Saturday: The Tentacle Cult of Child Sacrifice

My streak of dreams involving harm to children continues with this: a dream set in a post-apocalyptic colonial America of perpetual dusk. A dark-robed cult that worships an unspecified Lovecraftian god wreaks havoc on the already ravaged world. The fuel for their foul rituals are the bodies and souls of children, whom they capture and imprison by the tens to be held prisoner until their time comes to be sacrificed.
My story begins with me as a child of about 12 years of age, running down a wooded dirt road. I ran as fast as I could as I passed others running away from the village just behind us. The dark-robed cultists had invaded the village to kidnap every child they could find.
Foolishly, I decided to stop running, thinking I had outrun them. I had not. A large, burly man with an uncanny resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger grabbed me. Only a short distance away was a seemingly abandoned shed. He took me inside and threw me into a pit dug in the center. In the dimly-lit pit were other children like myself. None seemed like they had any interest in escaping, their spirits broken long ago.
I waited in the pit for what seemed like hours. Arnold returned with a little bit of food to give to us. Rather than throw it down, he descended a winding ramp that suddenly appeared along the walls of the pit. As he walked, I noticed his handgun fall from his pocket. Without hesitation, I picked up the gun and pointed it at him.
I pointed my gun at him, but suddenly he looked like someone else, and I shot him in the head. He fell, dead, and I ran up the ramp to freedom. I ran into the woods, rather than back to the road. I remember thinking about the other kids in the pit, but I decided I really didn’t care about them and only wanted to save myself. I didn’t know any of them personally, so I had no emotional investment in their fate.
In an instant, as if none of the previous paragraph had happened, I was back in the pit. It was as if time has gone backwards. Arnold was walking down the ramp once again, and he dropped his gun just as before. I picked it up and pointed it at him. He looked back at me, not phased. I tried to pull the trigger, but the trigger was tight, and hard to budge. I managed to pull it back far enough to fire, but rather than firing a deadly bullet, a stream of barbecue sauce shot at his face. I was terrified, knowing I would most certainly be punished for this. Arnold disarmed me easily as I stood in shock. He grabbed me and locked me in a cell above ground, alone.
I looked out into the dusky woods, having lost all hope of escape. Over and over the thought raced through my head: why didn’t the gun fire this time?
I hadn’t long to dwell on this, as a tall, dark-robed figure walked slowly up to meet me at the barred cell. The long hood of his robe covered most of his face, but I could see his long, bony jaw and pointed nose.
“That was a very naughty thing to do. We don’t want you trying to escape. Each ritual requires one child, and we perform many rituals. We need many children to feed Him,” he said coldly. As he spoke, the long sleeves draped over his right arm began moving and writhing as if a ball of snakes had been hiding underneath. A mass of tentacles wriggled slowly out of his sleeve, like worms out of the dirt. I’d assumed this was some power granted to the cultists by whatever dark entity they worship.
I could not see his eyes, but I could feel him staring at me as I watched the tentacles creep closer and closer to the bars of the cage. I woke up at this point.
Final Thoughts: The “Ariel Harms Children” tally is up to 6, but if abandoning a group of future sacrifices counts as children I’ve harmed, I’m probably up to 16. We’ll keep it at 6 since the fate of the children was not clear. I can only assume they’ve already met some grizzly fate on top of a bloodied altar. I’d also like to mention, despite the dream being scary in nature, at no point did I feel fear, so I would not categorize this as a nightmare. It was more like the level of fear I have when watching a horror movie, which is almost zero.
