Dreams

By JCRogers

The Dream

Dream-like. That’s how it felt. That’s how it always felt when it happened.

He stood on the roof of his house, looking out over the city. The lights of the city twinkled in the night air, and the occasional breeze made him shiver. He’d have to remember to bring a jacket next time it happened. Not that he was ever awake when it started. Perhaps that was part of the reason he always felt like he was dreaming.

Maybe he was dreaming. He always accepted the possibility—and usually immediately dismissed it. There was almost always some evidence. Dirt on his clothes, or holes, and one time he was completely soaked after an encounter with lawn sprinklers.

For some reason, he always ended up on his own roof. To him, this was odd because his house was the last place he wanted to be. He also suspected that that was the origin of the… Well, it had to be, didn’t it?

Maybe he wished himself somewhere else so strongly that he’d actually caused it to happen. Maybe when he was sleeping, it was easier to tap into whatever supernatural power pulled him away almost every night.

Every day after school, he had to come home to his parents’ constant fighting, and his older sister treating him like slime. After dinner, when he could finally go to his room, he felt like it was a sanctuary, where they couldn’t hurt him anymore. He’d always get drawn into his parents’ arguments, and his sister was always hitting him, blaming things on him, taking things from him, and taking all the positive attention from their parents. He was easily better in school than his sister, and got into much less trouble, but for some reason, she was the favorite.

But in his room, none of that mattered. He could be alone. At peace. He’d listen to music and read books, build models and eat junk food (which his sister would have taken from him, outside his sanctuary). And then he’d crawl into bed and sleep. The kind of peaceful sleep he had when he knew that no matter what was going on outside his door, he was impervious to it. The kind of sleep where you feel as if you’ll never voluntarily leave your bed again.

But it was never undisturbed. It wasn’t his parents or his sister—it was himself that constantly ruined his peaceful rest.

Not once in the last year had he gone through an entire night without waking up in odd locations. At first, it was on the floor of his own room. Then on the soft grass in his back yard. One time, he woke up in his neighbor’s pool.

He still didn’t know what was happening. His dreams always involved flying. And at first, when he would wake up, he always felt as if he’d just hit the ground: his chest and neck hurt, his legs were sometimes twisted under him, and when he woke in the pool, he heard a large splash as he woke.

This time, he became half-awake while still doing it… While still… Flying.

That’s all he could call it. He didn’t know what was actually happening, but he knew what it felt like. He was floating in the air; he could move with a thought; he could be perfectly still. He could fly.

Tonight was the night. He’d come awake while flying. Before when that had happened, he fell; but this time, he’d been able to control it and had come back to his roof, where he usually ended up anyway. When he’d found he could control it, he was amazed that it took no effort. It was like moving your arm; you don’t think about it, it just moves.

He tried lifting himself from the roof with the same instinctive thoughts. At first he couldn’t do it. And he knew why: he wasn’t sure if he actually could. He doubted. As long as that doubt was there, he would be forced to wait until he slept to fly again.

He wanted desperately to feel it again; to fly far from here and never return. He didn’t know where he would go or how he would make his way, but it didn’t matter. He just knew he had to leave.

He tried to convince himself that he’d just been flying, so it was possible. After about ten minutes of mental debating with no results, he decided that he would try one last thing.

He closed his eyes, and began to walk. Step after step he kept wondering when the roof would end. As he had planned, he just kept walking. He never felt the roof stop. There was a silly picture in his mind of himself just walking in midair, but when he opened his eyes, he found he was wrong. He’d stepped off the edge of the roof and just hung there, moving his legs but staying in one spot.

Wrong muscles, he thought, as he laughed at himself.

He kept his eyes half closed, with the hope that he’d be able to control it better the closer he was to actual sleep. He began to move forward. Now he was having fun with it, he assumed the clichéd poses, like Super Man and Peter Pan, and then, he decided he’d invent his own: He flew forward as fast as he could with his feet forward and his back facing the ground—in a sleeping position.

Not long afterward, he actually did fall asleep. The sun had come up, and he’d slowed down, so the cold was no longer a problem. He just slept, and drifted in the sky.

When he awoke, he heard voices. He opened his eyes to see the bright blue sky above him. He rolled over to try and see the voices.

There were about twenty people below him, all talking to each other without taking their eyes off him. He assumed a standing position and floated gently to the ground. When he touched down, he lifted himself an inch just to make sure he wouldn’t have to walk off any more roofs, and finally settled firmly to the ground.

He looked around. He’d never seen any of them before, but somehow, he knew all these people. He knew they were like him. He also knew that they’d been waiting for him.

~ ~ ~

Lucidity

He felt half-awake. Like when you realize that you’re dreaming and you find you can control the dream. He felt like he’d been here before, seen all this before—but at the same time, everything was new and confusing.

But the people around him seemed to be hiding something from him. They regarded him with a kind of reverence mixed with an anxiety or fear. He couldn’t understand it. They taught him about his gift, but reservedly.

They kept telling him of how he was to be humanity’s savior, how he was supposed to be the protector of the entire world. He wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for that sort of thing.

He kept asking them questions, trying to get them to tell him more, but they were skilled at changing the subject and dodging questions.

After a time, they had less to tell him. They no longer praised him as the savior of humanity. He figured it would only be a matter of time before they ran out of their empty praise. He’d grown tired of it anyway.

But he knew there was more.

During the long talks, he’d noticed that he was atop a large mountain, inside a small alcove that overlooked endless clouds. As it became dark, some of the people went deeper into the alcove and found places to sleep on the hard stone floor.

He couldn’t sleep. He sat on the outside edge of the alcove, looking out at the clouds which seemed to glow. He just stared at them. Thinking.

This can’t be real, he thought. People can’t do these things. I can’t do these things.

Or I shouldn’t be able to.

But I can.

What if they’re right? What if I’m here to protect the entire world? But from what? What can I protect them from?

From themselves, I guess.

But who are these people? Why can’t they do it? What’s so special about me?

He looked up. Above him was a full moon, looking larger than he’d ever seen it. And stars. More stars than he’d imagined could exist, brighter than any he’d seen.

And what is this place? He thought maybe he was on Mount Everest, but it wasn’t nearly cold enough, nor hard to breathe at all. He thought he’d heard a rumbling emanating from within the mountain itself.

He spent the rest of the night thinking. About himself, the strangers, the stars, the moon, the glowing clouds… And the strangers’ secret.

Time seemed to be moving quickly: The sky became brighter, the moon departed. But the clouds below never thinned or parted.

He heard the strangers’ rustlings as they woke up, and the sun rose over the horizon of clouds.

They approached him. He asked them again, for the last time, about the secret they were avoiding.

They looked uneasily at each other. One of them nodded to another, and to another. Abruptly, they all turned to him. The one who nodded stepped forward.

He sat on the edge of the alcove with him. And he told him the secret.

They meant him to do something. They’d help, of course, but none of them were as powerful as he could become. He’d have to be the one to do it.

“No!” he screamed. He flew as fast as he could. Anywhere but with them. Just…

Away.

~ ~ ~

Nightmare

It felt like a nightmare. He felt like he was being chased, and he couldn’t move as quickly as he wanted to.

He only wanted to get away, but no matter how fast he flew, whenever he looked back, the mountain was only a mile or two behind him.

And one of the others was behind him, closing the gap fast.

He couldn’t believe their plan, and what they expected him to do.

He might have accepted that they were the next step in some grand plan, or the next evolution of humans—But this? He wouldn’t do it! He couldn’t.

Then he thought of his house, his room… his sanctuary. And suddenly he recognized his neighborhood below him. The answer was obvious now: He wasn’t getting anywhere because he had nowhere to go. His only goal was getting away, which got him nowhere. But once he had a destination in mind, he was almost instantly there. That had to be how they kept their mountain hidden.

And there, below him, was his house. He landed on his roof and turned to face the one pursuing him.

And she wasn’t far behind. Within seconds she was floating directly in front of him, five or six feet away.

“I won’t do it!” he said. “And I won’t let you do it either! It’s not our place!

“Just because we may be superior doesn’t mean we should wipe them out to make room for more like us!”

It was obvious she wasn’t happy with that. She raised her hand, palm forward, and a glowing sphere materialized in it. She cocked one eyebrow, as if offering one last chance to change his mind.

This was a power they had not told him about, but so far he’d been able to exceed them in every other aspect. He stretched his arms out to his sides, and imagined all the energy in his body flowing to his palms. Sure enough, twin spheres appeared in his hands. Oddly, his were blue, as opposed to her yellow one.

The look of surprise on her face was hard to hide—but she tried: Her shock quickly turned to anger, and she thrust her hand toward him, launching the sphere at him.

Up until this point, he had no idea what he was going to do to stop it. Instinctively, he tried to block it with his forearm. As he did, the sphere in his right hand dissipated, but he was able to block her attack.

His arm stung where it was struck, but he threw his remaining sphere at her.

She easily dodged, and he realized dodging would be easier—and less painful. So he jumped up from the roof, and began to circle her in the air.

He formed two more globes of light, and she formed one. Either he was indeed superior, or there was some advantage to only one that he could not yet see.

He threw one at her, and as he did so, she dodged and simultaneously threw her sphere at him. The sudden counter-attack caught him off guard, and once again he was struck. This time it was on the leg, and it didn’t seem to hurt as much through his pants as it had on the bare skin of his arm.

He noticed that not only was he able to create these energy orbs in greater number, he seemed to be able to create them faster. He had two more ready, as her single sphere was only just materializing.

He threw both of them at her, to either side of her, hoping to hit her if she dodged either way. Unfortunately, he was still getting used to the idea of flying, and he didn’t take the third dimension into account: She darted upward, and threw her sphere at him.

This time he was able to dodge in time, and he spun and threw the half-formed orb from his left hand, in what he thought was a pretty impressive maneuver.

He also noticed that the smaller orb seemed to travel faster than the larger ones. Coupled with the fact that he could produce the smaller ones faster, he thought he might be able to create a kind of machine-gun effect.

He tried it, and with great success. He was able to throw the small balls of energy at her in rapid succession, forming one in one hand, while throwing another from the other hand. While she was good at dodging, a few of them struck their target.

But he had another realization: they were too small. After the first few contacted her, she began to not even bother dodging. These small orbs were doing absolutely no damage to her.

“Time to switch tactics,” he said to himself.

He created two more large orbs, and flung them. She dodged easily, but his experiment wasn’t over: He focused on them, and as he had hoped, they circled around and came at her from behind. Both of the full-power orbs hit her. One in the middle of her back, and the other on her leg.

The look of shock on her face was almost disturbing, and she fell to the ground, landing face-first on his front lawn.

It was only now he realized how high they’d flown. It seemed that in all their attacking and circling, they’d been going up and up, and now seemed to be at least a thousand feet above the ground.

He dropped down to her impact point, and saw that she had been severely hurt. But she wasn’t dead.

He rolled her over, and she opened her left eye—the only eye she actually had left—and tried to talk.

“I told you I wouldn’t let you do it,” he said. She gurgled a response, and reached her hand out toward him.

He turned to see three of the others flying down. He reflexively created a single orb in his left hand.

They landed on his roof.

As he stood facing the newcomers, between his house and the woman he’d just beaten, something happened.

Behind him, the outstretched arm began to glow and an orb formed at the end of it.

He turned too late.

From the angle it was launched at him, he was thrown between the newcomers and right over the roof.

He was dead before he hit the ground. He landed in his back yard, right below his bedroom window.

The three newcomers took the woman, who had since died from her own injuries. Presumably back to their mountain.

~ ~ ~

Sleep

In the morning, his parents found him. He was laying face-down on the ground, with his arms twisted awkwardly under him.

The police and paramedics arrived. They said it was suicide; he’d jumped from his roof. There was extreme blunt trauma to his rib cage, and his organs were destroyed.

“He was only twelve!” his mother cried.

An officer pulled his father aside. “Sir, do you know if your boy had any abnormal interest in fire?”

“I don’t… think so,” he replied at length. “Why?” The officer led him over to where his son lay on a stretcher, waiting to be taken to the morgue.

“See these scars?” The officer pulled down the sheet to expose the boy’s torso.

His father grimaced, but did not look away. “I see ’em. But I haven’t seem ’em before today.”

The officer looked from the boy’s father to the marks on the boy’s chest. Marks that looked very much like burn scars.

“What do you mean?” the officer asked, looking back up at the father.

“What I mean is: Those weren’t there before.”

“That’s impossible. Unless…” He ran to the area where the boy had been. There, on the ground where it had been left, was the boy’s shirt. Other than the clean cut of the paramedics’ scissors, there were many holes in the shirt. The shirt was torn to tatters. Something had happened.

The officer returned to the boy’s father with the shirt in hand, and held it up for him to see.

“What’s th—” He paused, trying to take in what he saw. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea. Those marks… for the life of me, they look like burn scars. But this shirt implies they’re fresh.” He looked at the shirt in his hand. “I don’t know what would make marks like that.”

The boy’s father made no reply.

“Sir, I assure you, I’ll do my best to figure out what happened to him.” He looked again at the boy. “No matter what it takes.”

The boy’s father looked up, as if jerked from a trance. “Thank you. we’d appreciate that, Officer…” He saw the badge on his uniform, “Officer Blake.”

“You can call me Miles,” he replied.

Officer Blake pulled the sheet up over the boy’s head.

~ ~ ~