~1,000 words, 3.5 minutes
For more context about this story, please see my blog post linked here.
The Onion Boy does not sleep, for night is the time he furtively toils, collecting and consuming dreams. His appetite is never satisfied. He moves on to the next sleeping victim with the prior still weighing freshly in his stomach — for he is sure they will be digested in time for his next meal.
Please, dear reader, if you could spare a moment, I will tell you about the first time The Onion Boy visited me. It was my first year of college, and I had just started dating a beautiful girl with long, flowing amber hair. I clung to every word that spilled out of her coy, curled lips as if it were gospel. We made love under the moon and drank during the day, using what precious time afforded us as young gods. I was deliriously happy.
But fate saw my happiness and could not abide its impetuosity. There was another who began to feel the glowing warmth of her attention. She started to make excuses on the days when we planned to meet. Then she would “forget” her mother was coming into town and be indisposed the whole weekend. I could no longer walk her home from the library at night because she was with her “friends,” all the while careful to avoid using any identifying pronouns that may signal another cock was in the roost. I’d like to say I was patient with her, but I sensed something amiss from the jump.
My suspicions were affirmed after spending many long nights trailing her and dodging behind shrubs when she felt my presence. But she never caught me. Not even that one night, that horrible, dreadful, terrible night I spent perched in the tree outside her window with binoculars. It was then that I finally saw him — her new lover. With gossamer curls draped over his adonis-like face, I knew I could not compete.
That night, I tossed and turned in my sweaty bed, my consciousness adrift in the twilight zone between sleep and wake. Whenever I closed my eyes and tried to drift off, I saw them rolling around in her satin floral sheets. I felt the love and magnificence in her gaze, only for it to curdle from the knowledge that it was promised to another. With each recollection of this horror, I was jolted awake.
This cycle went on for weeks, drifting off to sleep, only for my blood to become electric as I was awakened by my horrible memories. I knew no peace. It was on the third day that I first encountered The Onion Boy.
“Do you miss your delightful fantasies?” he croaked. The aura of death clung to every word that drifted from his mouth. “Replaced by vile visions?”
“Who are you?” I asked shakily.
“I can take it away,” he hissed. “The pain, the suffering, the memories.”
I flicked on my bedside lamp, and there he was, a little boy, no older than thirteen, wearing a Victorian newsboy outfit. He had a shock of shaggy, white-blond hair that stuck out from under his cap and a disquieting grin. His body was pale and decaying, with pock-marked skin that barely clung to his skeleton. Small maggots wriggled in the abscesses that littered his body.
“I am hungry,” he croaked. “Please, allow me to relieve your pain. Allow me to feast!”
“Begone!” I screamed.
His spirit dissipated, but that was not the last of The Onion Boy. He visited me every night, bellowing songs of death and recounting all the dreams he had consumed. All the while, my own nightmares continued to plague me. I couldn’t get the image of her lips pressed against his out of my head.
On the twelfth day, I finally relented. The Onion Boy came, heralded by the stench of rot and decay.
“Are you prepared?” he asked.
“Please,” I begged. “I’ll do anything. Just please make it stop.”
“As you wish,” he said with a smile. “Now, please lay back and close your eyes.”
He told me how he became The Onion Boy, a demon of the twilight, putrescence incarnate.
He used to be a regular kid named Isaiah who, like me, was consumed by nightmares. The visions of his mother’s horrible passing came to him every night, torturing and shocking him awake whenever he sought salvation through the unconscious. He was willing to do anything to make it stop.
Then, The Onion Boy approached Isaiah and offered him a deal: listen to his tale, and he would bring relief by devouring the nightmare that plagued Isaiah. He laid down and listened, and in the end, the specter consumed his dream as promised. The Onion Boy left Isaiah, who fell into a peaceful, uninterrupted sleep.
Isaiah was happy for precisely three days before the hunger set in — a deep, gnawing pain that nipped at his ribcage. No amount of food or books or candy that usually brought him joy could satisfy this hunger.
That night, The Onion Boy returned to Isaiah.
“What did you do to me?” Isaiah asked.
“Nothing that wasn’t done to me before,” he said. “The only way to rid yourself of this curse is to pass it on to another, just as I have. Remember, the story must always begin the same.”
At this point, I realized what Isaiah was doing and bolted from my bed, but it was too late—just as it is too late for you now, dear reader.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a quiver clinging to his lilt. “The story begins: ‘The Onion Boy does not sleep, for night is the time he furtively toils, collecting and consuming dreams…’”
Millerwiller 