Maddox Cheshire Grin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Maddox Cheshire Grin poured his own dream into the vat and watched it come out gray. He wanted one perfect nightmare in every bottle. One sip, and the drinker should sink into his or her worst dream and never climb out. That was the whole point of Cryptid Cola. But tonight the brew ran thin, like weak tea. He set down the bottle and counted his ten hats out of habit. The fog that usually wrapped his factory had faded to a pale haze. It hung low over the industrial tanks and did nothing. Without thick fog, his sleep came shallow. Shallow sleep made shallow dreams. Shallow dreams made cola that tasted like old soda and trapped no one. He pressed a paw to the glass chamber of the soda machine. Green fizz churned beside brown fizz. He had drained three nights of dreaming into it. The brew should writhe. Instead it sat flat. "A joke with no punchline," Maddox said to the empty factory. "How embarrassing." He needed denser fog. He needed a deeper place to dream. So he carried an empty bottle out to the old well behind the tanks. Pale green light rose from its mouth. Thin shapes drifted up like faces half remembered. He had always kept clear of it. The haze down there felt too heavy, even for him. Maddox leaned over the rim. Cold air crawled up his whiskers. Down in the dark, the fog did not drift. It coiled. It pulled upward in a slow purple spiral, thick as rope, shot through with green veins. He grinned wider than he meant to. "There you are," he said. He climbed over the edge and dropped. The spiral of mist caught him and lowered him, slow, into the well. The deeper he sank, the thicker the fog grew. It filled his mouth. It filled his ears. The faces pressed close and did not blink. Maddox let his eyes shut. Here the dreaming came fast and deep. Shadows swarmed him, dog-shaped and toothed, long serpent necks, eyes in every corner. His own grin stared back from a dozen dark shapes. He did not wake. He sank further, and the nightmares sank with him, rich and whole. When he climbed out at dawn, the empty bottle was full. The liquid inside did not sit still. It turned on itself, slow and hungry, full of small moving things. He held it to the weak light and saw shapes swim across the glass. This was no thin brew. This was the real thing. Maddox carried it back to the factory and corked it. One bottle. He had proof now that the deep fog of the well could bottle a true nightmare. But one bottle would not fill a shelf. To brew the trap in bulk, he would need far more of that coiling fog than the well gave up in a single night. And something down there had watched him take the first.