.
She is crying, sobbing as she stumbles into the bathroom. She puts a hand on the wall to support herself and reachs into the drawer for the scissors.
She goes straight to her scalp, shearing roughly though her heavy purple hair, creating dark bloody gouges in the top of her head. She has the right side bare to a stubble when she sees the black bugs crawling out of her skin.
She now notices that they are coming out of holes in her arms and legs. They ooze from a bright red hole around her eye.
She sets loose a scream that blends terror and hatred into a fruit smoothie and serves it over shards of glass.
"Warren, that sounded like it came . . ." But there is no longer anybody there to hear the alarm in Scott's voice. He catches a flash of pure white feathers as Warren bolts from the living room and flies up the stairs. Literally.
Scott wonders whether or not to persue. Warren and Betsy have made it clear that they are handling their recent changes and any issues they brought up so he is reluctant to butt in and antagonize them further.
He decides to give Warren time to find out what was going on. If it becomes X-Men business, Scott will be waiting.
Warren's wings, restless with trepidation, drown out the sounds at first but as Warren pushs his way into the bathroom, he can hear the most horrible thing of all.
He sinks to his knees and bellows, "Jean, Scott, someone get in here now!! Oh God!!"
The running footsteps stop at the door. Warren looks up at them, pleading with them to say it was all a bad dream, that all he had to do was wake up . . .
Betsy sits on the floor naked, her skin flickering between Kwannon's Asian tones and the Dark of an Undercloak. One side of her hair is the same long flowing purple he played with at dinner. The other is hacked nearly to the scalp and slick with blood. The only constants are her hands which scraped at her skin with a razor blade, causing dark blood to flow freely onto the cool bathroom tiles.
"Have to get them off of me, get them off me, get them off me, get them off of me, get them off me, get them off me . . . "