She was falling through the night sky, so high up she couldn't see the ground's lights below. It was terrifying, and at the same time, wonderful. Feeling the air rushing past her, her arms spread out, her back definitely free of wings and parachutes. She laughed.

Even in the darkness, she could see the eyes watching her. They never blinked, and never looked away. She reached for her knife, wanting to kill the eyes once and for all, but then...

"Nico," a voice said, and someone shook her awake. "Nico. Wake up, we have a customer."

Straightening up, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and fiddled with her messy orange hair. She stared into a nearby mirror, her red eyes blinking at her own reflection.

The girl called Nico grabbed a hair tie from a nearby box and walked into the main room of the apartment, giving the wealthy-looking man in a crisp suit a once-over with her eyes. She strode towards a desk at the far all of the room, and sat in the plush leather chair behind it.

"So," she said, "What can we do for you? Catch, subdue, or kill? Rates for clean kills have been going up recently, by the way."

The man looked put out by the tiny, fire-haired girl, who was calmly tying her hair back. "A child is being plagued with bad dreams," he said, his voice clear and refined. "As it is a continued case, we wish for the dream to be killed."

"That'll be 25 thousand," Nico said, grinning. "I can guarantee you'll be rid of it 15 minutes after we go in."

Balking, the man fished a sheet of paper out of his pocket. "It's a government order." He pushed the paper across the desk to the Nico, angling it so the official-looking stamp was right under her nose. She blinked.

"Oh, so you work for the country, then," she said, "Right, we'll up the price to 35 thousand. Lord only knows your government can afford it."

The man looked as though he was going to protest, but the less-than-patient look on Nico's face stopped him, and he handed her an envelope full of money. "The boss told me you might raise the price."

"Did he? Perceptive man," Nico said, not looking up from counting the contents of the envelope. "I must remember to give him more credit in future. He's not nearly as unintelligent as I make everyone believe."

"Anyway," she went on, ignoring the look of shock on the man's face, "You can leave the details of location and exact dream specifications on the desk. I know your boss gave you some. Then, you can let yourself out, I'll be around at nightfall to do the dirty work."

The man looked puzzled, but set down a second envelope and left.

******
Hi there. I'm Nico. Let's kick this off with a little profile that describes me.

Age: 16
Height: 5 feet
Occupation: Professional Nightmare Guard

Adults like to tell young children lies. There are, of course, many examples I could give regarding all the gigantic fibs they tell, but the most important and relevant at this time is this particular lie.

"It's OK, it was only a dream. You're all right."

Because dreams, really, are one of the most powerful and very real forces on this Earth.

When you wake up from a terrible nightmare, whether it's a dream with no people, or people who are trying to kill you, or everything is simply very, very wrong, then you are not escaping.

The nightmare is still there, ready to pull you back.

Nightmares and dreams are two rather different things.

A mere dream is a harmless thing, an animal that feeds off your mind and memories, and turns what it is feeding off of into interesting and rather confusing entertainment for you while you sleep. You do not lose the memories in your brain, rather, a dream feeds off the experience of the memory being replayed.

A nightmare is like a dream, but rather than simply replaying and feeding from your memories, it creates a new scenario out of existing memories and feelings, and feeds off your fear. A nightmare aims to make something that is as scary as possible for your particular brain, in order to get as much food out of the deal.

The one thing that nightmares and dreams have in common is that neither vanish when you wake up. They reside in your brain, sleeping during the day, and do not ever leave, unless they are killed. You've probably had the same dream living in your head since you were very small. It most likely shares with a nightmare (or, if you're one of those lucky people who doesn't have nightmares, it boots out nightmares because it wants all the food for itself. Dreams are greedy little things.)

Because of this similarity, dreams and nightmares have the same technical term: PARAsite. That stands for something, but the heck if I can remember.

A dream is a PARAsite Type 1, or a PARA01. A nightmare is a PARAsite Type 2, or PARA02.

The only way to kill a PARAsite is to basically experience the dream for yourself. To do this, a professional such as myself will connect my brain to that of the victim and hijack the dream (the victim will have a completely dream-free sleep that night.) Then the goal is to fight your way through the PARAsite, find the core of the nightmare, and kill the PARAsite living inside.

But I really am rambling, aren't I?

Recently I've been hired by the government a lot to do work in orphanages and such. I used to get all my business from private interests such as rich families and companies hoping to increase their employees' productivity by helping them sleep better, but that has declined since once a nightmare has been killed, no others will come near the host.

I should move more. Business might be better in another country.

I do have a business partner. His name is Max. In our business, I'm always the one who goes and does all the work, killing or trapping the PARA02s. Max is the one who comes in behind. He has this gift for luring dreams to him, and when he finds a particularly belligerent one, he'll convince it to come live with us and then we can attach it to a new host (whose mind has been newly freed by me.)

Dreams almost always take the form of small, strange-looking animals. Max and I actually have one as a pet, a puffy bobtailed fox-like thing with enormous ears and black koi-like spots. Her name is Zee. She's more Max's pet than mine, because honestly I can't see the sense in having a pet who eats all our food and then is never around when you want a decent conversation.

I should probably get cracking on this work. I'll pester Max until he finds a suitable dream to take this nightmare's place, and then we'll get going. I need a head start and some caffeine, because this PARA02 looks like it's going to be a bad one.

Signing off,

Nico