Chapter One: Dreamer

First chapter, yay!

Looking out over a vast and seemingly endless ocean... no, sea, it's a sea because that's what the water is trying to tell me. I look out across it and in the distance is an orange dot. What is it? I'm moving closer, but I'm not in a boat and I'm not swimming; I can feel the water yet I am not in it. The dot, wait it's not a dot, and it's not orange. It's a fire, no, again I'm wrong. It's a flower, a flower made of fire. A lotus? Floating on the water, a lotus of fire.

I'm falling, I don't know how or where, but I am. The sea is gone, the lotus is gone, all light is gone. I'm just falling in darkness, so black, so empty. A light in the distance; I need that light. I run towards it. Wait... how am I running? The light is close, it's a window. I jump through it.

I'm floating in the sky, a blue sky with no clouds, no sun, but light somehow. I'm surrounded by seven extremely large orbs. Midnight blue, pale yellow, ocean green, crimson red, moonlight silver, plum purple, and pitch black. In each orb... there's a girl in each orb. I spin in a circle, looking at each one, each girl, all the same. Long, flowing, waving hair, possibly blonde but the colored orbs distort it. Sleeping, gently sleeping, and cradling themselves. They are all naked, I think. Pale skin, pale white skin. It has to be to reflect the color of the orbs that way. But I can't see the girl in the black orb. Is she the same too?

I stop. The girl in the silver orb is staring at me, staring at me like she has never seen someone like me before. Or something like me. She falls out of the orb, and glides along the air to me. No clothes, she really is naked. Are the rest?

Her hair falls to her ankles, covering most of her body. It's as golden as the sun is bright. Her eyes are the same silvery color of the orb. Are the other girls' eyes the same as their orbs? Is that why the orbs are that way? I stare at her, and I don't know what to do. Her skin is paler then snow, her body seemingly so frail, I fear if I should touch her she would shatter.

“Are you the savior? Will you rescue us?” She asks in a voice like a whispering wind, and it dances along my skin.

Without thinking I reply, “I am the daughter of Moon and Sun.”

“You will save us.” She says, no question, but instead acknowledgment. “Daughter of Moon and Sun, what is your name? I must know. I must be able to call you.” She asks, or rather, demands.

I am about to say my name, say I'm Sara, but I stop. No, Sara isn't right, it's my name, but it isn't my name at all. It never was my name. It can't have ever been my name. “My name is...” I think I know what it is, but I can't remember how to say it. It has been so long, so very long, since it has been used. “My name is Kiriai'ana Al'Arathiya.” I finally stutter.

“Kiriai'ana Al'Arathiya, you must come now. We can only wait for so long, only so long before we fade. Come Kiriai'ana, come quickly. Save us. Please save us.” She says as she and the others all fade. The sky grows dark and everything disappears again. I fall, so quickly, and I keep falling. Darkness and falling. And noise. I think I'm going crazy.

Beep beep beep beep beep...

I fall off my couch onto the waiting floor. I look at my endlessly beeping alarm clock before smacking somewhere along the top and turning off the incessant noise that is creating a large and quite painful headache just above my right eye. I look again at the clock and read the time. Nine-thirty-five. S**t s**t triple s**t!

I run from my room frantically, wearing nothing but a worn t-shirt and my blue flower print panties. I trip over my feet on my way to the back door where the washer and dryer are, scrambling back up, and hurriedly throw open the dryer door to grab my (hopefully) dry clothes. And again, s**t! My clothes aren't in the dryer, just my parents' stuff. I run to the living room, but they aren't out there either, so I run back and throw open the washer door. My clothes are sitting in the washing machine, still completely soaked! F**k, I'm late to school and have no clothes. Oh what a joyous day.

My dad rushes from his room, of course in nothing but his underwear, to find out what the hell is going on. Before he can speak, I dart back to my room and yell, “I'm late!” I scatter the clothes on my bed hoping to find some pants or a skirt or something in the mess of stuffed animals, paper, and shirts. Then I yell again, “Stupid alarm clock didn't go off!” It's a blatant lie, but it's still better then saying I got lost in my dream and couldn't find the way home. By some miracle I find white cotton panties and faded blue jeans. I strip hurriedly, throwing my dirty clothes at random in my room, and pull on the panties and jeans. Then I run out of the room, back to the washer and dryer, taking my parents clothes from the dryer and running them to the living room couch. Thankfully my dad has gone back into his room to get dressed. I run back to the washer and toss my clothes into the dryer, throw in a dryer sheet, closing the door and turning it on for an hour. I run back to my room to find a shirt, and heaven forbid I get a day that week where I'm not late to school. I could swear my alarm clock is out to get me if I didn't know it went off every day.

Grabbing a shirt at random, and I mean at random, I slip on my sandals and run back to the living room in search of a hair brush. I find a brush by stepping on it next to the dining table, and run it through my hair, pulling at all the rats and tangles caused by tossing in my sleep. By the time I finish brushing my hair, my eyes are completely teared up from the pain at yanking on my scalp. I grab my backpack and my mom's car keys, rushing out to the car and starting it up. I sit, waiting impatiently for my dad to hurry up and get out so we can go.

I check the time again. It's nine-fifty now. Great, just f*****g great. My alarm clock isn't out to get me; nope, just good old karma coming to bite me in the a*s. Good thing I have a fat a*s, if I didn't, then karma wouldn't be able to bite it because too much of it is wasted on being a smart a*s. Not the greatest choice in life, but as the saying goes, it's a hell of a lot better to be a smart a*s then a dumb a*s.

My dad comes out to the car and it's nine-fifty-five. Karma, whatever shall I do without thee? Oh that's right, lead an easy, happy-go-lucky and carefree lifestyle. No wonder everyone says Karma is a b***h. If ever the two of us should meet, I think I may slap her upside the head so hard that she and the ground get to have a friendly meet and greet.

“You're late again. That's what? The fourth time this week?” My dad says. Of course he is pissed as hell too. But lately, it seems he's always pissed.

“Third. Today's only Wednesday. And it's not my fault, my alarm clock is faulty.” I say, partly under my breath and mumbled.

“Faulty my left a*s cheek. I heard that thing going off this morning like it would raise the dead.” He replies, practically pissing venom from his mouth. I remember before I went to bed that him and mom were fighting again. Guess he's still pissed about it.

“If you heard it, then why didn't you wake me up?” I ask, starting to get pissed myself. Just what I needed to wake up in the morning, no breakfast and a fight with daddy dearest.

“It's not my responsibility to wake you up. If you can't get up on your own, then you get to suffer the consequences, not me.” He answers in his high-and-mighty grown up voice. I'm a tenth grade girl, like I can wake up on my own. A train could've smashed through my house and I wouldn't have woken up.

We spent the rest of the ride to school in silence. He concentrated on driving, I concentrated on staring pointedly out my window at passing evergreen trees, wishing to be one. Oh how I wish, I wish, I could be a tree. Twinkle twinkle littler star, f**k this world over and make me a tree. Please?

I arrive at school, pissed to hell, not wanting to be here, but knowing I sure as sunlight don't want to spend another minute in suffering silence with my f*****g father. Of course, I'm coming to school late, again, and I still feel stupid showing up tardy. I get out of the car and dad races off before I can walk a single step. I sigh heavily and take a deep breath before trudging my way into the school. Since both of us were pissed, neither of us remembered I needed a written excuse for being late. So I go up to the attendance booth and shrug before anyone can ask for my excused note. Ms. Deno, the attendance lady, is absent, so the BEST student present gives me a green un-excused tardy slip.

I go to my third period class that is, thankfully, just starting. I could feel my face flushing as I enter the room, interrupting my French teacher Madame Higashi, and I hand her the pass before taking my seat. My eyes travel along the faces of my classmates, and I start to drift back to sleep.

“Come to us, Kiriai'ana. Quickly, come. You must come. Soon...”

I wake with a start, jerking up and falling out of my seat. The class bursts into laughter, and I try to hide the ever-present blush on my cheeks. The rest of the day passes by with nothing interesting, but lucky for me, I don't fall asleep again.

On the bus ride home, I stare out my window from the second to front seat, not really watching the scenery, but just staring so I have something to stare at. The dream is bothering me, like it's stalking me. I can't escape, but I have the urge to listen to the girl's voice, to go to them. But how can I go? It doesn't exist, it's just a dream for f**k's sake!

When I get home, not even knowing how I got there, I go straight to my room and plop down on my couch. I'm still extremely tired so I just lie down, fully dressed, and fall back asleep.

I'm walking through the woods in my backyard. I think I'm following a deer path again, but it's not one that I normally take; it's one of the paths I usually avoid. It's dark, full of holes and thorn bushes, dead trees are scattered across the path; but I continue forward, tripping and falling, covering myself in scratches. The trees stand ominously around me, reaching into the ever darkening sky, yet crouching down, grabbing for me, making me run faster. The path stretches onward into the distance, night falling around me. Shadows between the trees stretch clawed hands out, trying to grab, to pull me into the darkness. I run, as fast as I can, I run. Suddenly I see a big patch of sunlight not far ahead, an open grove or something.

I finish the last few steps into the opening and close my eyes at the brightness of the sun. As my eyes adjust, I look around. No bushes, no grass, no trees at all in this large space. Instead, it's just a bunch of ruins. Three sand-colored platforms stacked atop each other like a miniature Aztec pyramid, but they're old and worn from the weather. I walk closer and see each platform is only about three feet tall, and each is covered in thousands of flat, shards of dark grey shale. The stones of the platforms are made of something similar to limestone, but not exactly the right texture. From a distance they looked smooth and worn, but as my fingers trace the top edge of the lowest platform, I find it to be smooth as silk yet sharper then broken glass and I end up pricking myself on the rock when there isn't any visible edge.

Blood flows from the prick, more blood then there should have been. It drips along the stone bricks and the shale shards, creating a pool of blood that is deep and wide. My finger suddenly stops bleeding and I look into my pool of blood. I stare transfixed, unable to look away.

Suddenly, a black clawed hand reaches from the pool and tries to grab my throat. I scream, scrambling up the stone wall, and up the second, then the top platform. Standing on the top, I look around and the forest is gone. I'm beside a desert, a vast desert wasteland. No trees, no plants, no life. Not even sand, but desert was the only word for the everlasting flat expanse of land around me.

I take a step forward to jump down the platforms, but again I'm falling. Falling and falling. That's all I do in my dreams lately, I fall. Even gravity is out to get me. As I fall I hear my name, someone calling Sara...

I fall off my couch, tangled in the blanket. My room is dark, and outside my window is even darker. I guess I've been asleep a while. Huh. Oh well, I didn't have anything better to do today anyways. I hear my mom yelling my name from the living room, so I untangle myself and go out to tell her bye before she heads off for work.

I sit down on the couch to watch some television but I can't quite escape the feeling that I'm being stalked by shadows in my own home. I guess the dream claw of black bloody doom got to me more then I thought. I try watching the episode of Simpson's that's on, but my mind can't understand the pictures. In the corner of my eye a shadow in the hallway to the back bedrooms, to my bedroom especially, flickers. My skin prickles with fear, and I immediately pull my feet up on the couch. I may be a little old to be afraid of monsters under the bed and things that go bump in the night, but hey, if I want to be chicken s**t while dreams are stalking me, then I will be the best damned chicken s**t that I can be.

I stare at the hallway, and maybe I have been oversleeping, or maybe I am losing my mind, but honest as bacon filled breakfast, I see a shadow walking down my hallway towards me. It stops just before the light from the dining room, and it blends too well with the shadow of the unlit hall for me to really see it, but I can tell it's there. Part of me wants to scream, the other part wants to run, and the final part wishes it had a flashlight to see if that would piss it off or make it go poof. But all of me was agreeably frozen with fear.

“Sara! Go pull out chicken for dinner!” I jump, startled half to death, as my dad calls me from his room. I glance back at the hallway and the shadow is gone. My body shakes from the fear, goosebumps covering my flesh, but I get up and turn on every light I pass as I go get the chicken out of the back freezer. I put it in the sink, then walk over and turn on the hall light for extra comfort. No shadow is going to scare me, not even if they have long black claws, because if I have to light my house like the Vegas Strip, I will.

I sit back down on the couch and commence the watching-yet-not-watching of T.V. again. I can't remember how or when it happened, but of course I fell asleep. I open my eyes, thinking, or praying, I am sitting in my living room. But no, instead I am standing in front of a legion's worth of shadow things, all of which have long black clawed hands. Oh goody! Not only are the dreams stalking me, but they're trying to kill me too!

Karma, you b***h, when I find you I swear I am going to put you into a meat grinder.

Author's Note

Sorry for spacing, I copy/pasted this from a word doc.

Reviews

[Twilight]

Another great submission to my Contest, "Weird Tales". Well, it is the dream sequences which I enjoyed reading most. Also, the sudden change to a school pupil's relatively mundane life, seemed almost like a disappointment to me. But, only because I wanted to keep reading those dream-like sequences, and the alternative visions which you have created for the reader!

The opening scene gave me good insight into your protagonist's confused state of mind, in regard to her time and place. Again, it is probably the real-life sequences which seem less interesting, and slightly cliched? Other than that, I very much enjoyed reading both this, and the poem which you entered!

Thankyou, and keep writing! You are a genuine talent, in the fantasy genre.....