Heaven Shall Burn

Last night I had a really cool dream, one of those “where the heck did it come from?”

It was all animated, black and white, with Disney characters. The animation was like in those early Mickey Mouse cartoons, with cartoon logic played completely straight. The story was set in the 20′s and showed a city in a tense stalemate between the police and mafia.

Mickey works as a cop in a precinct that suddenly becomes a frontline of the quiet war. All because of one shop - one tailor store whose owner refuses to pay protection money and who’s surprisingly healthy and alive in spite of having gone through many “accidents”. His store also can’t be destroyed or burnt down, or damaged in any way. Someone discovers the owner is a vampire and asks the police for help. Meanwhile, the mafia bosses, also fed up with the unruly store owner, threaten the city with bloodshed if the “problem” don’t get fixed.

Here’s the catch: there’s an old law that obliges the police to deal with the “unholy threat”. The law is still on the books, but is hardly ever enforced if the person (vampire, shapeshifter, elf etc) doesn’t commit any crime. The police also has a weapon that can destroy non-human creatures. But no one in the police force really wants to use it because 1) the times have changed 2) no one wants to start an interspecies conflict.

The gangsters however have their spy at the station and the weapon gets stolen. Mickey learns about it from Goofy (who’s some sort of administrative assistant) and has to spring to action. The weapon is really powerful and could kill off almost every non-human citizen. And if the vampire turns out to be strong enough to deflect it, its power would ricochet killing countless other, less powerful non-human beings.

Mickey gets to the store before all the gangsters and police officers appear. He pleads with the vampire owner and tries to get him to run away - but it’s too late. The vampire decides to sacrifice his life by not deflecting the hit and absorbing the power of the weapon and suspects his store will be “mysteriously” destroyed by flames once his protective spells stop working. There’s really no time to do anything else so he only asks Mickey to save one of his works (earlier on it’s shown the vampire’s hobby is making miniature steam trains).

Mickey takes the bag with the train model and retreats in time to save himself from being killed with the vampire (weapon works mostly on non-humans; but will kill a human… well, a mouse too if they’re too close). The shootout between the police and gangsters hangs on a thin line but eventually the officers choose saving others hurt by the weapon over chasing the mafia goons.

In the evening Mickey and Goofy return home, saddened by the whole ever. Mickey takes the model and places it on the fireplace. Suddenly, he notices something and looks closely. Then grins.

It’s night and everyone’s asleep. The train gleams in the flames — until it’s not there anymore. We see the empty space on the fireplace and then a full-size, almost empty train speeding up the railroads, with one only passenger who draws something in a notebook filled with sewing patterns.

Horror trope “your reflection in the mirror doesn’t do the same things as you do” but with a twist:

IT’S REALLY TRYING HARD. It’s doing its best. And knows it should be able to predict your movements, outfits and such. Somehow other good mirror reflections always do it so well. It shouldn’t be so difficult, right?

I’m watching this cool set of videos following Ali Brown’s Honey’s Slim Pickins Challenge and most of them can be summarized as follows:

STAGE 1: “What the heck have they chosen, those things do not go together”

STAGE 2: “What am I supposed to do with that?”

STAGE 3: “This is hopeless.”

STAGE 4: “…Wait, I have an idea!”