I nodded. “This isn’t the dream. The school days are.”
Amelia crinkled her nose. “When did you figure it out?” I shrugged, “Leanne asked me if I dreamt of a high school, some place free of all this madness...” she knew I was half-lying and cocked her head, smirking. She wanted the real answer and was amused I wasn’t giving it. Part of my stomach gave and it felt like a relief just to say it.
“When you took my hand.” She suddenly flushed, remembering the moment instantly. “Oh.” She turned on her heel, the gray robes around her swishing across the sandy terrain of the beach. I caught a glint of the jewels in her deep brown hair, the silver chain glowing the orange sunset. “How did you know?” She turned her face back to me for a response. Expectant. I gulped. “Because, in the school, you took my hand like it was nothing. It was physical, but not.... deep. When you reached for me in the dungeon, called out my name, it started to rattle me. Deep, into my soul. And the moment I felt your warmth, it was a pulse that just- it was just knowing, then. I knew it was real.”
Something faltered in her eyes and she smiled. Touched, with hints of melancholy on the ends of her lips. I cocked my head and stepped back, cringing. “I’m sorry, you just see this kid, not the man you think I am.” I felt my body weaken, as if reverting to childhood. My fingers withered and fell to my sides, then into the torn pockets of my jeans. It felt so modern and so wrong at once; like falling back to earth out of a beautiful divine dream. She caught it and sighed. “You’re still in love with me.” It sounded so defeated, like the expected disappointment still hurting no less. I would love to say it embittered the beautiful scene of the moment, but i felt so strangely at home with it. “And we’ve had this conversation before,” I offered, “haven’t we?” She laughed. “No, not exactly. I’m burdened this time, Luke. It’s part of... whatever broke this universal timeline, the event shattered something and now I’m aware. I remember everything except the end; so does Bruce, but I think he just can’t process it like I can. You have no idea how many times you and I meet and you just... fall in love instantly. Like a lovesick puppy that can’t help itself. And you can’t help it. That’s okay.” She waved her hand on the last and turned her back to me, heading down the beach to the little row of stones and driftwood big enough to sit on. The wind picked up a little after I started following her.
My heart was not heavy with a youth’s love, nay I felt it like a sinking sensation, into the moors of memory I still could not properly see. This was something I had known a long time. I say I love you, she walks away, and still I follow after. She sat down on the long piece of wood, a tree that she could name for me a million times and I’d never remember it. I sat down on the opposite end, like I felt was right, and she did not raise ire. Amelia expected me to follow, didn’t she? It was part of what I did. What we did.
“Let’s make a fire,” she said and stood up suddenly. It took a little bit of retreating off the beach into the woods, but we found enough. When it came time to dig in the sand, something came over me, and with some distant flashback at my heel, I put the firewood together as Amelia had shown me on another beach, in a world long past. She smiled, recognizing the moment I had recreated in unconscious motions.
The embers danced in the air and the crackle was loud even over the sound of the rising tide. It illumined our faces and warmed our hands, the chill chased away by the heat. She smiled again, at ease. Comfortable.
I took a deep breath before saying anything.
“So, you know more about me than anyone else.”
“I know other you. How much do you remember?”
“Fragments, large pieces at a time - we took a trip to the beach like this, just the two of us. But we weren’t teenagers then.”
“No, we were closer to thirty. Sometimes it was Malibu, in other times it was somewhere on the Oregon coast. Once it was a trip to Texas.”
“You’re able to just remember all that at the same time?” I asked, the thought was unsettling to me to be so overwhelmed. She shrugged. “It just comes in flickers, like when you’re trying to remember a word when writing a sentence. Somewhere deep, timeless.”
[this is left unfinished as it was written a couple of years ago]
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The rusting stone bars of the cage rattled into place and gave another crunchy rumble when the leathery hands of the arena keepers locked them in a quick twist. Five dozen nearly faceless persons watched from the stands and their collective gaze of gold and red made Evelyn’s hairs stand on end. She gripped the sword in hand, took a slow breath. They were up there, the expectation was she would fight, and this is what she had signed up for. The caves no longer challenged her and she wanted something to kill that was a greater feat. The maestro of the arena had told her the very best would be there, captured or by their own volition. They were the worst beings in the dungeon world; killing them would be a service. And she’d already slain so many unknowable things in this place, reflections of monsters that her worst nightmares were afraid of. Hers was a path of destruction and burning crusade toward some inevitable victory. This reminder enkindled her inner flame and waves of heat distortion surrounded the blade of her sword.
Yet it extinguished quickly, when the gate to the challenger’s chambers slid open and a princely young man was cast out. Dark skin under the sharp and cold fluorescent bulbs overhead, hair long and tied back, and dressed in regal garb. Immediately, Evelyn recognized him from both Leanne’s description and a shocking series of memories she couldn’t quite put together in the right sequence. All of it sent alarm bells in her blood, that came up as the challenger gate closed, locking Jax Elroy in there with her. Evelyn turned to the maestro in the crowd. “What the fuck is this?!” She cried out, pointing her cooling sword at Elroy, who was trying to catch his bearings. “This is a good man, not an unholy beast.” The maestro’s eyeless face twisted in a grimace, gray crackling flesh showing the disdain within. He hissed back, “you wanted the best, then a metalbard would be good practice.” He gestured to the shadow crowd. “My audience appreciates steel of friend vs friend.” Evelyn had figured the maestro knew more than he let on, about her and Leanne and Luke, more maybe than that uptight Amelia. Friend? This was her friend and she had known Elroy, in the dreams of the school where the bell rung.
But as she thought on the fellow youth rising to his feet, garbed in white silk and gold muselin that made up a prince’s robes, she could remember more of herself. His face, hers, in a mirror, making faces together at age nine. There was someone else calling out from a bedroom, another child’s voice.
A shout from the crowd stole her attention and the cage rattled. They were getting antsy now, craving for blood. One of them with a mouth chewed popcorn teeth loudly at her, expectant. Another panted like a pervert. Others began to hyperventilate. Elroy was catching his bearings and looking around. “Man. What did I drink last night?” He asked, then spotted Evelyn. “Uh, Eve?” He, too, was trying to remember and put the pieces together. Despite no weapon, he was not powerless and his body moved with a confident stride as he approached her across the arena. The crowd’s cries grew and dust kicked off from the cage in little clouds when they slammed their feet, causing the maestro to cough impatiently. “Are you going to fight him or not, Miss Sparks?” Evelyn blinked at the deja vu of that name; it had been hers in another lifetime. It was the last straw. Enough of this thing’s games.
“Fuck you.”
“So be it, if you will not shed blood, then the audience will take it from you.” The maestro rose his skeletal hand and snapped the fingers loud enough to be heard over the crowd. Each of the beastly things in the audience shed their clothes and skin, hissing and growling and snarling, a mixture of blood and flesh and pitch-colored liquid with bones protruding in abnormal fashion. They slammed up against the stones aligned to make the arena’s cage and seeped through, bending and twisting in Cronenbergian fashion to fit and fall into the battlefield. Immediately on impact with the dirt ground, they became multiple things of shadow and flesh, beasts like lizards and mammals and birds. They bore claws and fangs and teeth, transforming to suit themselves; if they needed eyes or ears they would gain many and if they desired to consume they would gain mouths. One such mouth gave a mighty roar and Elroy flinched. Evelyn stood between him and the monsters circling the arena. “I take it you’re not carrying a Fender under those robes, your highness?” Evelyn asked, hopeful sarcasm, and Elroy sighed. “I fuckin’ wish, dudette.” As she took the sword in both her hands, Evelyn smiled. “No problem. More for me.”
The flames kindled on her sword once more and her eyes beamed orange into her sight turning red. And the first wave of shadows attacked.
She swung down on a jaguar wielding a bone axe, rending its head in two and blinding the large eyeball orb with legs to its left. Evelyn’s next swing embedded the blade in the orb and used it as a projectile to send across the arena into an shadowed human archer grasping at the cage roof. A tentacle grabbed her leg and she shouted, flames of rage burning hotter until it let go in pain and she grabbed the escaping tentacle to send a chain reaction of chemicals into its bipedal body. It exploded in a splash of ink and bile that would have soaked her, if not for the heat emanating off her turn it immediately to steam.
Elroy watched in a mix of horror and amazement. He could hear a rhythm in her movements and tapped his feet along. A melody arose in his heart, causing him to sway his hands. Electricity shook at his fingers until he thought something was coming out of him - and then a great hand smashed him to the ground, knocking him out cold. Evelyn was too late in turning around to see what it had done and barely noticed as more of the shadows began to overwhelm her with all-out attacks. She deflected with sword and flame alike, casting them away, but it wasn’t enough. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the maestro still in the stands above: he was letting more monsters into the arena and they were either cheering loudly or preparing to join the fray. This wasn’t going to stop.
Evelyn would keep fighting, she told herself. Kill everything, burn it all down, until the last.
“You called me back from the stars. It was you. You did this.”
The words rang in my head like a guilty mantra, echoing, repeating in discordant delays and spirals. I could feel the pit in my stomach grow, the tension since being brought through the mirror had eased only to be replaced with a deep chasm lined with barb wire and hot shame. It couldn’t be true and I wanted to deny it, yet the gaps in memory said maybe. Maybe I had called this slithering unknown thing of deep cosmic origin, maybe I had let him win and pull us into his eternal limbo, a dream world that we had been caught in for so long I now sought escape.
The gray thing slithered around my brain and no matter how far it’s mouth appeared to be, distant and human some fifty meters away, I could hear it moving right in my consciousness. Deja Vu dripped on the next thing uttered in dulcet tone. “You don’t want to move on.” Where I had heard it, I still couldn’t recall. But it felt like weakness and I prayed that’s all it was, a moment of my fall that the Unknowable had taken advantage of and drawn the world into the void. Though I felt fear, I was beginning to realize in each breath, every intake one I had to force to be real because I couldn’t tell the fucking difference anymore, that it was only going to continue being my fault if I didn’t do anything to change it. I had fucked up. Time to do something about it.
My fists tightened, trying to tense the dry blood between my fingers, feeling the tacky sensation. Something to hold onto. I imagined Amelia’s hand on my fingers. The way her eyes bore into me and said don’t give up, we had come too far. I wanted to hear Evelyn’s fiery rage and fuck you to the darkness. See the glow of Leanne’s light, that showed truth and reminded me of the world that is. Be emboldened by Elroy’s endless determination that energized our blood and set us loose like a guitar solo on octane. Take hold of Bruce’s gifts of power to protect, courage to choose discipline, and wisdom to weave into life with knowledge.
I heard the chainmail on my torso rattle before I felt the air on my rising arm. The Beretta extended out as a sword of my soul. Each bullet left in it, I conjured to being part of them. Part of me. The Unknowable thought I’d faced him alone like last time.
The mouth in the mass of gray shadows smiled. It thought this action was pointless.
I proved him wrong seven times in a row, until the slide locked back and the gun was empty.
And he was torn asunder, laughing and screaming, in his own morbid joy at release. The sound of something fulfilling its purpose. Once, I had called him. Now, he had called me.
When the water overtook his body and he was fully submerged, he panicked, his heart raced. He could barely swim and now he was in the body of water of unknown depth with something very large and seemingly unnatural living in it. None of this was good. He held his breath, looked around but could perceive more than he could see. It was out there, he could feel its vibrations in the water. He tried to make for the surface, but his shoes weighed him down. The shape's shadow caught his peripheral vision and he turned right, trying to see it, only for it to be gone. He heard something vaguely like a girl's voice giggling. Something familiar. Then, there was touch. Hands on his ankles. He jolted, kicked, making no connection. The fingers moved to his shoes and pulled the laces, tugged them off. Freed of the weight of them and his socks, he felt the hands start to drift up his body, causing him to freeze. The feminine touch lingered in intimate places and another giggle filled his ears as the creature unbuckled his belt and pulled his heavy jeans off. The tension in his lungs was unbearable then, he had to get out of here. He wanted to swim up and away, but visions of sirens and mermaids whose faces were vicious and teeth were long came to mind. "Don't piss off the monster" had become a recent policy for him, but maybe it was worth it to breathe again. But before Luke could move, the mermaid finally reached his sight. The face was one he had not seen in a few years, but felt almost like a lifetime. She had been beautiful, soft, loving. And he realized why the touch was familiar. Kate smiled and then pulled his head to hers for a long kiss. When her lips met his, it was like she breathed life into him and the tension of his lungs released. He breathed, as a mere human is not meant to breathe, in the watery world and it made his senses fill up. He shut his eyes from how light was suddenly more intense and dove deeper into her mouth, holding her naked body to him, hands flowing down her until they went from skin to scales. She broke the kiss shortly after and giggled again, then swam away. Luke swam after her.
“Tarantism - The urge to overcome melancholy by dancing.“
As it turns out, this is possibly not the correct definition of the word - some further research on Wiki and other sources appears to show this word referring to the hysteria and symptoms of illness caused by a venomous spider bite. (arachnophobia-sufferers like myself beware when searching into this - meep) What I wrote was more based upon what the meme defined as Tarantism. So, that’s what I post. But, if you’d like, I’m willing to do the other thing also as a horror story. ;>
Chalk on the sidewalk from weeks prior greeted her when she returned to the neighborhood. Little Lana and Kelly must have had a ball, making Peace signs and writing Happy 4th of July with colorful fireworks on the asphalt and cement. It warmed Leanne to see the touch of home beneath her, the same as seeing the familiar cedar tree in front of Mr. Grady’s yard giving shade to the semi-truck in his driveway. And the scent of lilacs from the Dangars’ yard mixing with the soaked lawns.
She didn’t return to her own home immediately, wanting to delay the inevitable argument with her mother about disappearing into the night. And she didn’t want to face the argument with Elroy or his family or their friends for running off like that. But the road had called to her and she followed, going with her two favorite allies Amelia and Crystal, guiding each other and themselves into minor adventures and lonely sojourns along the coast. They were safe, but they needed some time to themselves, and some people back home didn’t understand that.
The feeling Leanne felt as she walked past the houses that were home and fell off into the woods that circled so much of the township, was still a solemn sadness. The rows of age like pews in a church, and she was walking down the aisle. Long ago childhood past, adolescence beginning to reach twilight. The years were falling away until adulthood and college and everything else was seemingly directly ahead. Responsibilities loomed like a gallows. And it filled her with the need to shake it off as if they were heavy cloaks burning her in summer.
Leaping over bushes gave rhythm to her heart and the smell of pine and cedar was a melody that lifted her feet. She could taste how rain was coming soon and she would dance with it just the same. It was still only cloudy when she reached the clearing she had once seen in a dream as a child and found as a middle-schooler when solace was sought. Private and alone, only Elroy had shared this place with her, but now it was just hers. And she spun, moving smooth with a soul song only she could hear guiding her way. There was no style, no school of dance, nothing but the purity of her own expression. The trees moved with wind, she thought, only in her deepest dream she felt them move with her. Nature and herself becoming as one, no longer separated by consciousness.
And the fears were cast away into nothingness, dissolved to the smallest atom, and her own breath became a shout for them never to return. She would be young. She would be free. She would always be.
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It was another dream and he knew it wouldn't stop hurting until he made the thing. Arising out of his bed, one he'd somehow made of pieces of the forest outside his cave, he rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. Noon, exact. Fate must have a silly love of symmetry with man-made conceptions. Bruce lifted his tired body up and walked to the small creek flowing into the cave from the waterfall, pulling a small vial of claret out. He popped its cork and drank from the smooth, vertical glass form. The blood filled him and its chill gave a shiver to his spine while the nourishment brought new electricity to his brain. He was ready to work. The vision had been specific, but less than usual. If it weren't for the familiar twinge of sickness in his eyes, like getting a picture overlaid on his sight, he would have thought it a natural normal human dream. But no, it was another call to the grind. The artist, he, being chosen to create something deemed necessary by Fate. He reminded himself of this responsibility when he sat down at his desk deeper into the cavern, shoo'ing away a couple of squirrels that we're taking refuge on his chair. He didn't bother with the lamp, he needed to use his undead sight to see. Both hands stretched out in front of him as he reflected on the shape of the weapon he was told to make. Smooth barrel, he could make that in two days if he could get the materials that night. Wood stock... No, that had to be special... He'd have to go down to the Vine Grove for one of the mouth trees. The other main functions were simple. It was the engraving that would be the hardest. That was his thought as he pulled up his drawing paper and grabbed for charcoal and pencil. He had to draw it all out. The squirrels returned to watch him do so, but he paid them no mind. They were rather curious creatures. At first the shapes were vague, lines that went far along horizontally, until he realized they were becoming the pattern of flames. And from the licking tongues of burning on one end, they gave way into strands, like hair. Like a paintbrush. It reminded him of a smile and voice he couldn't remember clearly, but thinking about it made him feel calm. Helped him refine the details. These engravings would go on the outside, while sigils and runic marks would run through the barrel of the rifle. The design came to life through his hands, bringing imagination, vision, to existence and corporeality. After refining the shading, he knew clearly now this was the weapon of someone whose spirit was of fire. He wondered who it was for, as he went about designing the mechanics of the rifle. And he remembered, as he went to put the design on the wall, the other weapons he'd made. The scythe. The twin dueling pistols. And the baseball hand grenade. Who were they for? He had no idea. Each reminded him of a memory of his human life, before he'd been cast into shadow and taken shelter in this place past the waterfall. Maybe one day it'd would make sense. Bruce didn't know then. All he could do was trust that he was doing something worthwhile, waiting for Bernard to call on him.
First there were shadows of multiple dark shades, brown and green of the trees blurred up in tall streaks before they stretched past and turned blue like a summer sky, giving way to yellow-white sands and turning orange from there. It was then the orange bled red and yellow streaks followed. The world became no longer the forest of the Pacific Northwest, but somewhere distant and primordial. Evelyn found the shapes becoming clear and she blinked through what felt like a dream until the distinct shapes of ground, sky, and mountains became clear. She found herself at the foot of a volcano erupting hot gooey core of the planet. Its heat finally made itself known, waves of it shimmering in the air and the scent was like stone and burning wood. She didn't know what to make of it, how familiar it felt yet how suddenly the world had changed on her. Her physical memory said this was new, but an echo deep in her spirit said, "home." She started to walk, surprised that although pulsing, flowing magma seared the ground to her sides, she felt no effects to her clothes or skin. As she stepped up and up, climbing over boulders she would have rather punched, her eyes took in the sky's orange glow and smoke-seared shadows. It looked like art and made her want to paint. Beneath her feet, the cooler ground that had probably been just as fluid as what flowed beneath and to the sides of it, made patterns. Evelyn felt comfort from these swirls and shapes, symmetrical and yet like they'd been molded, breathed into existence by a God. The further she ascended up the mountain, the more the lava flow increased in scope around her, bringing heat and and glow. When she stopped to look at the view, she saw that the world was an island and around the volcano a large lake. No steam came up and it felt funny to see such heat flow into the seemingly cool water without the usual reaction. It was when she was turning back to the top of the volcano that she saw a flicker of something in her peripheral. Orb, small, colored a deep green that looked out of place. Then another that made her head turn, this time blue. Two more, red and yellow. When she'd spun the whole way around, the orbs floated before her. Sprites, she knew on instinct. Like children, or imps. Their light flickered and she suddenly awoke.
Luke leapt out of bed. A feat, given his rotund size, but his body followed his body's panic at the sudden rise from the... Was it a nightmare? The night was vivid, the date and seeing the movie with Nora, then after... The violence and blood of the innocent spilled. Then, monster blood spilled before a long chase. A capture. Amelia's determined face when they escaped. The monsters. Bruce and the guns. And last of all, that visage of her... A girl thought lost long ago. Luke collected himself and stood up, tore off his clothes for signs of bruises. None. He remembered but did not feel the pain of being beaten to the ground, falling down the stairs at the school, or the burn from the close-quarters gunshot by his arm. His wars weren't even ringing. Was it all some fantasy of elaboration? Seconds after and many clicks done on his computer, he made his way to dream symbolism and sought answers. Little of what he recalled matched what the symbols for these things said. Then, his phone rang. Amelia. He didn't even have to read the name on the screen, he answered knowing it was her. Could only be her. "Hey," he said. Her voice came back, croaking as his did with the fatigue and tension and dryness his own mouth felt. "Hey. I had the craziest dream." "Yeah. Yeah, me too."
