I'm just getting home from a long work shift, and a hell of a day. Memories of it float through my head as I try to figure out how to explain to my family what happened. They're going to have questions when they see the shiner on my left eye, and my broken glasses.
My boss had attacked me in the cooler at the height of an argument she started. She was pissed off because I helped a co-worker she recently fired get unemployment from the company. All I did was answer a phone call from his case worker, and tell the truth. Problem is, I can't keep my big mouth shut, and I told her that it was her own fault she got caught in another lie. Usually, that gets me restroom cleaning duty, or outside (super-heavy) trash can duty, but this time, she turned around and slugged me twice - once in the jaw, and once in the eye. The attack was totally unexpected. She knocked me clear across the room, into a stack of soda trays.
I've been fired for filing criminal assault charges. My boss was hauled out in cuffs, and about an hour later, the district manager came in and notified me that I was being let go because the company was considering my choice to "carry the conflict beyond the company" (call the cops on my boss for assault) to be insubordination, and therefore a firing offense. I know that the unemployment office is not going to agree with the company, but I also know it's going to take me at least a month to get through that process.
I don't want to tell my family that we just lost half of our household income for a month, and we'll only be able to recover half of that until - or if, in this economy - I can get another job.
And, oh, yeah. I need new glasses, because that punch in the eye broke the left lens in mine.
Because we can afford them, now that I'm not working.
Again.
I am feeling totally defeated, even though I know I'm not.
My husband's car isn't in his spot. Great. I wonder where the guys went. Hopefully they're not buying fast food. We can't afford it now. Then, I remember, they went out of town, and they won't be back until late. I'm home alone for the next several hours. At first I'm disheartened, but then, I figure being alone will at least give me time to get online and file for unemployment right away. I decide that's what I'm going to do.
I step inside, remove my shoes, and shake the sand out of them outside before closing the door.
I'm not alone. My girlfriend is there, sitting on the couch. When I walk in, she starts to say "surprise," but stops at "su" and stares at my face. She half-panics, asks what happened and if I'm ok, and whose ass she needs to kick for me. I still want to know what she's doing in my apartment. Where is her fiance?
Instead of answering me, she runs across the room and touches my face with both hands, looking up at me with a deeply concerned expression on her face. She sees the empty left frame on my glasses, and immediately demands to know if I got glass in my eye. I ask about the fiance again, and she says he's at work, and she just wanted some "us" time. It's been a long time since we've had a girls' day. She tells me to quit stalling, and explain the bruises. She draws me over to the couch, sits me down, and curls up next to me, staring at me with those wide, tender eyes. I tell her everything that happened at work, starting with having been given every crap duty my boss had, to the argument in the cooler, and the assault, to being fired, and being worried about finances for the next month or so until I get through the unemployment process. Before, I was just disheartened, but now I realize the position my boss has put me in, and I'm pissed. By the time I finish talking, I'm so angry, I'm actually shaking.
Her eyes widen throughout the story, her expression becoming more sympathetic. She asks why I didn't hit my boss back, and I remind her how small the woman is. I just can't. Even though she's strong, I'm bigger and stronger. And I don't hit people. I just don't. She knows that.
I'm overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and a sense of complete powerlessness. I don't want to worry my girlfriend, but I can't keep from crying. She shushes me, pulls me into a hug, wraps herself around me and pulls me down on the couch. The cushions feel oddly lumpy and hard, almost gritty, giving me the stray thought that it also needs replaced, but I'm lost in her soft, comforting affection. I let myself sob into her shoulder, frustration spilling over in the form of tears. She whispers in my ear, reminding me that this is not so bad, calling me babe, reminding me that I won't stay down like this; I never do. I'll get unemployment, and then another job, and I'll never have to deal with that bitch again.
She must be really mad. She doesn't usually use that word in seriousness.
Well, she is really protective. Feeling loved, I hug her closer and take deep breaths, trying to stop the tears. I feel soft kisses on my temple, then my cheek, and she gently presses under my chin with her fingers. I turn my face to hers, feel her lips brush against mine, and her teasing tongue...
The wrongness finally registers with me. Her tongue should feel soft and flexible, not solid, and kind of rounded. She never calls me "babe." This isn't the right apartment... we moved from here 4 years ago. There shouldn't have been sand in my shoes, because I was on the pavement the whole time. My husband's car wouldn't make it out of town. And she and I don't snuggle up like this... not any more.
I open my eyes, try to push back so I can see, and feel pressure from appendages wrapped around me, more than two legs, more than two arms. From the lips in front of me protrudes something that looks like a bug's proboscis, a long, tube-like appendage. And the couch isn't just hard and lumpy. It's made of sand. I feel new bruises forming on my temple, then my cheek, and realize that "she" wasn't kissing me. He was tasting me. My spine turns to ice, and my gut to water as I begin to understand the position I'm in. I feel so stupid!
Screaming in horror, I struggle to extract myself from the grip in which I'm held, thrashing and kicking, trying to move my arms. "Her" face wears an expression of disappointment, and then it begins to melt into something else. "Her" brow widen, and her chin narrows. "Her" eyes grow larger, darkening to a deep, impenetrable black, rimmed in darkness and bordered on the bottom by red. "Her" full lips disappear, only to be replaced by that thin little mouth he has. He slurps the proboscis back in like a spaghetti noodle. He says, "I was hoping you wouldn't notice. It's so much easier if you don't struggle. You know how this is going to end. Why keep doing this to yourself?"
My struggles don't seem to bother him at all. He lets the movement happen, not losing his grip on me, my efforts only serving to roll us off of the dune he masked with the couch illusion. Even then, he doesn't seem to lose any momentum. We land in almost the same position. With a determined look, he takes one of his arms out of the embrace, reaches up with the same fingers that seemed so gentle just moments ago, and tries to pry open my mouth. Hard as I fight, he gets one sharp claw between my teeth, and wrenches my jaw down. I try to bite, but his hands are strong. I can see his mouth opening, and that proboscis thing coming back out. Greedy anticipation fills his eyes.
I find a solid chunk of his hair with the hand of the arm is pinned under his body. I get a good grip and yank hard, pulling his head backward. He lets go of my face, and reaches back to try to find my hand. I put my teeth on his throat and clamp down. I'm unable to break the skin, but I get what I want. He forgets about his hair, and uses both of his "up" hands to push on my face, trying to prevent the bite. My other arm freed, I reach into the pocket of the armor-pants, and pull out one of those little crystals. It's no bigger than the size of a sweet pea. I put as much thought into it as I can in short order, howling my intent. I want to hurt him. He was wearing her form. I'm trying to remember a familiar word that sums up what I want this to do to him, but it won't come to me. All I can think of is "toxic."
It will have to do. I reach up and shove the little crystal deep into the end of that tube with my finger, then clamp the end of it shut with my hand, focusing on toxicity. The tube, previously a translucent pink color, turns deep red around the crystal, and his face contorts in an expression of agony.
He releases his grip on me with all four arms, half of his body rising up so he can grab at the hand holding the crystal in. With my other hand loose, I grab the tube between my fingers and the crystal, squeeze that, and push back toward his mouth. He's clawing at my clamping hand, trying to pull it off. With his two other hands, he's gripping my shoulders, trying to push me away. His eyes are wide with dismay and... is that fear?
There's a burning sensation in my fingertips, and I realize I'm running them over little tiny, spiky teeth, but I don't stop until I get almost to his lips. There, I run across something that feels almost like a cartilage joint. The thickness and texture changes there, and I can't squeeze that part shut. He makes a choking, gagging noise, and I see the crystal sucked in past his thin lips.
He shoves me away, rolling back in the sand, his body curling up, head thrown back, hands clawing at his throat. I see that behind the second pair of legs is what looks like the back-end of a wasp again, only the stinger isn't sticking out. That deep, raspy voice of his is raised in a half-yell, half growl. He thrashes, around, alternately roaring at me, coughing and sputtering, retching up some kind of black ooze, but he can't seem to spit out that crystal.
The last growl comes out almost like a whine, and he curls up in a ball in the sand, hands over his head. I can see the second pair of arms melting into his body. The legs are going, too, and so is the stinger. Slowly, he returns to the form I see the most frequently, tucked into an almost fetal position, knees up to his elbows, hands grasping his own hair.
Is he dead? Dying? Injured? I'm afraid to approach. I crouch in the sand, ready to try to run if he moves. I watch. He just lays there, uneven breathing the only movement I can see.
I stay where I am for several moments. Nothing changes, except that his breathing becomes more shallow, and then I can't tell if he's breathing at all. I watch for what seems like an eternity. He's totally still. My heart is pounding. I don't know what I should do.
Finally, I get up the guts to approach. He doesn't respond to the sound of my footsteps.
I touch his arm. I think I might hear something, but I'm not sure.
I push on him, and he rolls backward. His hands fall, and I can see that his eyes are wide open, showing not just the red on the bottom, but also the red on the top. And his pupils are totally dilated. I can just barely see a border of iris around them. He's wearing an expression of dazed amazement. His eyes turn to me, but they don't focus. Then, he giggles, madly, points at me, says "Bad," and mumbles four syllables of complete gibberish. "You are smarter than" and then he spouts more gibberish. The laughter returns. It's just about the creepiest sounding laugh I've ever heard. I back away, but he doesn't pursue. He sits up and wipes his face with his hands, his movements totally uncoordinated.
Oh, my God. He's high. I didn't shove enough of the burnt shield into him. He's not poisoned enough. I didn't kill him. He's only stoned out of his mind.
I have more. I've got to get it into him while he's incapacitated like this. Maybe I can overdose him. I grab another one out of my pocket, this one slightly larger.
Approaching him carefully, I try to figure out how I'm going to open his mouth and get it into that proboscis thing. I hold up the crystal, and he crosses his eyes trying to look at it. Then, he turns his gaze to me, reaches up with lightning quickness, and grabs my wrist with a clumsy, too-hard grip. He yanks me forward so that I'm inches from his face again, and says, as if correcting a wayward toddler, "Noooooo, now you cut that out." I try to wrestle my arm out of his grip. He leans forward on me, knocking me off balance, and I end up on my butt in the sand. He takes the crystal from my hand and pops it into his mouth. I hear him crunching it between his teeth. He says, "You should stop trying to kill me. It's such a waste of time." For a moment, he looks totally serious. Then he bursts into another laughing fit. This feels more dangerous than before, probably because he's less predictable. And he just ate my secret weapon like candy.
I back away, but he doesn't come after me. He's looking at his fingers, completely fascinated. I run back along the beach, toward the little building I'm not supposed to enter. I have to get out of here. Maybe she knows how.
As before, I don't seem to be getting any closer to it for quite some time. Then, suddenly, I'm right in front of it. Even though I'm running in sand, I'm moving way too fast to stop, and I smack right into the wall. I feel the impact of the wood against my face.
And suddenly, I'm awake, lying on the floor, face down. In my haste to run away from him, I must have rolled over in bed and fallen out. Now, I've got a sinus headache that won't go away, probably from breathing the dust in the carpet.
My girlfriend. I don't even know how to go there. "It's complicated" isn't good enough to cover the bases. We're together, but we're not. She's engaged. I'm married. Both of them are aware of us, and both have agreed that we shouldn't be kept apart, and neither of them minds. Both find the concept sexy. So, we're like a family, but we're not. They live across town. I don't do anything with him. She doesn't do anything with my husband. And I'm afraid to do too much with her, because I don't want to step on her fiance's toes. He's my friend.
But, I'm also afraid to be with anyone else. She and I have agreed to an open relationship, but I've got a pretty good sense that she gets jealous of other women who attract my attention. My husband and I have the same - open, but really not. He's ok with other women, but I'm pretty sure he's not as ok as he wants to believe he is with other men, and I'm really not interested in testing that theory.
I've pretty much made my peace with the situation, as long as no one stirs the waters, so to speak. This dream churned them up like a blender. Today is going to be a rough day. Tomorrow, I'll see her at a friend's house, where we hang out for a few hours every other weekend. That's going to be even harder.
Right now, I just want to curl up in a blanket and pretend I don't exist. Yep, a deal with something that wants to take my feelings away and eat them... is very tempting.
Feed me, Seymour.
I didn't want to be here. I worked really hard to not come here. Why am I on the beach again?
I look up, and see that endless blue sky. No sun.
This is bad. I can't have used it up. It must be hidden.
I think about trying to change things, make a shelter or a shield, anything I can, but I get the feeling that doing so would draw attention to me. I have a vague memory of something with salt water and herbs, candles, and determination.
I was hoping that would help, but I feel almost like I've got food poisoning, and maybe a fever. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and there's this watery feeling in my gut.
I need to get out of here, but the beach is kind of endless. Maybe the water...
I hear that low, caustic voice behind me. "Are you sure?"
I'm not. I know what I usually find in deep water. This is why I hate coming here. And as if to punctuate the thought, I can see a dorsal fin sticking out of the water a few yards off shore. An icy chill runs through my chest, and my first impulse is to back away from the water, as if the shark can come out of there and get me on the beach, but I don't move. If I let him see me reacting, I'm sure he'll use that.
I decide that since I'm found, there's no point in hiding my energy. I pull from the sea and the sand, and make a shield around myself, keeping it close. In the split second it takes me to pull and form that, I hear movement in the sand. I charge my shield.
I hear a short, rough chuckle right behind me. His voice is repulsive. It makes my skin crawl, but I force myself to not respond. I close my eyes and picture a huge, no trespassing sign. KEEP OUT.
Something is touching my shield. I can feel it, just behind my right shoulder, something small, sliding along the bubble, moving across the surface. The feeling is bizarre, like having a hair inside my shirt. I want to fidget, scratch, grab at it and pull it off of me, but I also feel like that would be a form of surrender, like giving him a point - he'd be acknowledged. I take a deep breath, let it out slow, and push against the pressure of the touch with that same sense of KEEP OUT.
The touch moves around the side of the shield, past my arm, across the front of the shoulder. That stray hair feeling moves up the side of my neck, and an involuntary shiver threatens to break through. I feel myself gritting my teeth, tensing up every muscle in my body. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Another deep breath, and I push again. That touch is still there, moving up past my jaw, across my cheek, my temple, my forehead, coming to rest right between my eyes, and then a slow tapping starts.
. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Now, I'm ready to crawl out of my skin. I have to see what he's doing. I open my eyes to see a clawed finger tapping on the outside of the "glass."
He's repeatedly touching the outside of my charged, spiked shield, and nothing is happening to him.
He stares at me from behind his hand, and says, "Greetings."
My heart thumps hard, and there is a crushing pain in my chest. It's hard to breathe. I shouldn't have opened my eyes. It's immediately apparent that he can see right through my bravado. I'm not fooling anyone.
I stare back at him. He stops tapping on my shield, and lets his finger hang in the air in front of my face. The urge to get as far away from him as possible is now competing with the urge to reach out and break his finger. He sees me looking, pulls his hand back a bit. His head tilts slightly to the side, his expression thoughtful, then he reaches right through the shield, and pokes that claw at the area between my eyes. The shield melts away like butter, falling to the ground around my feet and soaking into the sand. It feels like a set of clothing falling off, and now I feel totally exposed.
I smack his arm away from my face with one hand, and shove the heel of the other against his chest to push him away. He shakes his head at me and says, "Whatever," sounding petulant.
I wait a moment to see what he's going to do. He seems to be waiting to see what I'm going to do.
I remind him, "When I asked you where "through" would take you, you just dodged my question. Are you going to answer it?"
He dodges again. "Are all of your people laced throughout with that lovely shade of rage and resentment, or is it just you?"
I start to open my mouth to answer that no, I'm not normal, but I have a bad feeling about sharing any information with him about "my" people. Instead, I close my mouth, and cross my arms, and look as stubborn as I can.
He doesn't seem intimidated by it. Instead, he moves right up to me, so quickly my eyes can't keep track, and says, "It's an affliction, isn't it? It touches everything about you. I could taste it, you know? Is it rare, or are there many of you?"
I don't answer him. I'm thinking about what he's asking me. Everything about this feels wrong. I don't like his sudden interest in my psychological make-up. I tell him to back off.
He doesn't.
He says, "You don't hide things very well. You don't have to answer me. I can see it on your face. I'm right about you. It is an affliction. You hate it, don't you? Don't you fear being consumed by it? Wouldn't you like to get rid of it?"
What is he asking me? Everyone gets angry. I have things to be angry about. I have lots of them, and I'm only actually mad about half of those. Of course there are things I resent. People have been abusive to me, lied to me, taken advantage of me, and stolen from me. Wouldn't it be abnormal and unnatural to have to work through some resentment?
I remind myself what I've been told about this guy. He's made of lies, and deception. He feeds on the things we poison ourselves with. If I let him, he'll eat me alive, and he'll probably hurt everyone I love and protect in the process. I remind myself what he tried to do to my Lady. I harden my resolve. It's the only shield I have left. I turn my face away from him.
"No. You can't have it. It's mine."
I feel his chilled breath on my neck, and he very quietly chides, "You're a bad liar." Then, he says my Name. Not the one my parents gave me, not any of the pet names my friends call me, not even the one I use in the circle; my Name name, the one from before, that is mine regardless of what others call me.
I turn my face back to look at him. His eyes are inches away from mine. Seeing him that close makes my stomach lurch. A chill washes down my back, and into my core. I can't keep myself from shaking.
He asks, "Why hold on to such a burden? Let it go. I want it, and you don't. It isn't going to do you any harm to give it up. You'd be better off without it."
My gut hurts. This thing standing before me wants to feed on me like a leech. The sad thing is, this is so tempting... to be able to get rid of something I have to fight tooth and nail to control, to not feel pissed off all of the time - I could happily get rid of my temper. He's right. I don't want it. I do hate it. It is a burden. But I don't trust him. He's a thief, stealing emotions and twisting souls. I'm angry over what he's done. This actually makes me furious. I ask, "Is this how you do it? Is this how you hunt your victims, talking them into making some kind of deal with you? Did you trick my Lady into some kind of bargain?"
He utters a short, barking laugh. "I don't have to bargain with prey. She didn't even know I was there until it was too late. Most never do."
I ask, "Why are you trying to bargain with me?"
Instead of answering, he looks at me like I'm trying to pull one over on him. Inside, I feel like I'm prying at something, or trying to get through a maze. There's something I'm not taking into account. Even that look seems familiar, like I've seen him do it before. I feel horribly confused, and at the same time, I've got that tip-of-the-tongue, memory not found kind of frustration building up.
He says, "You all ready know the answer to that question. You just don't want to confront it."
I don't want to believe him, but that feels true. That doesn't make me trust him any more than before, or rather mistrust him any less. It just gives me yet another thing to try to figure out.
He continues, "...so close to the surface I can smell it on you." I feel a light pressure on my throat, moving down toward my heart. He's looking down. I look, and see his finger tracing along the center of my armor. I'm overwhelmed with revulsion, disgust, and outrage. Pushed over the edge, and without even thinking about it, I haul off and slug him right in the nose, feeling the bone crack against my knuckles, knocking him back into the water, yelling at him.
"DON'T. YOU. TOUCH. ME."
He sits in the water, nose bleeding, wide-eyed with surprise. He reaches up and touches the blood, licks his fingers, and says, "See, you're even angry when you're frightened."
Still shaking, heart pounding, I turn my back on him and trudge back up the beach. Part of me is terrified to do this - never wanting to turn my back on an enemy - but I need to get away from him, and from this spot. I need this discussion to be over, before he starts to make sense to me. I don't want to be an angry person, but what he's offering usually comes with a terrible price, or at least I expect there to be one.
It felt like I walked for a long time after that. Nothing else happened, but I also never got further from the water, or closer to the fence. I feel kind of stuck, though I think if I tried hard enough, I could change the scene. I'd still be in the dream state, just with a different image. And I guess I'm too old to stay up all night, because that obviously didn't work, either.
I look up, and see that endless blue sky. No sun.
This is bad. I can't have used it up. It must be hidden.
I think about trying to change things, make a shelter or a shield, anything I can, but I get the feeling that doing so would draw attention to me. I have a vague memory of something with salt water and herbs, candles, and determination.
I was hoping that would help, but I feel almost like I've got food poisoning, and maybe a fever. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and there's this watery feeling in my gut.
I need to get out of here, but the beach is kind of endless. Maybe the water...
I hear that low, caustic voice behind me. "Are you sure?"
I'm not. I know what I usually find in deep water. This is why I hate coming here. And as if to punctuate the thought, I can see a dorsal fin sticking out of the water a few yards off shore. An icy chill runs through my chest, and my first impulse is to back away from the water, as if the shark can come out of there and get me on the beach, but I don't move. If I let him see me reacting, I'm sure he'll use that.
I decide that since I'm found, there's no point in hiding my energy. I pull from the sea and the sand, and make a shield around myself, keeping it close. In the split second it takes me to pull and form that, I hear movement in the sand. I charge my shield.
I hear a short, rough chuckle right behind me. His voice is repulsive. It makes my skin crawl, but I force myself to not respond. I close my eyes and picture a huge, no trespassing sign. KEEP OUT.
Something is touching my shield. I can feel it, just behind my right shoulder, something small, sliding along the bubble, moving across the surface. The feeling is bizarre, like having a hair inside my shirt. I want to fidget, scratch, grab at it and pull it off of me, but I also feel like that would be a form of surrender, like giving him a point - he'd be acknowledged. I take a deep breath, let it out slow, and push against the pressure of the touch with that same sense of KEEP OUT.
The touch moves around the side of the shield, past my arm, across the front of the shoulder. That stray hair feeling moves up the side of my neck, and an involuntary shiver threatens to break through. I feel myself gritting my teeth, tensing up every muscle in my body. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Another deep breath, and I push again. That touch is still there, moving up past my jaw, across my cheek, my temple, my forehead, coming to rest right between my eyes, and then a slow tapping starts.
. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .
Now, I'm ready to crawl out of my skin. I have to see what he's doing. I open my eyes to see a clawed finger tapping on the outside of the "glass."
He's repeatedly touching the outside of my charged, spiked shield, and nothing is happening to him.
He stares at me from behind his hand, and says, "Greetings."
My heart thumps hard, and there is a crushing pain in my chest. It's hard to breathe. I shouldn't have opened my eyes. It's immediately apparent that he can see right through my bravado. I'm not fooling anyone.
I stare back at him. He stops tapping on my shield, and lets his finger hang in the air in front of my face. The urge to get as far away from him as possible is now competing with the urge to reach out and break his finger. He sees me looking, pulls his hand back a bit. His head tilts slightly to the side, his expression thoughtful, then he reaches right through the shield, and pokes that claw at the area between my eyes. The shield melts away like butter, falling to the ground around my feet and soaking into the sand. It feels like a set of clothing falling off, and now I feel totally exposed.
I smack his arm away from my face with one hand, and shove the heel of the other against his chest to push him away. He shakes his head at me and says, "Whatever," sounding petulant.
I wait a moment to see what he's going to do. He seems to be waiting to see what I'm going to do.
I remind him, "When I asked you where "through" would take you, you just dodged my question. Are you going to answer it?"
He dodges again. "Are all of your people laced throughout with that lovely shade of rage and resentment, or is it just you?"
I start to open my mouth to answer that no, I'm not normal, but I have a bad feeling about sharing any information with him about "my" people. Instead, I close my mouth, and cross my arms, and look as stubborn as I can.
He doesn't seem intimidated by it. Instead, he moves right up to me, so quickly my eyes can't keep track, and says, "It's an affliction, isn't it? It touches everything about you. I could taste it, you know? Is it rare, or are there many of you?"
I don't answer him. I'm thinking about what he's asking me. Everything about this feels wrong. I don't like his sudden interest in my psychological make-up. I tell him to back off.
He doesn't.
He says, "You don't hide things very well. You don't have to answer me. I can see it on your face. I'm right about you. It is an affliction. You hate it, don't you? Don't you fear being consumed by it? Wouldn't you like to get rid of it?"
What is he asking me? Everyone gets angry. I have things to be angry about. I have lots of them, and I'm only actually mad about half of those. Of course there are things I resent. People have been abusive to me, lied to me, taken advantage of me, and stolen from me. Wouldn't it be abnormal and unnatural to have to work through some resentment?
I remind myself what I've been told about this guy. He's made of lies, and deception. He feeds on the things we poison ourselves with. If I let him, he'll eat me alive, and he'll probably hurt everyone I love and protect in the process. I remind myself what he tried to do to my Lady. I harden my resolve. It's the only shield I have left. I turn my face away from him.
"No. You can't have it. It's mine."
I feel his chilled breath on my neck, and he very quietly chides, "You're a bad liar." Then, he says my Name. Not the one my parents gave me, not any of the pet names my friends call me, not even the one I use in the circle; my Name name, the one from before, that is mine regardless of what others call me.
I turn my face back to look at him. His eyes are inches away from mine. Seeing him that close makes my stomach lurch. A chill washes down my back, and into my core. I can't keep myself from shaking.
He asks, "Why hold on to such a burden? Let it go. I want it, and you don't. It isn't going to do you any harm to give it up. You'd be better off without it."
My gut hurts. This thing standing before me wants to feed on me like a leech. The sad thing is, this is so tempting... to be able to get rid of something I have to fight tooth and nail to control, to not feel pissed off all of the time - I could happily get rid of my temper. He's right. I don't want it. I do hate it. It is a burden. But I don't trust him. He's a thief, stealing emotions and twisting souls. I'm angry over what he's done. This actually makes me furious. I ask, "Is this how you do it? Is this how you hunt your victims, talking them into making some kind of deal with you? Did you trick my Lady into some kind of bargain?"
He utters a short, barking laugh. "I don't have to bargain with prey. She didn't even know I was there until it was too late. Most never do."
I ask, "Why are you trying to bargain with me?"
Instead of answering, he looks at me like I'm trying to pull one over on him. Inside, I feel like I'm prying at something, or trying to get through a maze. There's something I'm not taking into account. Even that look seems familiar, like I've seen him do it before. I feel horribly confused, and at the same time, I've got that tip-of-the-tongue, memory not found kind of frustration building up.
He says, "You all ready know the answer to that question. You just don't want to confront it."
I don't want to believe him, but that feels true. That doesn't make me trust him any more than before, or rather mistrust him any less. It just gives me yet another thing to try to figure out.
He continues, "...so close to the surface I can smell it on you." I feel a light pressure on my throat, moving down toward my heart. He's looking down. I look, and see his finger tracing along the center of my armor. I'm overwhelmed with revulsion, disgust, and outrage. Pushed over the edge, and without even thinking about it, I haul off and slug him right in the nose, feeling the bone crack against my knuckles, knocking him back into the water, yelling at him.
"DON'T. YOU. TOUCH. ME."
He sits in the water, nose bleeding, wide-eyed with surprise. He reaches up and touches the blood, licks his fingers, and says, "See, you're even angry when you're frightened."
Still shaking, heart pounding, I turn my back on him and trudge back up the beach. Part of me is terrified to do this - never wanting to turn my back on an enemy - but I need to get away from him, and from this spot. I need this discussion to be over, before he starts to make sense to me. I don't want to be an angry person, but what he's offering usually comes with a terrible price, or at least I expect there to be one.
It felt like I walked for a long time after that. Nothing else happened, but I also never got further from the water, or closer to the fence. I feel kind of stuck, though I think if I tried hard enough, I could change the scene. I'd still be in the dream state, just with a different image. And I guess I'm too old to stay up all night, because that obviously didn't work, either.
Temper and a tempest
I'm cold and wet. It's dark, except in a few spots where the sun breaks through the clouds. Rain is falling all around me, and the tide is coming in. The sand under my feet is treacherous, slipping out from under me with each step, and if that isn't enough, there's a wind blowing hard enough to threaten to blow me off of my feet. I am absolutely miserable. I just want to get inside.
I'm searching along the side of the building, trying to find the door. I seem to remember being here before, but for some reason, I don't think I'm going to be able to get in. Moving all the way around the place, I confirm my suspicion. There is no entrance. I find a spot where the roof hangs over, and huddle underneath that. It provides little shelter, but at least less rain is hitting me.
I look out into the storm. There was someone here before, but now there isn't. I'm all alone.
I should be able to shape this. There are sunbeams coming through thin spots in the clouds, off in the distance. I can still use the energy from the sun. After a moment of reaching out, I can feel it. I draw it in, and try forming a small shelter up against the side of the building. It's kind of like half of a wigwam, with the open end right up against the wall of the building. Under the wigwam, I can hear the weather outside taking a turn for the worse. Thunder rolls across the sky, and the rain pounds my shelter so hard it sounds like hail.
I use energy to fortify the wigwam, then turn my attention to the wall. This temporary shelter is keeping me dry right now, but if the weather keeps getting worse, I'm going to need something better. I put both hands on the wall. I think of the wood temporarily becoming flexible, like a hanging curtain. I feel it relax, and move under my fingers. I pull several boards to the side, and look in. It's very dark. I can see what looks like a restaurant table a chair. I step through the wall/curtain, let it fall behind me, and make it solid again.
Now it won't matter if the wigwam blows away. I'm in a sturdier building, and the rain isn't getting in here.
It's completely dark in here. Feeling to see if I can still reach the energy from the sun, I'm able to produce a small glowing ball. I see a light switch on the wall, and I flip that up. Some of the areas on the ceiling light up. Oddly, they don't look like light bulbs. It looks like there's a mini-sun in here, and some other little round orbs that could be other suns. The ceiling is really dark blue, and the walls are dark brown, but the room still seems brightly lit.
The room actually seems to be some kind of a studio. Beside me, there is a drawing table positioned like the paste-up tables I used to work with at the newspaper (it's on a slant) and stocked with paper and art supplies. Further away, there's a tripod and a camera, and a backdrop stand. Beside the stand, there are a few different backdrops on the floor. Across the room is a chair surrounded by crochet and knitting supplies. A few feet away from that is a desk with a computer hooked up to a scanner and two printers. There are images sitting in the tray of one printer, and there are typed pages on the tray of another.
Next to the space where the computer set-up is, there is another table, this one laying flat. It's about a third covered in fabric, sewing tools, findings, and accessories. Mixed in with those items are jewelry making supplies. There is a dressmaker's dummy with a partially made outfit, and there are mannequin parts with partially made jewelry pieces on them.
There's a loud tapping noise on the roof, and then suddenly there are a whole lot of loud tapping noises. I wasn't imagining it earlier; that is definitely hail. I can hear the whistle of high winds, and the building shakes. Using some of the energy I pulled earlier, I thicken the walls. As I turn back to look at the room again, I see a trap door in the floor.
Curiosity compels me to open it, but my mind makes up the excuse that if there's hail, there will probably be a tornado. Maybe there's an underground tunnel leading away from the beach. Maybe it goes to another building, and that's why there was no door to get in here. I start to lift the door, and a child's voice from behind me says, "I wouldn't."
I spin around to see the voice's owner, a little girl of about 10 years old. At first glance, I only notice that every single thing she's wearing is pink, right down to the frames of her glasses. I had a pair of glasses exactly like those when I was her age. As I notice the frames, I really see her face for the first time, and realize she could be my 5th grade twin. She looks suspicious of me, and asks, "What are you doing in here? How did you get in?"
I tell her I'm sorry for intruding, and that I only came in because of the storm outside. I figure she has to know I've been out in it - I look like a drowned rat. I ask if it's all right if I stay in here until it blows over, and she looks at me like I've said the stupidest thing in the world. She says, "It's only storming like that because you pissed him off and then let him get away. And don't go into the cellar. You don't want to confront what you keep down there."
I ask the little girl who she is, and she rolls her eyes at me. "Oh-mih-GAWD. Do NOT tell me you're seriously asking me that." She executes a melodramatic flounce, and begins putting something together on the sewing/jewelry table. When I wait for more of an answer, she continues with, "Well, I can't tell you, anyway. It's not like I have a name or anything. Jeez . Anyway, you shouldn't be here. This is my place, not yours. You can dry off, but you're eventually going to have to go back outside, and you can't let him see you... did he see you come in here?"
I start to say that I don't think so, but then there's a loud thunk on the side of the building. I hear the wigwam crunch apart. Her eyes widen, and she says, "He may not have seen, but he knows you're here. You have to go!"
I start to ask how I'm going to get out without him seeing the opening, when suddenly I'm back on the beach. I'm in a sunny spot, but there's a storm raging all around. It's like I'm in the eye. I can see him walking along the edge of the water, heading my way. I can see hail hitting the roof of the building, and the wigwam being battered by the wind. I call the energy I used to make it back into myself, and it kind of dissolves. I want to make sure that building and the child inside are safe. I move the sand, piling it up around the walls, until the entire building is inside a huge dune. I pack it down, then melt the outer inch depth of sand and solidify it so that it's basically glass. Then, I work on my shield, making it like a narrow egg shape around my body.
Lightning strikes out on the water, then another flash strikes the sand near where I am standing. Finally, a flash strikes my shield. I hear a sound like a bomb going off in my head, but no damage is done. The shield holds.
I think to myself, so, he wants to play with the weather? That's my game. I do this all the time. It's my favorite toy.
I reach out and feel the storm. It feels like he's focusing on one thing at a time. He's gotten the storm going, and he set rain falling, hail stones falling, and wind moving, but is now ignoring all of that to use lightning. The entire rest of his creation is vulnerable.
I begin increasing the wind, but not at ground level where he'll notice. Instead, I move the air way over our heads, just below the clouds, creating a downdraft that hits the water a little out to sea, and behind his position. I move the air harder and faster, and pretty soon it's pulling other air along with it. I let go and watch as a funnel cloud forms, dropping down to the water. I grab it again, pulling it closer until he can hear the tell-tale whistle.
He turns to see it, then shoots a look of shock and indignation back over his shoulder at me. I wave at him. He grits his teeth and turns away from me, and suddenly I can feel an icy energy trying to remove my mental grip on the tornado, causing it to waver and threaten to disperse into the wind.
I flip the tail and smack him with it, picking him up, spinning him around, and tossing him into the air. He lands hard on his side, rolling across the sand before landing near me. I can see that his clothing is burned on one side, and he has scars on his arm, and on the skin under all of the rips.
He ducks his head and balls his hands into fists, and I feel his energy pushing against mine again.
I blast him with a gust of wind from the other side, and he falls over. He starts to get back up, and I pull another funnel cloud down from the sky, so that there's one on either side of him. Neither of them are huge, but the winds from both of them are battering him pretty well. He is getting hit by driftwood, shells, and hail, and scoured by blowing sand.
He puts his hands up on either side of him, and I can feel that cold, clammy energy again, trying to wrestle control away from me. I push, and the tornadoes move closer to him. I pull down a third one behind him. I've now got the thunder and lightning worked into a rhythm, with the cyclones whistling along, almost making the storm into a song. He turns around and looks at me again. I'm dancing with excitement as I trace a finger through the air, and lightning follows it across the sky, then down to the sand, striking the beach with a loud boom. I grin at him, then hit the sand with a wind sheer that kicks a huge cloud of it several feet into the air, like a bomb went off under it. Sand rains down on his head. He looks like he's taken a bite of something unappetizing, but can't spit it out. I'm feeling really triumphant, and quite proud. Playing with storms is something I'm good at.
He suddenly launches himself at me, moving so fast I don't even think to react before I'm tackled.
I forgot to maintain my shield. I put every ounce of energy I had into my little show. I realize it's gone as he knocks me down and lands right on top of me. I push him away, but he's got a grip on my arm with one hand. He slashes at me with the other, scraping along the front of my armor, which fortunately hasn't disappeared.
When he can't claw through my clothing, he balls up a fist and tries to punch me. I take the opportunity, while he's off balance, to throw him off of me. Scrambling backward, I begin indiscriminately pulling energy from the storm, trying to focus on shielding myself. In doing so, I end up sucking in the entire storm, taking both my energy, and his. It's nasty, like having to put on a smelly, sweaty article of clothing after a shower. I don't like it, and I don't want it, but since I have it, I use it to blast the sand around him again, kicking it up into his face and over his head to keep him busy while I shield myself. What I'm able to form quickly doesn't look right to me. It's got spikes, and it covers me, but it's oddly dark, like smoky glass.
For a moment, he doesn't move at all, just sits there in the wet sand, giving me a slack-jawed stare. I figure I must have stunned him. I step forward. He sits up a little, but doesn't take any action. I realize I still feel that cold, clammy touch, and I wonder if he put all of his power into that storm. I throw a gust of wind into the sand again, blasting him with it, and he does nothing but stare at me. His jaw moves like he's about to try to speak, but he doesn't. His eyes are more open than normal. I can almost see the top of his irises. Is that what he looks like when he's afraid?
My next thought is that if I can keep him out with a shield, I can keep him inside of one, too.
As he sits there, I work on building a bubble over him. It's different from encasing myself, because I'm not doing it from the inside, I'm doing it from the outside. The energy wants to form a box instead of a sphere. Instead of correcting the problem, I let it be that way. He sits there and watches me. As I walk around the box to make sure it is complete, he turns his head to follow my movements. I notice that one corner of his mouth has turned up.
I know something is wrong. The box is as smoky as my shield. I can feel that it's solid, and completely closed, but why isn't it clear, like normal, and why is he looking at me like that? I momentarily lower my shield to reach out and physically touch the box. Aside from the color, I can't find anything out of the ordinary. It feels like my shield always feels, a lot like glass. If I concentrate, I can reach right through my shield, as though reaching through a liquid, because it's energy that I've drawn through myself, and it's attuned to me.
As I place my fingers on the wall of the box, he stands up and steps toward me, still looking kind of stunned. Maybe now I can get him to talk to me.
"What do you want? Why do you keep attacking me?" I know he's replied to this, but he really hasn't given me an answer.
He acts like he's going to speak, but no sound comes out. I'm wondering if I made the box too heavy. Without thinking, I reach out and tap on it like a window. Fast as lightning, he reaches through it, folds his fingers around my hand, and grins broadly.
That cold, clammy feeling. . . the energy that made the storm was drawn through him, manipulated by him. And I drew it into me and used it. I used it to make the box, and I'd used it to make my shield. He could have gotten through the whole time.
He says, "You have quite an appetite."
I try to pull away from him. I don't want him touching me, even if it's not an outright attack - and it's not, because he hasn't even come the rest of the way out of the box. He doesn't let go of my hand, and even though I'm a bit taller than he is, and I'd guess that I outweigh him, he's got quite a grip. More than that, I can feel a pull through the palm of my hand, pulling on that energy, and on my focus.
I don't know what he's doing, but it can't be good. I make a mental stab at blocking off my hand, but I can still feel that pull. I pull back against it. Immediately, I get another taste of that icky, cold clammy feeling, and then he's pulling harder. I feel my control slipping away.
I say, "Good dodge. Not gonna answer me?"
I double my effort, pulling it back, and feel his claws dig into the back of my hand. Blood runs down onto my wrist. He's trying to use pain to distract me.
He steps through the wall of the box, right into my personal space, and says, "I told you, I want to get through." Even his breath is freezing cold. I'm completely repulsed. I want to pull away and run, but I know that won't do any good.
I give a hard pull, drawing something into myself that isn't me. It's not anything like the energy I've been manipulating. It makes my hand feel freezing cold. It's almost a burning kind of cold, like temperatures that cause frostbite. Intense, searing pain fills the bones in my hand. Whatever I just brought in has found my arthritis.
I realize that this won't end well for me. If I win the tug-of-war, I'm going to be filled with something terrible that feels like it might kill me. If I lose, he most certainly will. I have to change the rules.
I ask him where "through" will take him. He gives me a momentary look of confusion, then says, "You don't remember?"
He grabs my other hand, and starts to pull back, taking through both of them. I let the icky energy go, but try to hold on to my own. At the same time, I'm thinking about my family, how much I love them, and how much I want to protect them. I focus on the things about myself that make me proud to be me. I dwell on the joy I find in everyday things, and in the people who are closest to me. I use those thoughts build up a bright, warm energy within myself.
I ask what I'm supposed to be remembering.
I still feel the tug on my own supply. I don't seem to be able to separate those two energies from each other just by willpower. The warm brightness, though, seems to be untainted. I hold out, pulling just hard enough to keep him from getting anything, but not hard enough to subject myself to another burst of freezing cold.
His look of confusion changes to surprise. Instead of answering me, he says, "You don't remember. I can't believe you don't remember. Why are you even fighting me?"
I tell him, "Because you tried to take whatever it is you're after without my consent. You never even tried a peaceful path."
I move the warm, bright energy I've built up, letting it flow down through my arms and into my hands, displacing what's there with it. When he pulls again, I let it flow, pushing it through the connection he chose to make when he grabbed my hands. The feeling of it moving is so opposite the way what came from him felt, it has to do some kind of damage.
Except, it doesn't. I feel the energy flow from my hands, and into his. I can even see that it's affecting him. The pale skin of his hands takes on a little more color. His fingers twitch, pulling away from my hands, and he lets go. I can see that even his face is less pale, especially around the cheeks. Once again, he gives me that slack-jawed, wide-eyed stare. He backs up against the wall of the box. It cracks, then shatters and melts into the sand.
Only thing is, he doesn't look injured. He just looks really, really surprised. He blinks - which until now, I haven't seen him ever do. Even that is weird. His upper eyelids move down to meet his lower ones, but the lower ones don't move up, so it looks like his upper eyelids are really long, and the blink is kind of slow.
I'm all ready working on building up more energy, trying to figure out a way to knock him down before he snaps out of it and retaliates, but he doesn't. He just asks me if I realize what I've just done. Now it's my turn to be confused, and I can feel that it shows on my face. For a moment, he actually looks pensive and a little amused, but then he seems to snap out of it.
He says, "I still want through. I want through." He takes an aggressive posture, and then does absolutely nothing, just stands there. I don't even know what to do right now. I fully expected that positive energy would hurt him because he seems so evil. It didn't. I'm at a complete loss. I take a defensive stance and seriously hope that he makes the fight physical, because then I might have a chance.
Instead, he seems to melt into yet another swarm of bugs, but this time is different. Normally, the swarm is made up of wasps that look like Great Black wasps but are over 2 inches long. This time, it is a swarm of tiny, silvery-black butterflies, each no more than an inch. The swarm flies right at me and totally surrounds me for a moment, flying so close that I can feel some of them brushing up against my face and hands. I expect an attack, and try to focus energy on them, but nothing happens. There is no attack from either of us, and the butterflies move out of my reach and keep going until I can't see them any more.
I hear a noise behind me. I turn to see the little girl from inside the beach shack walking toward me on the sand. She gets up close, gives me an angry and incredulous look, and shoves me with a loud yell, "You IDIOT!"
I feel myself falling backward.
From there, this turned into one of those falling dreams, where you feel like you're falling endlessly. I woke when I "landed" on the bed. It was the weirdest thing - it really felt like she'd pushed me out of my own dream experience.
I'm pretty sure she's me, or part of me, because she looked just like my ten-year-old self, right down to my first pair of glasses. I don't know exactly what she represents, but it's got to be connected to my creative side, because her 'room' was full of arts and crafts that interest me.
Out of the whole screwed up dream, the thing that has messed with my head the most is the butterflies. They're the only non-stinging bug-like thing I've seen the whole time I've been dreaming about this particular monster, and the reason they bother me is that they don't fit the pattern. There's always something scary, never something nice. I really feel like it has to be some kind of a mental trap.
A note about the storm - playing with tornadoes was one of the first lucid things I ever did while dreaming. I absolutely love storms, particularly electrical storms, and am fascinated by tornadoes. I guess I just explored that to a more "me" kind of level in dreams growing up, and now it's kind of second nature. It doesn't even take any effort most of the time.
I'm searching along the side of the building, trying to find the door. I seem to remember being here before, but for some reason, I don't think I'm going to be able to get in. Moving all the way around the place, I confirm my suspicion. There is no entrance. I find a spot where the roof hangs over, and huddle underneath that. It provides little shelter, but at least less rain is hitting me.
I look out into the storm. There was someone here before, but now there isn't. I'm all alone.
I should be able to shape this. There are sunbeams coming through thin spots in the clouds, off in the distance. I can still use the energy from the sun. After a moment of reaching out, I can feel it. I draw it in, and try forming a small shelter up against the side of the building. It's kind of like half of a wigwam, with the open end right up against the wall of the building. Under the wigwam, I can hear the weather outside taking a turn for the worse. Thunder rolls across the sky, and the rain pounds my shelter so hard it sounds like hail.
I use energy to fortify the wigwam, then turn my attention to the wall. This temporary shelter is keeping me dry right now, but if the weather keeps getting worse, I'm going to need something better. I put both hands on the wall. I think of the wood temporarily becoming flexible, like a hanging curtain. I feel it relax, and move under my fingers. I pull several boards to the side, and look in. It's very dark. I can see what looks like a restaurant table a chair. I step through the wall/curtain, let it fall behind me, and make it solid again.
Now it won't matter if the wigwam blows away. I'm in a sturdier building, and the rain isn't getting in here.
It's completely dark in here. Feeling to see if I can still reach the energy from the sun, I'm able to produce a small glowing ball. I see a light switch on the wall, and I flip that up. Some of the areas on the ceiling light up. Oddly, they don't look like light bulbs. It looks like there's a mini-sun in here, and some other little round orbs that could be other suns. The ceiling is really dark blue, and the walls are dark brown, but the room still seems brightly lit.
The room actually seems to be some kind of a studio. Beside me, there is a drawing table positioned like the paste-up tables I used to work with at the newspaper (it's on a slant) and stocked with paper and art supplies. Further away, there's a tripod and a camera, and a backdrop stand. Beside the stand, there are a few different backdrops on the floor. Across the room is a chair surrounded by crochet and knitting supplies. A few feet away from that is a desk with a computer hooked up to a scanner and two printers. There are images sitting in the tray of one printer, and there are typed pages on the tray of another.
Next to the space where the computer set-up is, there is another table, this one laying flat. It's about a third covered in fabric, sewing tools, findings, and accessories. Mixed in with those items are jewelry making supplies. There is a dressmaker's dummy with a partially made outfit, and there are mannequin parts with partially made jewelry pieces on them.
There's a loud tapping noise on the roof, and then suddenly there are a whole lot of loud tapping noises. I wasn't imagining it earlier; that is definitely hail. I can hear the whistle of high winds, and the building shakes. Using some of the energy I pulled earlier, I thicken the walls. As I turn back to look at the room again, I see a trap door in the floor.
Curiosity compels me to open it, but my mind makes up the excuse that if there's hail, there will probably be a tornado. Maybe there's an underground tunnel leading away from the beach. Maybe it goes to another building, and that's why there was no door to get in here. I start to lift the door, and a child's voice from behind me says, "I wouldn't."
I spin around to see the voice's owner, a little girl of about 10 years old. At first glance, I only notice that every single thing she's wearing is pink, right down to the frames of her glasses. I had a pair of glasses exactly like those when I was her age. As I notice the frames, I really see her face for the first time, and realize she could be my 5th grade twin. She looks suspicious of me, and asks, "What are you doing in here? How did you get in?"
I tell her I'm sorry for intruding, and that I only came in because of the storm outside. I figure she has to know I've been out in it - I look like a drowned rat. I ask if it's all right if I stay in here until it blows over, and she looks at me like I've said the stupidest thing in the world. She says, "It's only storming like that because you pissed him off and then let him get away. And don't go into the cellar. You don't want to confront what you keep down there."
I ask the little girl who she is, and she rolls her eyes at me. "Oh-mih-GAWD. Do NOT tell me you're seriously asking me that." She executes a melodramatic flounce, and begins putting something together on the sewing/jewelry table. When I wait for more of an answer, she continues with, "Well, I can't tell you, anyway. It's not like I have a name or anything. Jeez . Anyway, you shouldn't be here. This is my place, not yours. You can dry off, but you're eventually going to have to go back outside, and you can't let him see you... did he see you come in here?"
I start to say that I don't think so, but then there's a loud thunk on the side of the building. I hear the wigwam crunch apart. Her eyes widen, and she says, "He may not have seen, but he knows you're here. You have to go!"
I start to ask how I'm going to get out without him seeing the opening, when suddenly I'm back on the beach. I'm in a sunny spot, but there's a storm raging all around. It's like I'm in the eye. I can see him walking along the edge of the water, heading my way. I can see hail hitting the roof of the building, and the wigwam being battered by the wind. I call the energy I used to make it back into myself, and it kind of dissolves. I want to make sure that building and the child inside are safe. I move the sand, piling it up around the walls, until the entire building is inside a huge dune. I pack it down, then melt the outer inch depth of sand and solidify it so that it's basically glass. Then, I work on my shield, making it like a narrow egg shape around my body.
Lightning strikes out on the water, then another flash strikes the sand near where I am standing. Finally, a flash strikes my shield. I hear a sound like a bomb going off in my head, but no damage is done. The shield holds.
I think to myself, so, he wants to play with the weather? That's my game. I do this all the time. It's my favorite toy.
I reach out and feel the storm. It feels like he's focusing on one thing at a time. He's gotten the storm going, and he set rain falling, hail stones falling, and wind moving, but is now ignoring all of that to use lightning. The entire rest of his creation is vulnerable.
I begin increasing the wind, but not at ground level where he'll notice. Instead, I move the air way over our heads, just below the clouds, creating a downdraft that hits the water a little out to sea, and behind his position. I move the air harder and faster, and pretty soon it's pulling other air along with it. I let go and watch as a funnel cloud forms, dropping down to the water. I grab it again, pulling it closer until he can hear the tell-tale whistle.
He turns to see it, then shoots a look of shock and indignation back over his shoulder at me. I wave at him. He grits his teeth and turns away from me, and suddenly I can feel an icy energy trying to remove my mental grip on the tornado, causing it to waver and threaten to disperse into the wind.
I flip the tail and smack him with it, picking him up, spinning him around, and tossing him into the air. He lands hard on his side, rolling across the sand before landing near me. I can see that his clothing is burned on one side, and he has scars on his arm, and on the skin under all of the rips.
He ducks his head and balls his hands into fists, and I feel his energy pushing against mine again.
I blast him with a gust of wind from the other side, and he falls over. He starts to get back up, and I pull another funnel cloud down from the sky, so that there's one on either side of him. Neither of them are huge, but the winds from both of them are battering him pretty well. He is getting hit by driftwood, shells, and hail, and scoured by blowing sand.
He puts his hands up on either side of him, and I can feel that cold, clammy energy again, trying to wrestle control away from me. I push, and the tornadoes move closer to him. I pull down a third one behind him. I've now got the thunder and lightning worked into a rhythm, with the cyclones whistling along, almost making the storm into a song. He turns around and looks at me again. I'm dancing with excitement as I trace a finger through the air, and lightning follows it across the sky, then down to the sand, striking the beach with a loud boom. I grin at him, then hit the sand with a wind sheer that kicks a huge cloud of it several feet into the air, like a bomb went off under it. Sand rains down on his head. He looks like he's taken a bite of something unappetizing, but can't spit it out. I'm feeling really triumphant, and quite proud. Playing with storms is something I'm good at.
He suddenly launches himself at me, moving so fast I don't even think to react before I'm tackled.
I forgot to maintain my shield. I put every ounce of energy I had into my little show. I realize it's gone as he knocks me down and lands right on top of me. I push him away, but he's got a grip on my arm with one hand. He slashes at me with the other, scraping along the front of my armor, which fortunately hasn't disappeared.
When he can't claw through my clothing, he balls up a fist and tries to punch me. I take the opportunity, while he's off balance, to throw him off of me. Scrambling backward, I begin indiscriminately pulling energy from the storm, trying to focus on shielding myself. In doing so, I end up sucking in the entire storm, taking both my energy, and his. It's nasty, like having to put on a smelly, sweaty article of clothing after a shower. I don't like it, and I don't want it, but since I have it, I use it to blast the sand around him again, kicking it up into his face and over his head to keep him busy while I shield myself. What I'm able to form quickly doesn't look right to me. It's got spikes, and it covers me, but it's oddly dark, like smoky glass.
For a moment, he doesn't move at all, just sits there in the wet sand, giving me a slack-jawed stare. I figure I must have stunned him. I step forward. He sits up a little, but doesn't take any action. I realize I still feel that cold, clammy touch, and I wonder if he put all of his power into that storm. I throw a gust of wind into the sand again, blasting him with it, and he does nothing but stare at me. His jaw moves like he's about to try to speak, but he doesn't. His eyes are more open than normal. I can almost see the top of his irises. Is that what he looks like when he's afraid?
My next thought is that if I can keep him out with a shield, I can keep him inside of one, too.
As he sits there, I work on building a bubble over him. It's different from encasing myself, because I'm not doing it from the inside, I'm doing it from the outside. The energy wants to form a box instead of a sphere. Instead of correcting the problem, I let it be that way. He sits there and watches me. As I walk around the box to make sure it is complete, he turns his head to follow my movements. I notice that one corner of his mouth has turned up.
I know something is wrong. The box is as smoky as my shield. I can feel that it's solid, and completely closed, but why isn't it clear, like normal, and why is he looking at me like that? I momentarily lower my shield to reach out and physically touch the box. Aside from the color, I can't find anything out of the ordinary. It feels like my shield always feels, a lot like glass. If I concentrate, I can reach right through my shield, as though reaching through a liquid, because it's energy that I've drawn through myself, and it's attuned to me.
As I place my fingers on the wall of the box, he stands up and steps toward me, still looking kind of stunned. Maybe now I can get him to talk to me.
"What do you want? Why do you keep attacking me?" I know he's replied to this, but he really hasn't given me an answer.
He acts like he's going to speak, but no sound comes out. I'm wondering if I made the box too heavy. Without thinking, I reach out and tap on it like a window. Fast as lightning, he reaches through it, folds his fingers around my hand, and grins broadly.
That cold, clammy feeling. . . the energy that made the storm was drawn through him, manipulated by him. And I drew it into me and used it. I used it to make the box, and I'd used it to make my shield. He could have gotten through the whole time.
He says, "You have quite an appetite."
I try to pull away from him. I don't want him touching me, even if it's not an outright attack - and it's not, because he hasn't even come the rest of the way out of the box. He doesn't let go of my hand, and even though I'm a bit taller than he is, and I'd guess that I outweigh him, he's got quite a grip. More than that, I can feel a pull through the palm of my hand, pulling on that energy, and on my focus.
I don't know what he's doing, but it can't be good. I make a mental stab at blocking off my hand, but I can still feel that pull. I pull back against it. Immediately, I get another taste of that icky, cold clammy feeling, and then he's pulling harder. I feel my control slipping away.
I say, "Good dodge. Not gonna answer me?"
I double my effort, pulling it back, and feel his claws dig into the back of my hand. Blood runs down onto my wrist. He's trying to use pain to distract me.
He steps through the wall of the box, right into my personal space, and says, "I told you, I want to get through." Even his breath is freezing cold. I'm completely repulsed. I want to pull away and run, but I know that won't do any good.
I give a hard pull, drawing something into myself that isn't me. It's not anything like the energy I've been manipulating. It makes my hand feel freezing cold. It's almost a burning kind of cold, like temperatures that cause frostbite. Intense, searing pain fills the bones in my hand. Whatever I just brought in has found my arthritis.
I realize that this won't end well for me. If I win the tug-of-war, I'm going to be filled with something terrible that feels like it might kill me. If I lose, he most certainly will. I have to change the rules.
I ask him where "through" will take him. He gives me a momentary look of confusion, then says, "You don't remember?"
He grabs my other hand, and starts to pull back, taking through both of them. I let the icky energy go, but try to hold on to my own. At the same time, I'm thinking about my family, how much I love them, and how much I want to protect them. I focus on the things about myself that make me proud to be me. I dwell on the joy I find in everyday things, and in the people who are closest to me. I use those thoughts build up a bright, warm energy within myself.
I ask what I'm supposed to be remembering.
I still feel the tug on my own supply. I don't seem to be able to separate those two energies from each other just by willpower. The warm brightness, though, seems to be untainted. I hold out, pulling just hard enough to keep him from getting anything, but not hard enough to subject myself to another burst of freezing cold.
His look of confusion changes to surprise. Instead of answering me, he says, "You don't remember. I can't believe you don't remember. Why are you even fighting me?"
I tell him, "Because you tried to take whatever it is you're after without my consent. You never even tried a peaceful path."
I move the warm, bright energy I've built up, letting it flow down through my arms and into my hands, displacing what's there with it. When he pulls again, I let it flow, pushing it through the connection he chose to make when he grabbed my hands. The feeling of it moving is so opposite the way what came from him felt, it has to do some kind of damage.
Except, it doesn't. I feel the energy flow from my hands, and into his. I can even see that it's affecting him. The pale skin of his hands takes on a little more color. His fingers twitch, pulling away from my hands, and he lets go. I can see that even his face is less pale, especially around the cheeks. Once again, he gives me that slack-jawed, wide-eyed stare. He backs up against the wall of the box. It cracks, then shatters and melts into the sand.
Only thing is, he doesn't look injured. He just looks really, really surprised. He blinks - which until now, I haven't seen him ever do. Even that is weird. His upper eyelids move down to meet his lower ones, but the lower ones don't move up, so it looks like his upper eyelids are really long, and the blink is kind of slow.
I'm all ready working on building up more energy, trying to figure out a way to knock him down before he snaps out of it and retaliates, but he doesn't. He just asks me if I realize what I've just done. Now it's my turn to be confused, and I can feel that it shows on my face. For a moment, he actually looks pensive and a little amused, but then he seems to snap out of it.
He says, "I still want through. I want through." He takes an aggressive posture, and then does absolutely nothing, just stands there. I don't even know what to do right now. I fully expected that positive energy would hurt him because he seems so evil. It didn't. I'm at a complete loss. I take a defensive stance and seriously hope that he makes the fight physical, because then I might have a chance.
Instead, he seems to melt into yet another swarm of bugs, but this time is different. Normally, the swarm is made up of wasps that look like Great Black wasps but are over 2 inches long. This time, it is a swarm of tiny, silvery-black butterflies, each no more than an inch. The swarm flies right at me and totally surrounds me for a moment, flying so close that I can feel some of them brushing up against my face and hands. I expect an attack, and try to focus energy on them, but nothing happens. There is no attack from either of us, and the butterflies move out of my reach and keep going until I can't see them any more.
I hear a noise behind me. I turn to see the little girl from inside the beach shack walking toward me on the sand. She gets up close, gives me an angry and incredulous look, and shoves me with a loud yell, "You IDIOT!"
I feel myself falling backward.
From there, this turned into one of those falling dreams, where you feel like you're falling endlessly. I woke when I "landed" on the bed. It was the weirdest thing - it really felt like she'd pushed me out of my own dream experience.
I'm pretty sure she's me, or part of me, because she looked just like my ten-year-old self, right down to my first pair of glasses. I don't know exactly what she represents, but it's got to be connected to my creative side, because her 'room' was full of arts and crafts that interest me.
Out of the whole screwed up dream, the thing that has messed with my head the most is the butterflies. They're the only non-stinging bug-like thing I've seen the whole time I've been dreaming about this particular monster, and the reason they bother me is that they don't fit the pattern. There's always something scary, never something nice. I really feel like it has to be some kind of a mental trap.
A note about the storm - playing with tornadoes was one of the first lucid things I ever did while dreaming. I absolutely love storms, particularly electrical storms, and am fascinated by tornadoes. I guess I just explored that to a more "me" kind of level in dreams growing up, and now it's kind of second nature. It doesn't even take any effort most of the time.
Sunny beaches
I'm walking along a beach, staying on the wet sand close to the water because the dry sand is hot. The water and sand stretch out both in front of me and behind me as far as I can see in either direction. Off to my left, beyond yards and yards of sand, is a short fence, and on the other side of that there are buildings. In front of me, off in the distance, I can see a little shack that might be a snack bar.
It's very bright and sunny outside, with only a little breeze. I'm feeling really, really warm, even though my clothing is lightweight and loose. The heat soothes my sore shoulders and back, but it feels like my arms and legs are a little sunburned. I can see that my forearms are pink, but I also have a vague memory of being attacked by bugs, and I think they caused the redness.
I enjoy strolling along, absorbing the sunlight. I feel like I can use it to make my arms feel better. I give the idea a try, picturing the redness and irritation fading, the skin returning to normal. I open my eyes, and watch it happening just as I'd imagined.
There's no one else on the beach. I'm not even seeing any birds or bugs, and no fish in the water. It's just me here. I decide to take the opportunity to practice manipulating things.
I feel the energy around me, then draw on it to create a big splash in the water near me, sending a cascade of raining drops out onto the waves. I try shaping it, pushing the water out away from me to reveal more sand and shells, in an arc with about a 10 foot radius. I let the water fall back in, then pull it up into kind of a column shape, and let it fall again.
I try "splashing" the sand the way I did the water. It works. I'm also able to "dig" a hole, turning up a few larger shells, and some sticks. I shape the sand into a big block, then use my finger as a pointer, directing the energy around the sides to create bricks and turrets with windows. Then, I focus a strong wind on it, blowing it away a little at a time until it's just a dune.
I keep walking, getting closer to the shack on the sand. I feel like there's something important, but hard to get, waiting in there for me. It's slow going. The shack is farther away than I originally thought. I can see that I am getting closer. It's just not happening as quickly as I expected. Obviously, I need a faster means of transport than my feet.
I decide to go up a little. Rising off of the sand, I float about ten feet above the ground. I hover over the water for a moment, then shoot forward as fast as a bird, making a beeline toward that little building. It still takes a few minutes to close the distance. If I'd continued walking, getting there would have taken forever. When I do get there, I realize that the building is much bigger than I originally thought. It's not a little snack bar. It's the size of a house, or maybe a restaurant.
I think I'd better be ready before going in there. I stand still and focus on making armor and a shield. The armor looks like regular clothing, but I can feel that it's stronger than steel. Outside of that, I gather a sphere of protective energy, harden it so that it's solid, and build spikes on the outside. I add more energy to the shield, so that it crackles. Then, I make the whole thing invisible. I can feel it there, and I can see a faint outline, but it's now hidden from anyone else's eyes. Anyone or anything that tries to sneak up on me is going to get a nasty surprise.
I start looking for a way into the building. Facing the beach, there's a deck with tables and chairs, but I see no windows or doors in the adjoining walls. I walk around the side, counter-clockwise because I came from the direction that would be left of the building if facing it from the water. On the other side, there's still no door, but there's a narrow stone walkway leading toward what, by process of elimination, must be the front of the building.
There's no door here, either. There's a long, narrow porch, but no door.
Thinking that maybe I missed it, I circle back around to the side I first approached. It's just a solid wall. Close to the corner, set into the sand, is what looks like a utility meter that has been painted over. I look closely, but the paint is thick and solid. I wonder if the door is also painted over.
I start looking more closely. Examining every panel of wood, searching for a keyhole or a doorknob, maybe painted over, I very slowly move around the building again. There's absolutely nothing, not even a knot in the wood.
From behind me, I hear a familiar voice. "Frustrating, isn't it?"
Turning around, I see that he's gone back to looking mostly human. His eyes are still a sore looking mess, but aside from that, he could just be a scrawny little man with bad hair.
I ask why he's here, but all I get back from him is a quizzical stare. I forge on. "Well, you seemed to be unable to accomplish whatever it was you wanted before, and now you don't have any help. Why are you still bothering me?"
He crosses his arms and takes on a posture that reminds me of a sulking teenager, and growls at me. That's the only answer I get.
I try a different question. I speak the words calmly, slowly, and clearly, enunciating each syllable as if speaking to someone who might not otherwise understand.
"What do you want?"
He shoots forward until he's inches away from my shield, about two feet from my face, looking up at me. He says, "I want through." He seems frustrated, and three times, he says, "I want to" but doesn't finish, like he's stuttering. Then, he says, in the same slow, clear manner as I used, but with a very determined tone of voice, "I am going to unravel you." I have the feeling that unravel isn't the word he wanted, but is the closest approximation he could think of. Somehow, though, I think of the crocheting I do, and imagine him looking for a string to pull. The thought makes me laugh.
He responds like I've slapped him in the face, jumping back and giving me an accusing glare. He yells at me to shut up, and kicks sand into the air, pushing it forward with energy. It flies over my shield and lands harmlessly around me. This makes me laugh harder, and he lets out a string of obscenities mingled with gibberish. I see him trying to draw energy from the sand, with less success than I have in pulling it from the sun. Unable to get a good grip on it, he pulls from the water instead. This causes a mist to rise up, and soon there are dark clouds in the air. It looks like there is going to be a storm. Oddly, above the clouds, I can still feel the presence of the sun. I keep hold of that energy.
From the clouds, a bolt of lightning streaks down and hits my shield. I can feel the energy from the bolt competing with the energy I've used to create the shield. I remain connected to the sun as an energy source, and fortify myself against the bolt. It feels like my shield is melted, but it remains in place rather than collapsing. I focus on holding it there. When the bolt is gone, he's looking to see if there's any change.
I've got an idea. I step toward him, and he steps back. I rush forward as if to hug him, slamming the front of my molten shield into him. He tries to turn away, but since he's still walking in the sand, he can't move as quickly as I can. I strike the side of his body, plastering him with the melted energy. An ungodly scream erupts from him as he wrenches himself away from me and throws himself into the water. Steam rises from his searing flesh as he tries to tear off the liquid heat that is stuck to him. He thrashes around among the waves, throwing bits and chunks of crystallized energy back onto the beach.
I watch the struggle, realizing that there's some kind of a reaction taking place. It's not just that the energy is hot; it's reactive in a way that is similar to a chemical reaction. It's bonding to him. He's having to tear off bits of flesh to get rid of it.
I pick up some of the crystals. They're translucent purple, like amethyst, but darker. There doesn't appear to be anything attached to them, so I keep them. I make a pocket in my armor, and put several of them in there. It feels like they might be useful later.
He slowly crawls out of the water, looking shocked and dismayed. His face and posture tell me that my response was totally unexpected, and that he's feeling his injury, which is pretty widespread. The burn is from head to toe, and all along it are spots where he's torn off bits of skin. There's a decent sized gash along his arm, where his claws dug in as he tried to scrape off the melted shield.
He's crawling toward me, and I suddenly realize that there's a hole where the shield impacted him. I back away, trying to close it. He reaches forward, then collapses on the beach, coughing. The first cough is just a cough, but with the next breath, he exhales more strongly, and once again a swarm of bugs exits from his mouth, and his body seems to follow, until there's nothing but the swarm. The bugs fly into the clouds, and a huge gust of wind kicks up. Sand and debris fly everywhere, and the clouds move rapidly away, further along the beach, and out over the water. I'm left floating over the beach, working on fixing the tear in my shield. Oddly, its hardened with strings of pulled shield sticking out of the hole, like bits of caramel that has been pulled apart, and I have to patch it from the inside.
It's very bright and sunny outside, with only a little breeze. I'm feeling really, really warm, even though my clothing is lightweight and loose. The heat soothes my sore shoulders and back, but it feels like my arms and legs are a little sunburned. I can see that my forearms are pink, but I also have a vague memory of being attacked by bugs, and I think they caused the redness.
I enjoy strolling along, absorbing the sunlight. I feel like I can use it to make my arms feel better. I give the idea a try, picturing the redness and irritation fading, the skin returning to normal. I open my eyes, and watch it happening just as I'd imagined.
There's no one else on the beach. I'm not even seeing any birds or bugs, and no fish in the water. It's just me here. I decide to take the opportunity to practice manipulating things.
I feel the energy around me, then draw on it to create a big splash in the water near me, sending a cascade of raining drops out onto the waves. I try shaping it, pushing the water out away from me to reveal more sand and shells, in an arc with about a 10 foot radius. I let the water fall back in, then pull it up into kind of a column shape, and let it fall again.
I try "splashing" the sand the way I did the water. It works. I'm also able to "dig" a hole, turning up a few larger shells, and some sticks. I shape the sand into a big block, then use my finger as a pointer, directing the energy around the sides to create bricks and turrets with windows. Then, I focus a strong wind on it, blowing it away a little at a time until it's just a dune.
I keep walking, getting closer to the shack on the sand. I feel like there's something important, but hard to get, waiting in there for me. It's slow going. The shack is farther away than I originally thought. I can see that I am getting closer. It's just not happening as quickly as I expected. Obviously, I need a faster means of transport than my feet.
I decide to go up a little. Rising off of the sand, I float about ten feet above the ground. I hover over the water for a moment, then shoot forward as fast as a bird, making a beeline toward that little building. It still takes a few minutes to close the distance. If I'd continued walking, getting there would have taken forever. When I do get there, I realize that the building is much bigger than I originally thought. It's not a little snack bar. It's the size of a house, or maybe a restaurant.
I think I'd better be ready before going in there. I stand still and focus on making armor and a shield. The armor looks like regular clothing, but I can feel that it's stronger than steel. Outside of that, I gather a sphere of protective energy, harden it so that it's solid, and build spikes on the outside. I add more energy to the shield, so that it crackles. Then, I make the whole thing invisible. I can feel it there, and I can see a faint outline, but it's now hidden from anyone else's eyes. Anyone or anything that tries to sneak up on me is going to get a nasty surprise.
I start looking for a way into the building. Facing the beach, there's a deck with tables and chairs, but I see no windows or doors in the adjoining walls. I walk around the side, counter-clockwise because I came from the direction that would be left of the building if facing it from the water. On the other side, there's still no door, but there's a narrow stone walkway leading toward what, by process of elimination, must be the front of the building.
There's no door here, either. There's a long, narrow porch, but no door.
Thinking that maybe I missed it, I circle back around to the side I first approached. It's just a solid wall. Close to the corner, set into the sand, is what looks like a utility meter that has been painted over. I look closely, but the paint is thick and solid. I wonder if the door is also painted over.
I start looking more closely. Examining every panel of wood, searching for a keyhole or a doorknob, maybe painted over, I very slowly move around the building again. There's absolutely nothing, not even a knot in the wood.
From behind me, I hear a familiar voice. "Frustrating, isn't it?"
Turning around, I see that he's gone back to looking mostly human. His eyes are still a sore looking mess, but aside from that, he could just be a scrawny little man with bad hair.
I ask why he's here, but all I get back from him is a quizzical stare. I forge on. "Well, you seemed to be unable to accomplish whatever it was you wanted before, and now you don't have any help. Why are you still bothering me?"
He crosses his arms and takes on a posture that reminds me of a sulking teenager, and growls at me. That's the only answer I get.
I try a different question. I speak the words calmly, slowly, and clearly, enunciating each syllable as if speaking to someone who might not otherwise understand.
"What do you want?"
He shoots forward until he's inches away from my shield, about two feet from my face, looking up at me. He says, "I want through." He seems frustrated, and three times, he says, "I want to" but doesn't finish, like he's stuttering. Then, he says, in the same slow, clear manner as I used, but with a very determined tone of voice, "I am going to unravel you." I have the feeling that unravel isn't the word he wanted, but is the closest approximation he could think of. Somehow, though, I think of the crocheting I do, and imagine him looking for a string to pull. The thought makes me laugh.
He responds like I've slapped him in the face, jumping back and giving me an accusing glare. He yells at me to shut up, and kicks sand into the air, pushing it forward with energy. It flies over my shield and lands harmlessly around me. This makes me laugh harder, and he lets out a string of obscenities mingled with gibberish. I see him trying to draw energy from the sand, with less success than I have in pulling it from the sun. Unable to get a good grip on it, he pulls from the water instead. This causes a mist to rise up, and soon there are dark clouds in the air. It looks like there is going to be a storm. Oddly, above the clouds, I can still feel the presence of the sun. I keep hold of that energy.
From the clouds, a bolt of lightning streaks down and hits my shield. I can feel the energy from the bolt competing with the energy I've used to create the shield. I remain connected to the sun as an energy source, and fortify myself against the bolt. It feels like my shield is melted, but it remains in place rather than collapsing. I focus on holding it there. When the bolt is gone, he's looking to see if there's any change.
I've got an idea. I step toward him, and he steps back. I rush forward as if to hug him, slamming the front of my molten shield into him. He tries to turn away, but since he's still walking in the sand, he can't move as quickly as I can. I strike the side of his body, plastering him with the melted energy. An ungodly scream erupts from him as he wrenches himself away from me and throws himself into the water. Steam rises from his searing flesh as he tries to tear off the liquid heat that is stuck to him. He thrashes around among the waves, throwing bits and chunks of crystallized energy back onto the beach.
I watch the struggle, realizing that there's some kind of a reaction taking place. It's not just that the energy is hot; it's reactive in a way that is similar to a chemical reaction. It's bonding to him. He's having to tear off bits of flesh to get rid of it.
I pick up some of the crystals. They're translucent purple, like amethyst, but darker. There doesn't appear to be anything attached to them, so I keep them. I make a pocket in my armor, and put several of them in there. It feels like they might be useful later.
He slowly crawls out of the water, looking shocked and dismayed. His face and posture tell me that my response was totally unexpected, and that he's feeling his injury, which is pretty widespread. The burn is from head to toe, and all along it are spots where he's torn off bits of skin. There's a decent sized gash along his arm, where his claws dug in as he tried to scrape off the melted shield.
He's crawling toward me, and I suddenly realize that there's a hole where the shield impacted him. I back away, trying to close it. He reaches forward, then collapses on the beach, coughing. The first cough is just a cough, but with the next breath, he exhales more strongly, and once again a swarm of bugs exits from his mouth, and his body seems to follow, until there's nothing but the swarm. The bugs fly into the clouds, and a huge gust of wind kicks up. Sand and debris fly everywhere, and the clouds move rapidly away, further along the beach, and out over the water. I'm left floating over the beach, working on fixing the tear in my shield. Oddly, its hardened with strings of pulled shield sticking out of the hole, like bits of caramel that has been pulled apart, and I have to patch it from the inside.
Slight stinging sensation
There doesn't seem to be anything to hold the street together any more. It seemed so solid that I'm surprised to see it disintegrate like this. First, the buildings crumble, then the smaller structures, the lamp posts and traffic light, the cement trash cans, and the fence around the parking lot. The sidewalk turns to dust, and the street melts into the ground.
I'm left in a dry, dusty open area with huge rocks, giant plants that are like brown cacti without so many spikes, and a dry river bed. On closer inspection, it looks like these plants are dead, and possibly petrified. This whole area seems totally barren. Nothing here is green.
I put my hand on one of the rocks. It's extremely warm. The ground is warm, too. It's daylight, but nowhere in the sky do I see the sun. I am not surprised. There is no place like this in Ohio. I'm still feeling horribly angry, but I'm also wary. This place is unfamiliar, and I don't know if anything else is here.
As I step around a boulder that used to be part of the parking garage, looking toward the area from which I saw them disappear, I hear a noise behind me. Before I can turn, I feel something impact against the back of my armor & shield, and I'm thrown forward. I curl up and roll onto my side to see that the impact came from the stinger of a huge wasp that is close to half my size.
There are scorch marks around the base of a stinger as long as my arm, where energy discharged from my shield seems to have burned the wasp. It rises in to the air and circles around, then hovers over me. The stinger appears to be poised for use, but the wasp appears to be hesitant to approach. It buzzes angrily, as I stand up and look at it. I'm waiting to see what it's going to do, but I'm also pulling energy from around me. The spikes in the outer shield stand out, arcs of energy crackling between the points. I feel like an electric porcupine, but at least the bug can't touch me without getting hurt.
Slowly, the shape of the wasp changes, slimming down, wings shrinking, head shrinking, front legs becoming arms. As it sinks toward the dirt, the face begins to look vaguely human. He stands on 4 legs, the stinger still sticking out behind him, staring at me with those injured-looking eyes. I stare back at him. I hear a low growl, and then he's moving forward again. He gets just a few inches away from the ends of the spikes in my shield, and stops. He looks furious.
He kind of belches, then vomits a viscous, black ooze over me. It doesn't touch my body, hovering on the edges of the spikes instead. I feel pressure, like fingers are pushing on my skin. The ooze slides down to the ground, and soaks into the cracked dirt beneath my feet. The attack was totally ineffective. I'm feeling simultaneously triumphant at having had no problem resisting his effort, and confused as to what he was trying to do.
Suddenly, the ground beneath me jerks upward hard and fast, knocking me off balance. As I struggle to right myself, it lurches side to side, up and down, tossing me around like a rag doll. I'm thrown to the ground, and can't do anything about how I fall. I feel my head hit a rock when I land, and for a second, I'm completely stunned.
I find myself on my back, with him on top of me, using his six limbs to pin me to the ground. His little tiny mouth opens, and keeps opening, until his jaw has stretched wide, and his chin is down by his chest. At the same time, he motions that stinger forward toward my gut. He bites down on my shoulder and thrusts the stinger in, only to shriek in pain and leap away from me.
The shield wasn't gone. It looked like it was gone, but it was still there. It was just flattened up against my body during the moment when my focus was dimmed. Now, the stinger seems bent at an awkward angle. I'm guessing that it's broken.
I take a few steps toward him, still crackling with energy. I haven't actually done anything yet, and he's all ready battered, bruised, and burned. He backs away from me and belches more goo on the ground.
This time, I jump into the air and try to hover. It takes concentration away from my shield. The spikes don't shrink, but they sag a little. Trying to distract him, I throw an energy ball, but the expression on his face changes.
I can see from my vantage point that the earthquake isn't very big. It only affects a circle about 15 or 20 yards across, the edge of which doesn't reach where he's standing. He wasn't shaking the ground under his feet, only under mine. I decide to try something new.
Staring at him, I mentally focus my energy behind him, moving toward him from back there. I pull at the energy that is in that area, and then push it toward him with as much willpower as I can muster. The effect is a strong gust of wind hitting him from behind. He keeps his footing, but his upper body falls forward, and his face slams into the ground. The wind breaks up before it gets to me.
He quickly rights himself, giving me a livid, hateful glare. His nose is bleeding heavily. He bellows at me and dissolves into a pulsating swarm of normal sized black wasps. The swarm expands, spreading out to surround me, and then they all dive in at once, bombarding me with vicious little attacks, hitting so hard that the impact of each one against my shield sounds like raindrops hitting a window. The horror of being overcome by a swarm of angry, stinging wasps is too much, and I find myself falling to the ground, trying to cover my head with my hands, even though not one sting makes it through the shield. I try to concentrate on adding energy to zap them, but it just won't move for me.
At this point, I'm thrown into a totally different experience. I'm about four years old, swinging on U-shaped metal bar set into the end of one of those A-framed, back yard swing sets, at my parents' house. I can see them standing nearby, chatting with someone. I'm watching an odd little bug that is hovering in front of my knee. It's long and skinny, a little over an inch, shaped kind of like an ant, but with wings, and a more pointy butt. As I keep swinging, my knee is getting closer and closer to that bug. I think I want it to land on me.
Suddenly, I feel burning pain in my bare arms and legs as hundreds of them attack and begin stinging me. I hear my mother shriek at my father, and the two of them grab me, fighting off the bugs, and run toward the house.
The pain is really intense, and it draws me back to the fight. I don't know if I've dropped my shield because of the panic attack, or if they've broken through, but the stinging continues. The natural response of thrashing around kicks up a cloud of dirt, knocking many of the wasps away from me. I find more loose dirt and throw it into the air, hoping to make flight more difficult. I desperately reach for the nearest energy and focus on rebuilding my shield, but I'm afraid I'll trap some of them inside of it.
I take the energy into myself and then try to push it out in all directions in a totally unfocused blast, hoping to turn myself into a human bug-zapper. Instead, it comes out at first like sweat, creating a wet layer on top of my skin. Working with what I have, I harden that. The stinging stops. I put my back to a big rock and try to force myself to focus, despite having a case of the creepy-crawly-heebie-jeebies over all of these wasps. I can still feel them crawling all over the outside of that thin shell.
I close my eyes and picture just the rock that is behind me, how still and hard and solid it is. I find its energy and begin to draw on that. As I do, I can feel the shield getting thicker, until I can no longer feel the tickle of little bug feet on my skin. I'm about to work on the spikes, when I realize I can't hear the bugs any more, either. I open my eyes.
He's just a few inches away from my face, staring at me intently, like he's studying me or something. There is blood encrusted on his lips from his nose. He doesn't look angry any more. His expression is really hard to read. For a moment, I forget attacking, and just stare back at him, trying to analyze his face. I settle on possible curiosity. It's hard to tell.
"Doesn't that hurt?" He glances down at my red, bumpy, wasp-stung arms.
The question pisses me off. Of course it hurts! I'm sure he's aware of that. Why the hell is he asking me?
I throw back at him, "How about your nose?"
He says, "It's broken." His tone of voice sounds totally unconcerned. He might as well have shrugged his shoulders, and added "Meh..." to the statement.
He doesn't look extremely bothered by the pain, not like I am, but it occurs to me that if I'm able to hide that about myself, he probably can, too.
He reaches one hand out toward me, and I zap him. He jerks his hand back, sticks his finger in his mouth, and looks annoyed. I cross my arms. I'm a little stunned to see such a human gesture from him. I feel like a stubborn little kid standing up to a big bully. I set my jaw and draw more energy from the rock behind me.
He stands up, turns around, and walks several feet away from me, turns back, and shoves both hands toward me like we're in a pool, and he's trying to splash me. I don't see anything coming my way, but I feel something wash over me with incredible force. Everything I can see, except him, seems to be breaking apart and melting.
The next thing I know, I'm laying on the couch in my living room. It's dark, and I don't know what time it is. I'm not sure what that was about, but when it happened, I instantly woke up. I have the feeling I was shoved out of the dream state.
I called and talked to my mother about the part of the dream involving the swarm of wasps and the swing set. She said she was surprised I still remember that. I was only 4 when it happened, so it's been over 35 years. I told her I didn't remember, I dreamed it, and it seemed really real. According to my mom, there was a nest in the swing set. Each time I swung that U-shaped bar back and forth, it ground against the top bar, vibrating the nest. No one saw the wasps until they found me and attacked.
No wonder they creep me out so much!
I'm left in a dry, dusty open area with huge rocks, giant plants that are like brown cacti without so many spikes, and a dry river bed. On closer inspection, it looks like these plants are dead, and possibly petrified. This whole area seems totally barren. Nothing here is green.
I put my hand on one of the rocks. It's extremely warm. The ground is warm, too. It's daylight, but nowhere in the sky do I see the sun. I am not surprised. There is no place like this in Ohio. I'm still feeling horribly angry, but I'm also wary. This place is unfamiliar, and I don't know if anything else is here.
As I step around a boulder that used to be part of the parking garage, looking toward the area from which I saw them disappear, I hear a noise behind me. Before I can turn, I feel something impact against the back of my armor & shield, and I'm thrown forward. I curl up and roll onto my side to see that the impact came from the stinger of a huge wasp that is close to half my size.
There are scorch marks around the base of a stinger as long as my arm, where energy discharged from my shield seems to have burned the wasp. It rises in to the air and circles around, then hovers over me. The stinger appears to be poised for use, but the wasp appears to be hesitant to approach. It buzzes angrily, as I stand up and look at it. I'm waiting to see what it's going to do, but I'm also pulling energy from around me. The spikes in the outer shield stand out, arcs of energy crackling between the points. I feel like an electric porcupine, but at least the bug can't touch me without getting hurt.
Slowly, the shape of the wasp changes, slimming down, wings shrinking, head shrinking, front legs becoming arms. As it sinks toward the dirt, the face begins to look vaguely human. He stands on 4 legs, the stinger still sticking out behind him, staring at me with those injured-looking eyes. I stare back at him. I hear a low growl, and then he's moving forward again. He gets just a few inches away from the ends of the spikes in my shield, and stops. He looks furious.
He kind of belches, then vomits a viscous, black ooze over me. It doesn't touch my body, hovering on the edges of the spikes instead. I feel pressure, like fingers are pushing on my skin. The ooze slides down to the ground, and soaks into the cracked dirt beneath my feet. The attack was totally ineffective. I'm feeling simultaneously triumphant at having had no problem resisting his effort, and confused as to what he was trying to do.
Suddenly, the ground beneath me jerks upward hard and fast, knocking me off balance. As I struggle to right myself, it lurches side to side, up and down, tossing me around like a rag doll. I'm thrown to the ground, and can't do anything about how I fall. I feel my head hit a rock when I land, and for a second, I'm completely stunned.
I find myself on my back, with him on top of me, using his six limbs to pin me to the ground. His little tiny mouth opens, and keeps opening, until his jaw has stretched wide, and his chin is down by his chest. At the same time, he motions that stinger forward toward my gut. He bites down on my shoulder and thrusts the stinger in, only to shriek in pain and leap away from me.
The shield wasn't gone. It looked like it was gone, but it was still there. It was just flattened up against my body during the moment when my focus was dimmed. Now, the stinger seems bent at an awkward angle. I'm guessing that it's broken.
I take a few steps toward him, still crackling with energy. I haven't actually done anything yet, and he's all ready battered, bruised, and burned. He backs away from me and belches more goo on the ground.
This time, I jump into the air and try to hover. It takes concentration away from my shield. The spikes don't shrink, but they sag a little. Trying to distract him, I throw an energy ball, but the expression on his face changes.
I can see from my vantage point that the earthquake isn't very big. It only affects a circle about 15 or 20 yards across, the edge of which doesn't reach where he's standing. He wasn't shaking the ground under his feet, only under mine. I decide to try something new.
Staring at him, I mentally focus my energy behind him, moving toward him from back there. I pull at the energy that is in that area, and then push it toward him with as much willpower as I can muster. The effect is a strong gust of wind hitting him from behind. He keeps his footing, but his upper body falls forward, and his face slams into the ground. The wind breaks up before it gets to me.
He quickly rights himself, giving me a livid, hateful glare. His nose is bleeding heavily. He bellows at me and dissolves into a pulsating swarm of normal sized black wasps. The swarm expands, spreading out to surround me, and then they all dive in at once, bombarding me with vicious little attacks, hitting so hard that the impact of each one against my shield sounds like raindrops hitting a window. The horror of being overcome by a swarm of angry, stinging wasps is too much, and I find myself falling to the ground, trying to cover my head with my hands, even though not one sting makes it through the shield. I try to concentrate on adding energy to zap them, but it just won't move for me.
At this point, I'm thrown into a totally different experience. I'm about four years old, swinging on U-shaped metal bar set into the end of one of those A-framed, back yard swing sets, at my parents' house. I can see them standing nearby, chatting with someone. I'm watching an odd little bug that is hovering in front of my knee. It's long and skinny, a little over an inch, shaped kind of like an ant, but with wings, and a more pointy butt. As I keep swinging, my knee is getting closer and closer to that bug. I think I want it to land on me.
Suddenly, I feel burning pain in my bare arms and legs as hundreds of them attack and begin stinging me. I hear my mother shriek at my father, and the two of them grab me, fighting off the bugs, and run toward the house.
The pain is really intense, and it draws me back to the fight. I don't know if I've dropped my shield because of the panic attack, or if they've broken through, but the stinging continues. The natural response of thrashing around kicks up a cloud of dirt, knocking many of the wasps away from me. I find more loose dirt and throw it into the air, hoping to make flight more difficult. I desperately reach for the nearest energy and focus on rebuilding my shield, but I'm afraid I'll trap some of them inside of it.
I take the energy into myself and then try to push it out in all directions in a totally unfocused blast, hoping to turn myself into a human bug-zapper. Instead, it comes out at first like sweat, creating a wet layer on top of my skin. Working with what I have, I harden that. The stinging stops. I put my back to a big rock and try to force myself to focus, despite having a case of the creepy-crawly-heebie-jeebies over all of these wasps. I can still feel them crawling all over the outside of that thin shell.
I close my eyes and picture just the rock that is behind me, how still and hard and solid it is. I find its energy and begin to draw on that. As I do, I can feel the shield getting thicker, until I can no longer feel the tickle of little bug feet on my skin. I'm about to work on the spikes, when I realize I can't hear the bugs any more, either. I open my eyes.
He's just a few inches away from my face, staring at me intently, like he's studying me or something. There is blood encrusted on his lips from his nose. He doesn't look angry any more. His expression is really hard to read. For a moment, I forget attacking, and just stare back at him, trying to analyze his face. I settle on possible curiosity. It's hard to tell.
"Doesn't that hurt?" He glances down at my red, bumpy, wasp-stung arms.
The question pisses me off. Of course it hurts! I'm sure he's aware of that. Why the hell is he asking me?
I throw back at him, "How about your nose?"
He says, "It's broken." His tone of voice sounds totally unconcerned. He might as well have shrugged his shoulders, and added "Meh..." to the statement.
He doesn't look extremely bothered by the pain, not like I am, but it occurs to me that if I'm able to hide that about myself, he probably can, too.
He reaches one hand out toward me, and I zap him. He jerks his hand back, sticks his finger in his mouth, and looks annoyed. I cross my arms. I'm a little stunned to see such a human gesture from him. I feel like a stubborn little kid standing up to a big bully. I set my jaw and draw more energy from the rock behind me.
He stands up, turns around, and walks several feet away from me, turns back, and shoves both hands toward me like we're in a pool, and he's trying to splash me. I don't see anything coming my way, but I feel something wash over me with incredible force. Everything I can see, except him, seems to be breaking apart and melting.
The next thing I know, I'm laying on the couch in my living room. It's dark, and I don't know what time it is. I'm not sure what that was about, but when it happened, I instantly woke up. I have the feeling I was shoved out of the dream state.
I called and talked to my mother about the part of the dream involving the swarm of wasps and the swing set. She said she was surprised I still remember that. I was only 4 when it happened, so it's been over 35 years. I told her I didn't remember, I dreamed it, and it seemed really real. According to my mom, there was a nest in the swing set. Each time I swung that U-shaped bar back and forth, it ground against the top bar, vibrating the nest. No one saw the wasps until they found me and attacked.
No wonder they creep me out so much!
Having a blast. Wish you were here.
I sit up, moving so suddenly and quickly that I startle my caregivers. I'm yelling at them, "What the hell! Let me go!"
I try to stand, but there's something wrapped around me, holding me down.
The nurse runs across the room, rapidly telling me to calm down, that it's all right, and she'll undo the strap. She explains that they had to do something. I was walking in my sleep.
Walking in my sleep? I haven't done that in years. I'm stunned into momentary inaction, sitting up in the hospital bed, looking at the nurse like she's grown a second head. As I sit there, everything starts coming back to me; my relationship with the gray haired woman, the terrible things we've been through, and what the creepy guy has done to her. I can feel a bruise on my arm from the shot I was given. The nurse sees the expressions crossing my face as the memory plays through my head, and pauses in her approach, and gives me a wary look.
She says, "Are you in control, or are you going to be a problem?"
Her hand is on her pocket. The shape is too big for a syringe. I think she may be holding a taser.
I struggle for a moment, as the weight of my outrage at what I've learned tries to overpower my hold on logic and reason. I can't fight him this way. This is what he feeds on. He'd just use it to turn me against myself. He'd destroy everything we've fought for. I may not understand much of what is going on, but I understand that.
I can't be not angry. It's too much. I can't know what he is and what he's done without having an emotional response to that knowledge. It would be stupid to try to deny that. I just have to not be controlled by how angry I am. I can be angry and reasonable at the same time. I have to, or we're lost.
I can feel energy building up around me. I've been unconsciously pulling. I'm inside of something that looks kind of like a flame. I gather it into myself, take a deep breath, and let it out slowly, sending the energy back where it came from. I tell the nurse I'm all right. I find the buckle on the belt, and I get up.
I'm still wearing the footie pajamas and puppy slippers. Grateful as I am for the comfort and rest, this isn't going to do. I need to be taken seriously. I take them off and stand in the middle of the room, and close my eyes. I try to clear my mind, but it's not going to happen. Meditation just isn't my thing. I can't be not angry. I just can't.
When I open my eyes, there is clothing on the couch. I meant to make it materialize all ready on me, but this is good enough. At first, it looks like there's two of everything, but then I realize, there's a set of clothes, and a set of armor. The clothes are soft, dark, and thin. They won't constrict or weigh me down. The armor looks like leather, and it's as light as paper, but it feels cold, like metal. The top looks like an oversized long sleeve tee shirt, and it's flexible. It seems to be crocheted. The rest looks like it was designed for rollerblading or skateboarding. There are pieces shaped like pads for the thighs, knees, and lower legs. They're arranged the way they're supposed to be worn. It's not designed for full coverage. Instead, I can feel that the pieces are connected by some kind of energy running over the whole thing. When I pick up top "pads" for the legs, the lower ones come with them.
I put on the clothes, and the armor. I head out into the lobby. There, the doc is waiting for me. The others are all gone. Doc asks if I'm sure I'm ready to do this. I'm not, but I'm going to do it anyway, and I think he knows that. What else can I do? I can't just hide in here forever. Eventually, it would be more like being imprisoned than having been given asylum, and if they were to find a way to come in after me, it would cease to be a neutral place.
The doc asks me what I'm going to do about the connection, and my shield. The reminder feels like being punched in the chest, and the expression on my face earns me a stern look. He says, "How are you going to survive if you're not ready to deal with that?"
I realize that I have no idea how to proceed. I got the feeling that the ceremony was more than just symbolic. Otherwise, she might be able to break through my emotional defenses, but she shouldn't be able to banish my shield like she does. I ask the doc why she can affect my control of energy, but I can't just work through the same connection to prevent him from changing her. He explains that I can affect her control of energy, too, but not her thoughts and feelings, and not his influence. That's why she hasn't really attacked me, because I would just be able to absorb, deflect, or diffuse the energy, just as she is. The one time I was able to affect her, it was because she wasn't expecting me to lash out. She let her guard down then, but it won't be down again. He also tells me that she's not the same spirit that she was, any more than I am the same. Just as the object I absorbed corrupted me, his energy has corrupted her. I'm going to continue to attract more things like him, and unless I release her, every single one of them is going to try to use her to manipulate me.
For a moment I don't understand what he's telling me, and then I do. There is no "the" key, but as long as I'm attached to her, she's a key, and she'll never be safe or free.
I tell him I understand, and then I start focusing on finding the place within myself where the connection is. I've unconsciously put my hands over my heart. The doc watches for a second, then stops me and explains that magic was involved in creating the bond, and energy work is required to break it. He tells me I have what I need, and I realize that in my hands, I'm holding the unity candle from our ceremony. I can see now that it's a ceramic oil lamp made to look like a candle, so that it can't diminish from burning. I understand what I have to do.
The room wavers. I'm standing in front of the door. I can feel that the "asylum" illusion is fading because I've decided to leave. If I hesitate, I'll disrupt the others' illusions, and their healing processes. The door opens, and I step out into the sunlight.
When I do, the building behind me kind of vanishes, and there's just a big parking lot. Off to my left and right are an empty street, bordered by empty sidewalks. I see the parking garage on the other side. Quickly, I surround myself with another shield, covering it with spikes, and back against a wall. Across the street, the two of them see me, and rush forward. They stop when the shield goes up. He gives her a look, and she advances on me, asking, "Why do you keep wasting your energy?"
When she's about six feet away, I hold up the candle-lamp. She stops and looks at me, and asks, "Where did you get that?" She looks confused and nervous, and suddenly I don't want to do this. I want to grab her and run back into the asylum, but I know that even though it's "there," it's not there, and it's not an option. I hold the lamp out in front of me and pour the oil on the sidewalk. I tell her "I reject you, body, mind, and spirit. I am not your partner. I am not one with you. We are unique, and separate from each other. You are not permitted to touch me." I force myself to feel separated from her, then throw the lamp down. It shatters on the pavement at her feet, and I feel like someone just ripped out my heart. I fight to not take it all back. My stomach is sick. Her face twists in shock and disbelief, then I can see tears, and she quietly says two syllables in gibberish. I don't know what the word means, but hearing it is like a kick in the gut, and I can't look at her face any more.
The creepy guy yells at her. "What is wrong with you? Take down that shield before she gets away again!"
Her hand reaches for the shield. I don't want to hurt her. I tell her, "Don't."
She hesitates. I step between them. Now, she's to my right, and he's to my left.
She steps forward, but she doesn't touch the spikes. I stop fighting the pain, and instead push that into my shield, and I feel her step back away from me again.
She says, "I can't. I can't even touch it."
He says, "then I don't need you for that any more." I only have a split second to realize what he means. He rushes forward, his body melting into a black cloud as he moves. I throw yet another shield up, this one over both of us, and the cloud flows over it like thick ash from a volcano. I feel pressure, almost like a heavy pounding on the outside. This isn't going to hold up to that attack for very long.
She's still looking at me. It doesn't seem to have dawned on her that we're both being attacked. She's not even going to fight back against him.
Not knowing what else to do, I fuse my spiky shield with the outer shield, keeping a wall between myself and her, and begin funneling energy attacks into the outer arc of it. Lightning-like streaks zip through it, making it look like an angry thunderhead, and the pressure is reduced. The smoke rises away from the shield momentarily. I can hear laughter, but it doesn't seem to be centered anywhere. A second later, lightning from the smoke hits the shield. A single bolt impacts the side, hitting so hard that it cracks all the way to the ground.
I melt it back together, realizing that he's attacking her side of the shield to wear me down, but unable to figure out what else to do. Then, inside her half of the bubble, I see another shield go up. She's finally defending herself. I put my hands into the wall of my shield and focus as hard as I can, creating a doorway in the side, and she runs several yards away, keeping herself protected.
The ash re-forms into the creepy guy. He looks back and forth between us. I'm drawing energy for another attack, and she appears to be drawing for one, too. I worry for a moment that it's going to be directed at me, but instead, the two of them go at each other. From behind her, a huge mass of pavement rises into the air and breaks up into little pieces, which rain down on the creepy guy. He belches fire at her, melting the asphalt around her shield into a bubbling mass of goo. She's protected by her shield, but she can't go anywhere.
I fire another blast at him, but my energy is unfocused. He hasn't shielded, so the blast knocks him down the street, but I don't think it did a lot of damage. He doesn't even get up or dust off. He starts crawling toward her on his hands and feet, like a bug. His body becomes longer and thinner. When he gets to the edge of the melted down tar, he lifts up and stretches over it, striking at her shield with a punch that seems to carry more than just physical force. I see it losing its shape, a shockwave rolling through it to the other side.
I have to try again, before he breaks that shield down. I start throwing everything I can at him. If they can move stuff, then I can, too. I focus on one of the huge cement trashcans anchored to the pavement. It comes up, bringing part of the sidewalk with it. I direct it through the air, hitting him from the side. He doesn't even notice that it's coming. It knocks him back into the street and lands on top of him. He crawls out from under, and I can see that now he has many arms and legs, long fangs, and a stinger, but still the same face as before, wearing an obsessed, hungry expression. Ignoring the damage I've done to him, he turns and begins crawling back toward her. He's like some kind of predatory insect, intent only on one thing.
I run forward, hurling a stream of unfocused energy at him as I go. The anger from before breaks through, and all I can think about is him feeding on her all of this time, changing who she is, poisoning her. That acidic feeling fills my chest, and my skin feels hot again. I throw ball after ball of energy, knocking him back, bowling him over, but he keeps getting up. The wave of outrage builds up in my chest, and I let it go, directing it at him like a huge psychic blast.
The wave hits him, tearing huge chunks from the asphalt and throwing them - and him - further down the street. I'm distantly aware of the sound of someone screaming, but my focus is on the monster in front of me. Now, I'm taking whatever I can draw from everything around me, the ground, the buildings, parking meters, everything. I'm using both hands, I'm throwing a barrage of bolts, fiery blasts, and debris at him. His body is taking a pounding, and I can see that this time, damage is being done.
We're dozens of yards from where he started, far enough away that we can no longer see her. He rolls onto his feet, digs his claws into the ground, opens his mouth against the tide of my attacks, and spews out a huge cloud of flying, stinging insects, which spiral up into the air high above my head. I see his body melting into the mass of bugs, and realize he's trying to escape. I turn my attack upward, but the cloud of bugs breaks up and moves away, dodging the blast, and very soon, I can't see any of them. Fearing that they're trying to sneak back to get her, I turn and run at top speed, back the way I came.
No bugs are there, but the doc and the nurse are standing outside my lady's shield, talking to her. Something inside tells me not to go any closer. Instead, I look around. I'm expecting a surprise attack at any moment, but there isn't one. Seconds later, she drops her shield. Each of them puts a hand under one of her arms. They turn as if to walk away, and vanish. I'm pretty sure I know where she's going. He won't be able to get to her there.
I won't see her again, either.
I try to stand, but there's something wrapped around me, holding me down.
The nurse runs across the room, rapidly telling me to calm down, that it's all right, and she'll undo the strap. She explains that they had to do something. I was walking in my sleep.
Walking in my sleep? I haven't done that in years. I'm stunned into momentary inaction, sitting up in the hospital bed, looking at the nurse like she's grown a second head. As I sit there, everything starts coming back to me; my relationship with the gray haired woman, the terrible things we've been through, and what the creepy guy has done to her. I can feel a bruise on my arm from the shot I was given. The nurse sees the expressions crossing my face as the memory plays through my head, and pauses in her approach, and gives me a wary look.
She says, "Are you in control, or are you going to be a problem?"
Her hand is on her pocket. The shape is too big for a syringe. I think she may be holding a taser.
I struggle for a moment, as the weight of my outrage at what I've learned tries to overpower my hold on logic and reason. I can't fight him this way. This is what he feeds on. He'd just use it to turn me against myself. He'd destroy everything we've fought for. I may not understand much of what is going on, but I understand that.
I can't be not angry. It's too much. I can't know what he is and what he's done without having an emotional response to that knowledge. It would be stupid to try to deny that. I just have to not be controlled by how angry I am. I can be angry and reasonable at the same time. I have to, or we're lost.
I can feel energy building up around me. I've been unconsciously pulling. I'm inside of something that looks kind of like a flame. I gather it into myself, take a deep breath, and let it out slowly, sending the energy back where it came from. I tell the nurse I'm all right. I find the buckle on the belt, and I get up.
I'm still wearing the footie pajamas and puppy slippers. Grateful as I am for the comfort and rest, this isn't going to do. I need to be taken seriously. I take them off and stand in the middle of the room, and close my eyes. I try to clear my mind, but it's not going to happen. Meditation just isn't my thing. I can't be not angry. I just can't.
When I open my eyes, there is clothing on the couch. I meant to make it materialize all ready on me, but this is good enough. At first, it looks like there's two of everything, but then I realize, there's a set of clothes, and a set of armor. The clothes are soft, dark, and thin. They won't constrict or weigh me down. The armor looks like leather, and it's as light as paper, but it feels cold, like metal. The top looks like an oversized long sleeve tee shirt, and it's flexible. It seems to be crocheted. The rest looks like it was designed for rollerblading or skateboarding. There are pieces shaped like pads for the thighs, knees, and lower legs. They're arranged the way they're supposed to be worn. It's not designed for full coverage. Instead, I can feel that the pieces are connected by some kind of energy running over the whole thing. When I pick up top "pads" for the legs, the lower ones come with them.
I put on the clothes, and the armor. I head out into the lobby. There, the doc is waiting for me. The others are all gone. Doc asks if I'm sure I'm ready to do this. I'm not, but I'm going to do it anyway, and I think he knows that. What else can I do? I can't just hide in here forever. Eventually, it would be more like being imprisoned than having been given asylum, and if they were to find a way to come in after me, it would cease to be a neutral place.
The doc asks me what I'm going to do about the connection, and my shield. The reminder feels like being punched in the chest, and the expression on my face earns me a stern look. He says, "How are you going to survive if you're not ready to deal with that?"
I realize that I have no idea how to proceed. I got the feeling that the ceremony was more than just symbolic. Otherwise, she might be able to break through my emotional defenses, but she shouldn't be able to banish my shield like she does. I ask the doc why she can affect my control of energy, but I can't just work through the same connection to prevent him from changing her. He explains that I can affect her control of energy, too, but not her thoughts and feelings, and not his influence. That's why she hasn't really attacked me, because I would just be able to absorb, deflect, or diffuse the energy, just as she is. The one time I was able to affect her, it was because she wasn't expecting me to lash out. She let her guard down then, but it won't be down again. He also tells me that she's not the same spirit that she was, any more than I am the same. Just as the object I absorbed corrupted me, his energy has corrupted her. I'm going to continue to attract more things like him, and unless I release her, every single one of them is going to try to use her to manipulate me.
For a moment I don't understand what he's telling me, and then I do. There is no "the" key, but as long as I'm attached to her, she's a key, and she'll never be safe or free.
I tell him I understand, and then I start focusing on finding the place within myself where the connection is. I've unconsciously put my hands over my heart. The doc watches for a second, then stops me and explains that magic was involved in creating the bond, and energy work is required to break it. He tells me I have what I need, and I realize that in my hands, I'm holding the unity candle from our ceremony. I can see now that it's a ceramic oil lamp made to look like a candle, so that it can't diminish from burning. I understand what I have to do.
The room wavers. I'm standing in front of the door. I can feel that the "asylum" illusion is fading because I've decided to leave. If I hesitate, I'll disrupt the others' illusions, and their healing processes. The door opens, and I step out into the sunlight.
When I do, the building behind me kind of vanishes, and there's just a big parking lot. Off to my left and right are an empty street, bordered by empty sidewalks. I see the parking garage on the other side. Quickly, I surround myself with another shield, covering it with spikes, and back against a wall. Across the street, the two of them see me, and rush forward. They stop when the shield goes up. He gives her a look, and she advances on me, asking, "Why do you keep wasting your energy?"
When she's about six feet away, I hold up the candle-lamp. She stops and looks at me, and asks, "Where did you get that?" She looks confused and nervous, and suddenly I don't want to do this. I want to grab her and run back into the asylum, but I know that even though it's "there," it's not there, and it's not an option. I hold the lamp out in front of me and pour the oil on the sidewalk. I tell her "I reject you, body, mind, and spirit. I am not your partner. I am not one with you. We are unique, and separate from each other. You are not permitted to touch me." I force myself to feel separated from her, then throw the lamp down. It shatters on the pavement at her feet, and I feel like someone just ripped out my heart. I fight to not take it all back. My stomach is sick. Her face twists in shock and disbelief, then I can see tears, and she quietly says two syllables in gibberish. I don't know what the word means, but hearing it is like a kick in the gut, and I can't look at her face any more.
The creepy guy yells at her. "What is wrong with you? Take down that shield before she gets away again!"
Her hand reaches for the shield. I don't want to hurt her. I tell her, "Don't."
She hesitates. I step between them. Now, she's to my right, and he's to my left.
She steps forward, but she doesn't touch the spikes. I stop fighting the pain, and instead push that into my shield, and I feel her step back away from me again.
She says, "I can't. I can't even touch it."
He says, "then I don't need you for that any more." I only have a split second to realize what he means. He rushes forward, his body melting into a black cloud as he moves. I throw yet another shield up, this one over both of us, and the cloud flows over it like thick ash from a volcano. I feel pressure, almost like a heavy pounding on the outside. This isn't going to hold up to that attack for very long.
She's still looking at me. It doesn't seem to have dawned on her that we're both being attacked. She's not even going to fight back against him.
Not knowing what else to do, I fuse my spiky shield with the outer shield, keeping a wall between myself and her, and begin funneling energy attacks into the outer arc of it. Lightning-like streaks zip through it, making it look like an angry thunderhead, and the pressure is reduced. The smoke rises away from the shield momentarily. I can hear laughter, but it doesn't seem to be centered anywhere. A second later, lightning from the smoke hits the shield. A single bolt impacts the side, hitting so hard that it cracks all the way to the ground.
I melt it back together, realizing that he's attacking her side of the shield to wear me down, but unable to figure out what else to do. Then, inside her half of the bubble, I see another shield go up. She's finally defending herself. I put my hands into the wall of my shield and focus as hard as I can, creating a doorway in the side, and she runs several yards away, keeping herself protected.
The ash re-forms into the creepy guy. He looks back and forth between us. I'm drawing energy for another attack, and she appears to be drawing for one, too. I worry for a moment that it's going to be directed at me, but instead, the two of them go at each other. From behind her, a huge mass of pavement rises into the air and breaks up into little pieces, which rain down on the creepy guy. He belches fire at her, melting the asphalt around her shield into a bubbling mass of goo. She's protected by her shield, but she can't go anywhere.
I fire another blast at him, but my energy is unfocused. He hasn't shielded, so the blast knocks him down the street, but I don't think it did a lot of damage. He doesn't even get up or dust off. He starts crawling toward her on his hands and feet, like a bug. His body becomes longer and thinner. When he gets to the edge of the melted down tar, he lifts up and stretches over it, striking at her shield with a punch that seems to carry more than just physical force. I see it losing its shape, a shockwave rolling through it to the other side.
I have to try again, before he breaks that shield down. I start throwing everything I can at him. If they can move stuff, then I can, too. I focus on one of the huge cement trashcans anchored to the pavement. It comes up, bringing part of the sidewalk with it. I direct it through the air, hitting him from the side. He doesn't even notice that it's coming. It knocks him back into the street and lands on top of him. He crawls out from under, and I can see that now he has many arms and legs, long fangs, and a stinger, but still the same face as before, wearing an obsessed, hungry expression. Ignoring the damage I've done to him, he turns and begins crawling back toward her. He's like some kind of predatory insect, intent only on one thing.
I run forward, hurling a stream of unfocused energy at him as I go. The anger from before breaks through, and all I can think about is him feeding on her all of this time, changing who she is, poisoning her. That acidic feeling fills my chest, and my skin feels hot again. I throw ball after ball of energy, knocking him back, bowling him over, but he keeps getting up. The wave of outrage builds up in my chest, and I let it go, directing it at him like a huge psychic blast.
The wave hits him, tearing huge chunks from the asphalt and throwing them - and him - further down the street. I'm distantly aware of the sound of someone screaming, but my focus is on the monster in front of me. Now, I'm taking whatever I can draw from everything around me, the ground, the buildings, parking meters, everything. I'm using both hands, I'm throwing a barrage of bolts, fiery blasts, and debris at him. His body is taking a pounding, and I can see that this time, damage is being done.
We're dozens of yards from where he started, far enough away that we can no longer see her. He rolls onto his feet, digs his claws into the ground, opens his mouth against the tide of my attacks, and spews out a huge cloud of flying, stinging insects, which spiral up into the air high above my head. I see his body melting into the mass of bugs, and realize he's trying to escape. I turn my attack upward, but the cloud of bugs breaks up and moves away, dodging the blast, and very soon, I can't see any of them. Fearing that they're trying to sneak back to get her, I turn and run at top speed, back the way I came.
No bugs are there, but the doc and the nurse are standing outside my lady's shield, talking to her. Something inside tells me not to go any closer. Instead, I look around. I'm expecting a surprise attack at any moment, but there isn't one. Seconds later, she drops her shield. Each of them puts a hand under one of her arms. They turn as if to walk away, and vanish. I'm pretty sure I know where she's going. He won't be able to get to her there.
I won't see her again, either.
Camouflage
Once again, I have to fight through my own mind to get to the asylum. Prior to that, I'm twelve years old, sitting at a desk in a classroom, working on an in-class assignment that of all things involves counting, organizing, and cleaning a box full of my own shoes. At first, I totally lose myself in the assignment, performing the requirements to the exact specifications given on the instruction sheet. I'm doing this, and thinking about how, when I was a little girl, I used to gather everyone's shoes in the house and clean and polish them when I was stressed. I've never understood why that makes me feel better. It just does.
Suddenly, I realize I'm a little girl, thinking about when I was a little girl. This is a distraction. I need to talk to the "doctor." I'm probably using this to keep from confronting things I'm afraid to see.
As the thought occurs to me, the shoes begin to fade away. The desk I'm in becomes softer, and then the top of it disappears. I'm sitting in that chair in the room I'm staying in at the asylum. He's sitting across from me, and seems to be studying my face. He looks doubtful and a little worried. I feel like he doesn't think I can handle this. I don't feel like I can, either, but I know that if I don't, bad things are going to happen.
The wedding album sits on the table. Other books are there, but I don't think they'll work the way it did. At least, I hope not. There is still a deep, throbbing ache in my chest from learning from that book.
He tells me I should not try to do this so quickly, that I should rest a little. The petite lady/nurse comes around from behind me and brings me a huge cappuccino mug. It smells like there's hot chocolate in it, and when I look, I see marshmallows floating on top. I'm grateful for the concern, but I feel so impatient, and I'm overwhelmingly annoyed at the suggestion of a delay. Yes, it hurts... a lot, actually... but being kept in the dark drives me nuts. Also, it hurts to not know why, after clinging so hard, and trying so hard to not let go, she would turn against me like this.
I tell him I have to know at least that - why is she working with him? I want to know what he's trying to do, what he wants, and what he is, too, but right now I need to know why she is cooperating with him. Why, after working so hard to protect me, would she try to make me vulnerable to someone so obviously harmful and evil? Somehow, thinking about that hurts more than the memories brought back by the book.
He looks like he's trying to figure out what to say. He looks exasperated, too. Three times, he opens his mouth and shuts it again. Finally, he says, "You have to understand, she doesn't see what you do. She sees only what he presents to her, and she knows only what he feeds her."
I don't understand. Is the doc telling me that she could be so easily conned? I can't believe that. My confusion must show on my face, because he shakes his head. "It's not a simple thing. He's using her pain, twisting her emotions. He's not like a whole being - it's like he's made of lies and deception. He doesn't just hide the truth. He banishes it. If he can, he destroys it."
I have an overwhelming sense of deja vu right now. Huge. It feels like I'm being pulled at by that sense. I feel dizzy, and for a moment I close my eyes. When I open them, I'm in the meeting hall where the men dragged in the corpse of the monster.
There are thirteen of us here. We're arguing about what to do. My lady looks horrified, but determined. I feel the same way. We had them beaten, pushed back to where they had broken through, until it came along. It seems to have rallied them, and organized them into something we aren't equipped to confront. We've never seen anything like it, this towering, heaving mass of darkness. I am of the opinion that there's someone inside the dark, hidden, and that is our enemy. One of my allies, traveled here from the outside, thinks otherwise. What he's just told us is creepy. How do you destroy truth? What is left behind when you do? Is that how those monsters were formed?
No, my ally explains. They were what they are before it came along. They're pretty simple, by comparison. They are just hungry. The thing that is darkness is hungry, too, but what it "eats" isn't physical, and it has to poison everything first, for compatibility. If it succeeds, we won't recognize anything around ourselves any more - not even each other, and then he'll keep going. At the edge of my mind, I feel myself thinking about a hidden place, and a people in their infancy as a race. They don't understand. They wouldn't stand a chance. The discussion takes a turn; we are talking about accepting a quarantine. It seems that we have no choice.
I feel the weight of what he's saying slam into me, and it jolts me back to the moment, sitting in that chair at the asylum, looking at him as the doc, thinking about "what he's feeding her." My mind races.
I didn't come back to her, no matter how hard she tried. I didn't even say goodbye. He's made of lies and deception. He has to poison everything. He wants to get through the door. I'm the door.
I feel freezing cold. My whole body shivers. Goose bumps rise on every inch of my skin. Without thinking about it, I sink back into the chair, draw my knees up to my chest, and sip the cocoa, trying to feel warm.
The doc looks worried. "Do you understand? She doesn't know you've changed. She thinks you left. He latched on when she tried to bring you back, and no one knew it had happened until too late. He's been inside the whole time. She doesn't see what he is. She sees something else. She doesn't see how things are. She sees things as being how he can use them to make her do what he wants. She thinks you've let yourself be fooled into some kind of dark allegiance, and abandoned her. He's pulled her pain into anger at you for leaving. He's twisting everything she remembers, everything she feels. He's filling her with resentment and bitterness, poisoning her, so he can use her to get through your defenses. He has made her think that if she wears you down, she can save you from the enemy he's convinced her that we are, and make you return to her. He's using her to try to open you up, and he's making her into an entirely different person than she was. When he gets what he wants, he'll consume her, and discard the empty shell that will be left behind. And he's going to keep poisoning her and twisting who she is, until either you break the connection you made with her, or she breaks you open."
A fiery, liquid rage rises in my chest, and I'm not cold any more. I can feel heat in my face. There's a pounding in my head. Even my eyes feel hot. I want to break things. I want to burn things. I feel my grip tightening on the mug. I'm shaking even harder than before. I can hear someone growling, and for a moment I think they're here, but then I realize it's my voice. I'm going out there right now. I'm going to kill him.
I stand up, and a wave of dizziness hits me. I ignore it. I've got to get out that door. I start stumbling forward. There's a blackness around the edges of my vision. I feel like I'm on fire.
I feel a sharp sting in my left arm. The nurse is standing beside me, eyes wide, brow creased with worry. In her hand, I see a syringe and a hypodermic needle. I look behind me, shocked and angry. What the hell is she doing? I have to get out there. I'm going to burn everything.
My head is heavy. The doc has gotten up from his chair, and is running toward me. He hooks one shoulder under my right arm, and I feel the nurse slide under the other one. I try to push them away, but my limbs won't obey me. They feel like rubber. The cup with the hot chocolate falls from my fingers, but instead of crashing to the floor, it disappears. It feels like I'm falling, too, but I'm not. They're supporting me, guiding me back to the couch. I feel totally impotent, and completely desperate. I have to get my lady away from that thing.
The doc tells me, "Please, don't panic. Don't be angry. He won't do anything while you're here. You will get your chance at him, but you have to heal first. Don't rush in and throw everything away." The last thing I can understand sounds weird, like there's an echo. He keeps talking after that, but it sounds like I'm hearing him through a heavy blanket. I feel the soft cushions of the couch under me. I feel like I'm underwater, struggling to reach the top, except that I can breathe.
It's dark, and I don't feel anything.
When my husband woke me this morning, I had the sense that it had been hours since I lost consciousness. The anger momentarily returned, and I had to fight with it because I didn't want to lash out. I'm still tired. My neighbors were setting off fireworks and shooting guns in the air last night. I have only had a few hours of sleep, not long enough to have experienced the dream I had.
This is starting to fall into the category I think of as serial dreams. I've had them before. I thought that was something I was done with, because it's been a few years. I'm going to have to dig out my old journals and start going through them. There are some similarities here, things I remember. I'm sure that if I read the older entries, I'll find more.
A couple of weeks ago, I started working on a story based on one series of dreams I had as a teen. It involved different dimensions, and powers that would seem magical in reality, but weren't. I wonder if revisiting those dreams is part of the reason this is happening to me now. It feels like I'm working through something huge that runs really deep.
I don't know, though. Maybe I'm just nuts.
Suddenly, I realize I'm a little girl, thinking about when I was a little girl. This is a distraction. I need to talk to the "doctor." I'm probably using this to keep from confronting things I'm afraid to see.
As the thought occurs to me, the shoes begin to fade away. The desk I'm in becomes softer, and then the top of it disappears. I'm sitting in that chair in the room I'm staying in at the asylum. He's sitting across from me, and seems to be studying my face. He looks doubtful and a little worried. I feel like he doesn't think I can handle this. I don't feel like I can, either, but I know that if I don't, bad things are going to happen.
The wedding album sits on the table. Other books are there, but I don't think they'll work the way it did. At least, I hope not. There is still a deep, throbbing ache in my chest from learning from that book.
He tells me I should not try to do this so quickly, that I should rest a little. The petite lady/nurse comes around from behind me and brings me a huge cappuccino mug. It smells like there's hot chocolate in it, and when I look, I see marshmallows floating on top. I'm grateful for the concern, but I feel so impatient, and I'm overwhelmingly annoyed at the suggestion of a delay. Yes, it hurts... a lot, actually... but being kept in the dark drives me nuts. Also, it hurts to not know why, after clinging so hard, and trying so hard to not let go, she would turn against me like this.
I tell him I have to know at least that - why is she working with him? I want to know what he's trying to do, what he wants, and what he is, too, but right now I need to know why she is cooperating with him. Why, after working so hard to protect me, would she try to make me vulnerable to someone so obviously harmful and evil? Somehow, thinking about that hurts more than the memories brought back by the book.
He looks like he's trying to figure out what to say. He looks exasperated, too. Three times, he opens his mouth and shuts it again. Finally, he says, "You have to understand, she doesn't see what you do. She sees only what he presents to her, and she knows only what he feeds her."
I don't understand. Is the doc telling me that she could be so easily conned? I can't believe that. My confusion must show on my face, because he shakes his head. "It's not a simple thing. He's using her pain, twisting her emotions. He's not like a whole being - it's like he's made of lies and deception. He doesn't just hide the truth. He banishes it. If he can, he destroys it."
I have an overwhelming sense of deja vu right now. Huge. It feels like I'm being pulled at by that sense. I feel dizzy, and for a moment I close my eyes. When I open them, I'm in the meeting hall where the men dragged in the corpse of the monster.
There are thirteen of us here. We're arguing about what to do. My lady looks horrified, but determined. I feel the same way. We had them beaten, pushed back to where they had broken through, until it came along. It seems to have rallied them, and organized them into something we aren't equipped to confront. We've never seen anything like it, this towering, heaving mass of darkness. I am of the opinion that there's someone inside the dark, hidden, and that is our enemy. One of my allies, traveled here from the outside, thinks otherwise. What he's just told us is creepy. How do you destroy truth? What is left behind when you do? Is that how those monsters were formed?
No, my ally explains. They were what they are before it came along. They're pretty simple, by comparison. They are just hungry. The thing that is darkness is hungry, too, but what it "eats" isn't physical, and it has to poison everything first, for compatibility. If it succeeds, we won't recognize anything around ourselves any more - not even each other, and then he'll keep going. At the edge of my mind, I feel myself thinking about a hidden place, and a people in their infancy as a race. They don't understand. They wouldn't stand a chance. The discussion takes a turn; we are talking about accepting a quarantine. It seems that we have no choice.
I feel the weight of what he's saying slam into me, and it jolts me back to the moment, sitting in that chair at the asylum, looking at him as the doc, thinking about "what he's feeding her." My mind races.
I didn't come back to her, no matter how hard she tried. I didn't even say goodbye. He's made of lies and deception. He has to poison everything. He wants to get through the door. I'm the door.
I feel freezing cold. My whole body shivers. Goose bumps rise on every inch of my skin. Without thinking about it, I sink back into the chair, draw my knees up to my chest, and sip the cocoa, trying to feel warm.
The doc looks worried. "Do you understand? She doesn't know you've changed. She thinks you left. He latched on when she tried to bring you back, and no one knew it had happened until too late. He's been inside the whole time. She doesn't see what he is. She sees something else. She doesn't see how things are. She sees things as being how he can use them to make her do what he wants. She thinks you've let yourself be fooled into some kind of dark allegiance, and abandoned her. He's pulled her pain into anger at you for leaving. He's twisting everything she remembers, everything she feels. He's filling her with resentment and bitterness, poisoning her, so he can use her to get through your defenses. He has made her think that if she wears you down, she can save you from the enemy he's convinced her that we are, and make you return to her. He's using her to try to open you up, and he's making her into an entirely different person than she was. When he gets what he wants, he'll consume her, and discard the empty shell that will be left behind. And he's going to keep poisoning her and twisting who she is, until either you break the connection you made with her, or she breaks you open."
A fiery, liquid rage rises in my chest, and I'm not cold any more. I can feel heat in my face. There's a pounding in my head. Even my eyes feel hot. I want to break things. I want to burn things. I feel my grip tightening on the mug. I'm shaking even harder than before. I can hear someone growling, and for a moment I think they're here, but then I realize it's my voice. I'm going out there right now. I'm going to kill him.
I stand up, and a wave of dizziness hits me. I ignore it. I've got to get out that door. I start stumbling forward. There's a blackness around the edges of my vision. I feel like I'm on fire.
I feel a sharp sting in my left arm. The nurse is standing beside me, eyes wide, brow creased with worry. In her hand, I see a syringe and a hypodermic needle. I look behind me, shocked and angry. What the hell is she doing? I have to get out there. I'm going to burn everything.
My head is heavy. The doc has gotten up from his chair, and is running toward me. He hooks one shoulder under my right arm, and I feel the nurse slide under the other one. I try to push them away, but my limbs won't obey me. They feel like rubber. The cup with the hot chocolate falls from my fingers, but instead of crashing to the floor, it disappears. It feels like I'm falling, too, but I'm not. They're supporting me, guiding me back to the couch. I feel totally impotent, and completely desperate. I have to get my lady away from that thing.
The doc tells me, "Please, don't panic. Don't be angry. He won't do anything while you're here. You will get your chance at him, but you have to heal first. Don't rush in and throw everything away." The last thing I can understand sounds weird, like there's an echo. He keeps talking after that, but it sounds like I'm hearing him through a heavy blanket. I feel the soft cushions of the couch under me. I feel like I'm underwater, struggling to reach the top, except that I can breathe.
It's dark, and I don't feel anything.
When my husband woke me this morning, I had the sense that it had been hours since I lost consciousness. The anger momentarily returned, and I had to fight with it because I didn't want to lash out. I'm still tired. My neighbors were setting off fireworks and shooting guns in the air last night. I have only had a few hours of sleep, not long enough to have experienced the dream I had.
This is starting to fall into the category I think of as serial dreams. I've had them before. I thought that was something I was done with, because it's been a few years. I'm going to have to dig out my old journals and start going through them. There are some similarities here, things I remember. I'm sure that if I read the older entries, I'll find more.
A couple of weeks ago, I started working on a story based on one series of dreams I had as a teen. It involved different dimensions, and powers that would seem magical in reality, but weren't. I wonder if revisiting those dreams is part of the reason this is happening to me now. It feels like I'm working through something huge that runs really deep.
I don't know, though. Maybe I'm just nuts.
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