The Devastator

I didn’t play Village all week last week due to being on night shift and my desire to ensure my well-being was taken care of before doing anything absorbing as a video game new to me.

By the time I got back to it, first I stormed the stronghold assuming Karl Heisenberg was luring me into a trap, but instead he left his flask there assuming I would perish against a lycan army. When that was proven to be wrong, I had to meet him at his factory. (Finally!)

I spent a good amount of hours getting lost in there, even though the ambience was quite pleasant to listen to, when I’m not fleeing from one of his inventions! My friend tells me that thing is called the Sturm and it didn’t scare me as much as what was in Donna’s house, but enough to make me run like hell. I’ll certainly have some interesting things to talk about when it’s time to review the game.

But in this dream, I was wandering around his factory as myself. It could be a continuation from the last dream where he abducted me but let me roam freely once he saw I had good taste in music!

I woke up inside the bed in the small windowless room he gave to me, to the sound of conveyors, grinders and cranes lifting junk. There was a single light on the ceiling and a letter on the nightstand that said.

Get comfortable, buttercup. Remember I’m letting you stay somewhere cozy since you’re damn interesting. You’d be one of my experiments if you weren’t worth my time, always remember that. Go wherever you like, just try not to get yourself caught in the grinder or ventilation shafts.

I expect you not to play around with anything you shouldn’t touch, but other than that you know where to find me. ~KH

I rose from the bed and decided to explore the factory a little: walking through the dark corridors with red lights, and sound of machinery at work. I came to the railing and saw tons of raised conveyor belts with bodies being transported to who knows where, along with some Ferris wheel carrying more of them. I wiped the disturbed looked from my face and thought it was best to not confront Karl about what kind of work he was doing.

The last dream I had about him, turns out that took place right in the entrance to his factory, which looked like a garage. Now, I was in the very heart of it.

I climbed down a nearby ladder and walked along the turning corridors and through the rooms with several workbenches. After one path kept taking me back to the same spot with a locked gate, I realized I was lost. The room had a strange machine with a square-shaped pressure plate, and a large pitcher full of melted metal. I guessed it was something for creating solid objects of whatever could fit inside it.

On a nearby desk were some files, I read through them and discovered Karl’s hatred for Mother Miranda and another about one of his experiments he hoped to use against her.

Then, coming from a vent below was a noise that sounded like someone powering up a chainsaw until it began to roar, but it wasn’t cutting through anything. I pressed my ear against it, unaware that the pressure I was applying, suddenly caused it to flip open like a trapdoor and I fell in before I could pull myself away.

I landed in an enormous open room with piles of bodies ripped to shreds and the bloodstains were dry, and in the center was a larger creature whose torso and head was replaced by mechanical parts and a large set of saw-blades to form a propeller like the blades in a blender. An alarm screeched throughout the room completely blocking out my screams for help once the monster’s propeller spun rapidly as it lurched towards me. I ran to the other side of the room where there was a large gate but it didn’t budge no matter how hard I pulled on the handles.

It was like the Sturm’s places to wander in the lower depths of the factory is where Karl sent intruders into be executed, like Jabba did with the Rancor in his palace.

Karl’s voice then interrupted the alarm over an intercom, and he had many of its speakers installed in almost every room I had been to in his factory:

Now what you freak? What the fuck are you doing? Leave her alone, she’s special! That’s it, I’ve had it with you!

I don’t know if it was just me, but I could detect a significant change in his voice, almost mechanical. All of the lords except Donna have major transformations, and I know a little about what Karl’s looks like thanks to my friend’s fanfiction. Theories suggest the lords can revert back to normal from their mutated forms.

The large door burst open and an enormous metal behemoth entered the room with buzzsaws spinning and clashed with the Sturm as steel met steel and the immense sound of which recoiled at the sight of the second machine present which the latter then said:

Don’t come near her again!

This time I recognized the voice and screamed out his name, begging him to stop before he could destroy one of his greatest weapons. The monster turned to look at me, seeing the tears in my eyes as I said I wanted to help him and that I cared about him.

The Sturm fled to the far side of the room trying to escape as I approached the mutated Karl slowly and I could almost make out a face among the mechanical parts. Then the circular saw blades ceased to spin and then pieces of metal began to float away from the creature, discarding onto the floor with the existing piles and it shrunk in size more and more until there was nothing left but Karl himself, human again, and exhausted. Then he fell to the floor. I rushed to his side and tried to lift him up. He opened his eyes to see me and I started tearing up again, he asked me what the hell I did and why I was crying, and I had no answer, so he instead demanded I help him to his quarters, and helped him up, draping his right arm over my shoulder.

Sometime later, I sat by Karl’s side as he woke up in his bed and looked at me asking:

What the fuck were you thinking? You made me almost destroy one of my finest inventions!

I argued with him that he was the one who took it far by scaring me with his mutated form suggesting that he might have a soft spot for me if he was willing to be that protective when saving me, which I ended my contradiction with thanking him. He didn’t say anything for almost two minutes and then told me to leave the room and go find something to do, but not before thanking me for calming him down.

I spent the next several hours wandering the factory, steering clear of any vents or stairs that could lead to the lower levels where the Sturm was lurking. Eventually I found a lighter on one of the workbenches which I assumed he used for his cigars. I made my way back to his quarters and knocked, there was no answer but the door was open.

The bed, was unmade and his hammer leaned against the corner. I placed the lighter on the desk and moved his notebook out of the way and then a piece of paper slipped out of it. I hesitated to pick it but couldn’t help to keep things neat for him, so I gave in, and when I read it, it was full of things written about me, like he was uncertain about his feelings, given all the time he spent in seclusion in his factory. I blushed and was startled by his voice over the intercom.

Instead of snooping through my things buttercup, meet me in the grinder shaft. Yeah I said don’t go there but this is an exception. Don’t keep me waiting.

His voice sounded calmer than usual and I was surprised to see that he didn’t even swear this time. I reluctantly headed there and found him standing at the railing of the catwalk, overlooking the massive fan blade above as it shredded the metal scrap into smaller pieces and it rained down into the depths below. Despite the continuous grinding, it wasn’t as loud as the other machines in the factory.

He turned to look at me, and when he didn’t say anything, I walked over to him and explained to him that I was sorry if I looked like I was snooping through his stuff, I was just returning something of his that belonged to him. Then, when I reached him, instead of him answering, he suddenly clasped his arms around my waist, pulling me up against him and kissed me passionately that I couldn’t even react other than kiss him back while wondering where that came from all of a sudden. It was like he had never kissed a woman before in his life, yet he kissed me as if he had been longing to do so forever. At some point, I had to try and pull away to breathe because he wouldn’t stop and he wasn’t gentle, then eventually I gave up trying to breathe and just let myself succumb to him as he then held my face in his hands like the most precious thing ever.

When he finally pulled away I was at a loss for words, and then he released me apologizing and looked confused, he stormed off in frustration leaving me on the catwalk. Then and there I realized I had feelings for him and my tears were starting to flow again, his were mutual but he was clearly unable to admit it given his long-time self-centered attitude. I sat down against the railing and cried for a while until I no longer could. Then I decided not to confront him about that kiss, I knew my feelings and now he needed to figure out his. I left the chamber with the determination even with my eyes red from crying.

And that is where this dream sequence ends. It took me a few days to finish this one, I was meant to publish it on Tuesday this week but my imagination started unfolding that it transformed into this short story.

Looking at it now, and the other one I wrote, this screams fanfiction material! Don’t worry, it only takes a dream or two (or a fragment of a dream where I imagine the rest to fill in the gaps, and transfer it to a blog post) to inspire me to write a fanfiction of myself with the featured character! Let’s just say these dream posts are rough drafts with ideas of what will occur in the real story that goes on my Wattpad.

I still have to face Karl in the game, I know nothing about what his boss fight will be like, just the opening part before I realized that okay, I think at this point I need to stop and just play the game because I clearly want to now. There’s nothing more difficult than fighting a character you’re in love with, no matter how fun it turns out to be. But I should try not to see it that way because, well, who knows, maybe it will be fun!

Until then, I better get back to wandering in his factory.

👽Emily