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storyunrelated · 14 days

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Bad Dreams - Part One

(Bad dreams is big, so I am splitting it up.)

There are no good ways to wake up at five in the morning, but I’d safely say that one of the worst ways to be woken up at five in the morning is by the sound of screaming coming from across the hall.

Fortunately I know why there’s screaming coming from across the hall, which doesn’t make it better but does make it not as bad as it might have been. After all, mysterious screaming would present a whole host of other issues to deal with, so I’m glad it wasn’t that. It was Nisien screaming, the guy I live with, my buddy, my pal.

Again.

For as long as I’ve known Nisien - which is all of his life, given we’ve been friends since we were both tiny little babies - he’s had some pretty alarmingly vivid bad dreams from time to time. I mean really alarmingly vivid. We all have bad dreams from time to time and sometimes they’re bad enough we wake up feeling pretty shaken. Nisien has that, but far worse.

And since we live together now I get to be there when they happen, too.

Also no, I don’t know where his name comes from either. I did ask him once and he said it was one of his grandparent’s names and I was like sure, cool, that’s an answer. It sounds Welsh to me, but maybe I’m miles off the mark? Suppose I could have looked it up online but at this point I’m kind of committed to the mystery.

After all, what is life without a few unanswered questions?

Anyway. he’s in bed and he’s having a bad time and he and I have danced this dance before so I know what it is that I have to do - go across and make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.

Is it enjoyable walking over and occasionally having to delicately restrain someone you care about as they thrash and sporadically scream in their sleep? No, no it is not, but that’s what you have to do sometimes. Wonder if that’s a metaphor for life?

Probably not.

Anyway again, none of that matters. I, awake enough by then to realise what’s happening and what needs to happen, lurch to my feet, nearly fall over, walk head-first into the door, curse, and then stumble blearily across the hall to Nisien’s room, walk into his door too (and curse again), actually open his door, stumble blearily into his room and then take a knee next to his bed to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t roll out of it or start strangling himself with his duvet or leap up and try to climb out the window again.

I do this for a good few minutes.

Luckily his screaming died down pretty quick - he usually only gets off one or two good ones when this happens anyway - so I was mostly just watching him whimper and writhe and twitch which is, you know, great and all. He does try to roll off the bed, too, and when I try to stop him the contact wakes him up. Whoops.

Waking up really doesn’t do him any favours and the thrashing gets that much worse and I have to basically hold him down for a second until he realises where he is at which point he promptly bursts into tears.

That part is quite recent, the crying. I think it’s the stress of it happening so often, honestly, combined with not being able to ever have a proper night’s sleep. Anyone would start crying. Some nights I feel pretty close to it myself given that this just won’t stop happening.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright man, you’re alright, come on,” I say in as comforting a tone as I can manage, helping him up into a sitting position in his bed.

And he says - or sobs - something in response but he’s still mostly asleep so it doesn’t really make a lot of sense and doesn’t really have many actual words in it. But that’s fine. Most of us aren’t our best when half-asleep and that’s when most of us aren’t filled with irrational dread from things we can’t control.

Suppose we can’t control anything irrational, can we?

“Yeah I know, I know but it’s alright, come on,” I say, giving him a hug and a pat on the back as he clings onto me like if he doesn’t he’ll float off into the sky and disappear into space, crying the whole time of course. Poor lad.

So he’s there getting tears and snot all over my shoulder and I’m there rubbing his back and telling him that it’s okay and that he’s safe and I’m thinking to myself that this is happening a lot more often than it used to.

Mean, it used to be something that might happen once every six months, maybe, tops, and even that was more of a general guess than a hard-and-fast rule. It might have happened once every six months and he’d feel embarrassed and I’d tell him it was fine and we’d both have had a rough night and that would be it, but it just as easily might not have happened.

In fact, like I said before, they’d looked to have been on their way out, winding down, tailing off, much to Nisien’s relief.

But then a month or so ago it seemed to just start happening once a week. And then this month it’s basically been happening every night. Every night the screaming and the sobbing and the slow coming back to reality and the cup of tea and the embarrassment, only this time without the break of a few calm months to wind down in.

So all that embarrassment is mounting and building up with nowhere to go and no time to bleed off naturally, along with all that stress of, you know, waking up screaming every night. Poor guy looks like he’s a few inches short of having a breakdown.

And I’m not exactly running laps around the lake and clicking my heels in excited delight - waking up screaming every day is bad, getting woken up by screaming every day isn’t exactly all that much good for your sleep hygiene either. I’m knackered.

And if it wasn’t a weird enough shift of gears, I’ve also been having bad dreams every night, too, in those few hours that I’m asleep before having to wake up and go and soothe Nisien.

Normally I barely dream at all - or, rather, I don’t remember my dreams as apparently we dream every night regardless but usually don’t remember? I’m not an expert - so this is a change for me, certainly, especially with it being every night.

So that’s two pretty big, inexplicable changes for two guys in two rooms in the same house.

Now, I’m the kind of person who’d much rather put strange things down to coincidence. Strange things happen all the time without anyone having anything to do with them, that’s just life. No sense in wasting time looking for the culprit when the culprit is just things being things.

But I do also have limits, and this is pushing dangerously close to them.

So I figure, since this is a strange thing, I should go and ask a witch about it. Luckily I know a witch and, since it’s a weekend, luckily I got the free time to go and see her.

And so that happens. What would you have done?

Rose is another person I’ve known since I was a tiny baby. She and Nisien and me used to go roll down hills and climb up trees. One time a boy made Rose cry and so me and Nisien stuffed his shirt with grass until he cried. We got in trouble for that, which is fair.

Rose was also a witch. A few years ago she got the hat and everything, fully qualified and paid up.

When I was a younger person (a ‘child’ I believe is the term) I had some people tell me that witches were nasty and mean but Rose was neither of these things and never has been, thus demonstrating to me at an early age that people would seek to lie to me for their own strange purposes.

Those things aren’t really related, really.

I go around to hers and I ring the bell and I wait and a little moment later the door opens and Rose is standing there in her pyjamas (and her hat, obviously), holding a mug of tea and blinking at me, clearly not having expected to see me standing there.

“Did you - are we doing something today, did I forget? Sorry, I had a really bad night,” she says yawning and rubbing her eyes and while it’d be rude to say that she looks like she had a bad night she looks like she had a bad night. Like I did.

I probably look worse.

“Bad dreams?” I asked and she blinked again, pausing in her eye rubbing to squint at me.

“Uh, yeah. How did you…?”

I indicate with a gesture that I’d like to come in and continue this important discussion inside, out of the cold. Rose gets this and steps aside. In I go.

In her rather cramped little lounge we pick things up again:

“I also had bad dreams and I’ve been having bad dreams consistently. So has Nisien, only his have obviously been worse,” I said, sat on her sofa.

“His terrors come back?” Rose asked, concerned, before taking a sustaining sip of her tea.

“Oh my, yes.”

A fuller explanation of recent events followed. The reappearance of Nisien’s really bad dreams, the drastic increase in their regularity, our shared sleeplessness, that whole shebang. Rose listens and the more she listens the less happy she looks about it all.

“Since last month?! Why didn’t you come to me sooner? Or go to someone else? Or do anything?!” She asked. She showed hints of exasperation. Understandably, really.

“I did say he should, but you know what he’s like about this, he’s embarrassed.”

Not that he has any reason to be, but that’s how embarrassment works, really. If it made sense and could be easily dealt with it wouldn’t be the problem we all know it is, would it?

“But now you’re coming to me because you suddenly think it’s kind of weird?” She asks.

Rose looks like she’s going to come back at me with something else but then pauses and really thinks about it a second, chewing on her lip and clutching her mug. She takes another nerve-steadying sip of tea. I can smell her tea and it smells like the kind of tea that I wouldn't drink, but I’m glad it works for her.

“Well, it is weird, isn’t it?”

“It’s unusual,” she says, eventually, which basically means it’s weird.

The warm glow that washed over me was triumph, I was sure of it. I sat back on the sofa and it promptly started trying to swallow me, as sofas are sometimes wont to do.

“That’s what I thought. So I came here because I thought it might be worth seeing if you could do any witchy junk and shed any light on it. Just on the off-chance, you know?”

She gives me a look.

She keeps giving me the look in silence and the moment drags. It doesn’t take long for me to crack. Rose could crack walnuts with some of the looks she was capable of putting out.

Literally, actually, what with her being a witch and all.

“What?” I ask her.

She keeps the look on me a few seconds longer, so it really sinks in for me.

“...’witchy junk’?” She then says. I shrug.

“I don’t know what you call it.”

“Magic, we call it magic. Everyone calls it magic.”

Seems obvious now she says it.

“Right, well, that then. Is there any of that you can do?” I ask.

For a second it looked like Rose was all set to give me an abrupt, negative answer. She took in a breath and opened her mouth and raised a finger and everything, but before anything like that could come out she stopped and something seemed to occur to her. The breath let out, her mouth closed and the raised finger moved to scratch her chin.

“Maybe,” she said, frowning to herself.

She’s clearly chewing the subject over so I keep my mouth shut and let her have at it. Scratching her chin changes to tapping her chin which then changes to wagging her finger at me as she stares off to one side still frowning and thinking.

“Assuming it has anything to do with magic - and this could just be a coincidence, most things are just coincidences,” Rose says, as she shares this sentiment with me and rightly so. “But assuming it has anything to do with magic I should be able to pick up a trace of it from one of us. I could try having a look at you, if you’re okay with that.”

“Not that I don’t like volunteering for things but wouldn’t it also work with you, being as how you have bad dreams and all too?” I ask.

“Yes, but it’ll work better with you because you’re magically inert.”

“Nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Do I have to do anything?” I asked.

“Sit still,” she said.

“Think I can manage that.”

Rose slurps up the last of her tea, sets her mug down and then gets up out of the chair she’d been perched in to come and perch along the sofa from me. Once she’s done that she settles herself, takes a few calming breaths and then just touches me right between the eyebrows with a finger.

This is weird, but I guess magic is weird so that tracks. I sit still like I was told to.

Kind of tingles.

And I keep sitting there quietly while Rose, with closed eyes, kind of mouths things and screws her face up in concentration. It feels a bit strange to watch her do this so I try and see what else I can see without moving. Not a lot, as it turns out. I can see she’s found some new badges to put on her hat - which is pretty cool - but other than my view is pretty limited.

“There’s definitely something there…” Rose then says, which is a relief from the awkwardness.

Though learning that you’re the victim of magical shenanigans isn’t great, I guess.

“Oh?” I asked, continuing to sit still as Rose brings up her other hand and puts two fingers on another part of my head. Presumably this is all in aid of something.

“Yeah, definitely. Someone did this. Not to you specifically, but generally...explains why it got me and Nisien too. Probably a lot more other people as well, probably just about everyone in the area. This is local, I think. Whoever is doing this isn’t that far away.”

(Rose being local to me, only living a street away from me and Nisien.)

(Also, wow.)

“You can tell that?” I ask, deeply impressed.

“I can tell that.”

Magic is so magical, and Rose is such a fine and talented witch.

She spends a little bit longer poking and prodding my head and a few other parts to get a bit more information and once that’s done declares that she’s going to do of reading up on dreams and dreaming and related subjects and get back to me once she feels she’s got a better handle on the subject.

I ask her if that means she’s going to read one of those big, leatherbound books she has. I like those books. I looked in some of them once and they’re illuminated and everything. Rose says it does. This excites me on a base level so I make myself scarce so she has some space to do her thing.

When I get back to mine and Nisien’s place I find Nisien drinking bad coffee, watching children’s cartoons and trying not to fall asleep. Poor sod hasn’t even had breakfast and, since it is around lunchtime, I make some for me and some for him and we eat it and watch children’s cartoons together. Quality stuff.

I also make him better coffee. I have no idea how Nisien is so consistently bad at making coffee. He was bad back before he was sleep deprived and spring-tight with anxiety, too, so that’s no excuse.

It’s instant coffee, how do you do it wrong?

“Where’d you go?” Nisien asks during an ad break. He’s cradling his mug and - and I say this with all the love in the world - he looks like crap. Chap needs a nap.

“Rose’s,” I say simply between chews of lunch.

That gets his attention.

“Oh?” He asks, an eyebrow cocked.

“No,” I say, flat as anything.

“Oh,” he says, honestly a little disappointed.

Despite Nisien’s on-again-off-again absolute conviction that Rose and me have something going on we never do, never have and never, ever will. Just not the nature of our relationship. It’d be just as likely that me and Nisien would get into something.

Which is to say, not likely. At all. Just not the nature of our relationship.

That being said I should probably mention that I have kissed both Rose and Nisien exactly once each in all the time I’ve known them. While there was nothing technically wrong with either kiss - perfectly good as kisses go - they were both very much the wrong person for me to be kissing, something we all agreed on after the fact and have lived comfortably with since.

One way of finding out, right?

Anyway. That’s a tangent. It’s just that Nisien brought it up, as he regularly does, and pulled me off-course. I swallow my mouthful of lunch and chase it with a mouthful of slightly-about-average coffee before setting him straight on why I went there:

“Looking into this dream stuff. I’ve been having bad ones too, you know? Not like yours, obviously, but still bad. Rose as well. Something fishy is going on. Magically fishy, she says.”

Going to this topic immediately puts a damper on Nisien. Probably should have been a little more delicate about it. Oops.

“Hey, you okay?” I ask, putting a hand to his shoulder.

“Fine,” he says.

I put my arm properly around his shoulder after that, pull him in.

“Don’t worry about this, man, I’m on it, I’m going to sort it. Me and Rose are all over this, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, adding after a moment: “Thanks. For looking after me. You don’t have to.”

Strictly speaking in a grand, cosmic sense do any of us have to do anything? Suppose it depends on what you believe. Certainly though on a day-to-day basis there’s no beams of light descending on us from on high to compel us into doing things. We do things because we think they’re important to do and worth the effort, or we don’t.

It’s on us.

But that’s me. Probably wrong. I squeeze Nisien a bit tighter, to reassure him. Hopefully.

“No I don’t, but I do it because I want to and because I can and I know you’d do the same for me without even thinking about it. Rose too. That’s us, eh? Solid as a rock,” I say.

“Heh, yeah,” he says.

And there the matter rests. We watch more cartoons.

Later, Rose gets in contact and asks me to come round again, and so I do. I ask Nisien if he wants to come as well but he demurred. He’d rather sit and blankly stare into space and try not to fall asleep.

Poor Nisien, this really needs sorting.

So I go around and this time the door isn’t answered by a sleepy, pyjama-wearing Rose, no. This time the door is answered by a fully-dressed, fully-awake and quietly-excited Rose. You can tell she’s quietly excited because the brim of her hat has stopped being all floppy and has gone all stiff.

Is that a metaphor for something? One of these days I’ll find a metaphor for something.

“I think I’ve got enough for us to try and investigate to see where this might be coming from,” she says to me, grinning one of her particularly excited grins (she has a selection).

“Ooh,” I say to her. She nods.

“I’ve done a little reading on it so I should have an idea of what to look for once we get up there.”

“Up there?”

Rose switched to a different calibre of grin at that. This could have either been a good thing or a bad thing, with her grins it was always kind of hard to tell. Enigmatic would be the word. I think it was a witch thing, she never used to grin like this before she got the hat, I’m sure.

“Follow me,” she said, beckoning with a crooked finger.

When has anything bad ever happened after you follow someone who beckons with a crooked finger? Never. Probably. With some exceptions.

I followed her.

Locking the front door of her place behind her she led me around the corner and up that odd shared-access passage her place had to what could charitably be called the garden.

Once, however long ago it had been when these houses had been built in the first place, I imagine the garden would have been bigger. But that had been then and this was now, and now we lived in a period of time after someone had decided to sell most of the garden off to someone else, making the garden smaller.

Smaller to the point of actually being a little cramped.

“Give me a hand,” Rose said, going to a small half-shed thing and rummaging around. I gave her a hand and what this turned out to entail was to help her remove something and lay it out in the small, cramped garden.

There was no way what we laid out could have fitted in what we pulled it out of. But that’s just one of those things, no sense in getting caught up on it. I was too busy looking at what it was I’d helped her with anyway.

I could see what it was. Even my uneducated eye could see what it was. Had a basket and everything.

“Why do you have a giant balloon?” I asked her.

“Why don’t you have a giant balloon?” She hit back with.

Good question.

“...fair play,” I said.

“We’re going to use this to get up and have a look around. Evening is coming in, people will be going to bed so now is probably whenever whatever is happening, you know, happens. It’s local, so we might be able to spot it,” Rose said.

I saw an issue with this.

“We’ll be able to spot dreams?” I asked.

“Trust me. I read about this,” Rose said.

True, she had, and I hadn’t. Balloon inflation followed.

I didn’t really have a lot to do with that. I mostly just stood back and let Rose get on with it, it being her balloon and all, and her being the one with the skills necessary to get it inflated.

Ballooning - balloonery? Whatever it’s called - is not exactly something I know a whole lot about. I know balloons are involved and that they are big, certainly bigger than the one I’d helped Rose lay out in the little garden. Mean, it was big, but in the sense that it took up most of the available space.

The other thing I knew was that there was a big engine-looking thing that shot fire. That’s the sort of thing that sticks in the mind, fire-shooting engine-looking things. They filled the balloons with the hot air for which they were famous. Rose did not have one of those.

Instead she had a small box and with this box she fiddled.

Heh. Fiddling with her box.

The exact details of her fiddling (heh) were unclear to me, given that she was squatting over the thing and therefore blocking most of my view and I was stood off to one side anyway in an effort to not get in the way. I saw various arcane hand gestures though, and heard many a muttered word I could not comprehend.

At length, all of this must have paid off because the box - having been secured into a cradle of sorts beneath the body of the balloon - all at once started to glow, and the balloon started to inflate. Somehow. I’m sure it made perfect sense to Rose, given her training.

Again, magic is so magical.

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #writer on tumblr #Writing #Bad dreams #What

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storyunrelated · 21 days

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Flash #3681

"I mean, it's a joke, but it's one of those jokes that isn't really a joke, you know?"

"So, not a joke?"

"I guess?"

"Probably should have lead with that."

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Flash #3680

"There's never a dull moment," so they say, and I'd have to agree.

There's never a dull moment, because the whole thing is simply one infinite series of unending, continuous dull moments, unbroken, flowing endlessly one into the next without pause or any visible seams.

So no, no single dull moment, no. Just constant dullness. Dullness would be the default, making picking out individual instances of dullness a pointless exercise. Top to bottom, side to side, all is dull.

So I agree, but not at all in the way they meant.

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Flash #3679

"So, what do you fill the hours with around here?"

"I don't so much fill the hours as feel them slip through my fingers so, uh, not sure what to tell you, sorry."

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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How dare you

insinuate I deliberately make my Flash Fiction Friday titles as obtuse/long/rude as possible for shits and giggles.

Like I'd do that.

#talking to myself

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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I hope you fucking choke on a flake you sack of festering cunts

[Critical ice cream] @flashfictionfridayofficial

There's swearing in this. You may not be into that? Consider this a warning.

A benefit of summer was ice cream.

Of course, there was nothing stopping anyone from eating ice cream any other time of the year – even in the depths winter! – but Craig felt that to truly get the most enjoyment out of an ice cream it had to be hot and sunny, and these were best found in summer. Hence. Ice cream. Delicious, delicious ice cream.

And really summer was the best time for it. You got the refreshing coolness, the pulse-pounding excitement of knowing it was a race against the clock to eat the thing before it melted in the sunshine, you got sauces and sprinkles. You had it all!

Craig was a fan.

Which was why, on yet another searingly hot summer day he was out there in his shorts and sunglasses, cone in hand, proud (albeit temporary) owner of a fully-loaded ninety-nine. Well chuffed he was.

At least until the ice cream started talking to him.

“Oi, wanker,” it said, in exactly the kind of voice someone (someone reading the words written out, for example) would imagine an ice cream to have. “You gonna stand there catching flies all day or you gonna fuckin’ eat me?”

“I’m sorry?” Craig asked, taken aback. It wasn’t often he was spoken to like this, least of all by what was meant to be a sweet and delicious treat. The ice cream cackled.

“Yeah I bet you are, pal. You certainly look fuckin’ sorry. What’s the sunglasses for? Case you catch a look o’ your own legs? Fuck me but I didn’t know white got that white.”

“That’s uncalled for.”

“Felt pretty fuckin’ called for to me, pal! Figure I’m doin’ e’ryone here a fuckin’ public service. Your haircut’s fuckin’ shit, too. You pay for someone to do that to ya, pal?”

Craig, never normally a man given to much in the way of self-consciousness, raised a hand to his hair. He had indeed paid someone for it. Not a lot, agreeably, but then why spend too much on a haircut?

To avoid getting called out by ice cream, apparently.

“I’m going to eat you now,” Craig said, resolutely. This seemed a good way of dealing with the issue. The ice cream cackled again.

“Course you are. Look like a man wi’ a lot o’ experience o’ that,” it said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means you’re a fat cunt, you stinking, sausage-fingered prick.”

A flash of anger shot through Craig and he hurled the ice cream into the nearby duck pond, where it went splash. Ducks descended immediately, ravaging the cone and the flake and the toppings, shredding the ice cream to tatters even as it continued to swear and laugh and rant, until there was nothing left.

Craig took a few moments to recover his calm, then licked some melted ice cream off hand.

Maybe an ice lolly today, instead?

#flashfictionfriday #amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash #cw language

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Flash #3678

It was about five in the morning when he had a realisation.

This wasn't fun anymore.

It was meant to be. Of course it was meant to be. It was his passion, it was what occupied his thoughts and his waking moments. It was what he talked to people about, what he thought about when he wasn't talking about, what he read about, what he watched videos about.

Without it, what would he be? If not nothing then certainly less. Much less.

But it wasn't fun anymore. He didn't want to be awake at five to put the finishing touches onto something he hadn't enjoyed starting and was relieved to be finishing. He wasn't looking forward to later - only a few hours later, he tried not to think about - when he'd go and show off the fruits of his labour to other people who'd likely done the same thing as him and spent huge chunks of their time on something that, he realised, would probably be very similar to his own.

And they'd talk and make jokes only they'd understand and there'd probably be some hugs and he'd probably see some people he only saw rarely or had only ever spoken to at a distance before and he'd smile, of course, but he'd be waiting for it to end, and as the day wore on the desperation for it to be over would grow and grow and grow.

Then he'd be back home. Again. Alone, again. With nothing to do. Nothing to do except think about the next time, worry about the next time, fret over not doing as good a job as this time and having everyone see, everyone be kind on the outside but laughing on the inside. That wasn’t fun.

None of this was fun. Had it ever been fun?

He tried to think about that. Maybe, once. Not anymore.

But what else did he have?

He thought about that, too. For a while.

Nothing.

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Flash #3677

She was known among her people as a mystic and seer of great power and peerless wisdom, for only she had the ability to see what was directly in front of her and think more than five seconds ahead.

This set her several leagues ahead of her peers, and indeed the bulk of humanity.

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #flash fiction #flash

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Bad Dreams

A (surprisingly long, for me) thing I did done write, concerning a chap who finds his poor housemate beset by bad dreams to the point they can't sleep, and so who sets out to go talk to their other friend (who is a witch, obviously) and sort it all out.

The stakes could not be lower, and no edges of any seats will be in any danger, but maybe we'll make more friends along the way - by which I mean threatening people with crowbars.

Part one

Part two

Part three

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #writer #writers on twitter #Bad dreams #What

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storyunrelated · 1 month

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Flash #3676

“Alright, Bellamy,” said Cleve the Immortal, running the latest Chosen One through the required steps. “When the reach the Wellspring you’re going to need to-“

“That’s not my name,” said the Chosen One, who was apparently not called Bellamy. Caught short, Cleve the Immortal blinked at them.

“…are you sure?” They asked, at length. The Chosen One – looking distinctly unimpressed – folded their arms.

“Pretty sure,” they said.

‘Shit’ Cleve the Immortal thought to themselves. A whole fountain of possible names spurted forth inside their mind, any one of which might have fitted the grumpy, youthful face that now confronted them. Cleve the Immortal decided to run through some of the more likely ones:

“Uh, Grace? Forthright? Willows? Prim? Ram? Ren? Row?”

The Chosen One shook their head.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, and no. I can’t believe you forgot my name. You’ve been training me for months! Six months, at least!” They said, glowering.

Cleve the Immortal sighed, and for a brief moment really, really felt their age.

“Look. I’m going to be very honest with you for a moment here, okay? I am very, very old, in case I hadn’t mentioned. Hundreds and hundreds of years, yeah? Maybe over a thousand – I sort of lost track. I have met and trained dozens of Chosen Ones. Dozens and dozens. Probably hundreds. After a while they kind of start blurring together. They’re all young, they’re all eager, they’re all full of pluck and spirit and eventually, being mortal, they die, and then another one comes along. Bellamy might have been the one before you, come to think of it. So sorry if I get confused but I’ve got a lot to be confused about, alright? After you it’ll be another one, and then another one, and then another.”

Crushing silence followed this statement.

“…well that was inspiring,” the Chosen One said at length. Cleve the Immortal pouted at them. It was an odd expression to see on the face of an ageless legend.

“Hey, look, I was being honest, okay? At least you get to die at some point. Not all of us are so lucky,” they said.

“This has turned into a very depressing training session,” said the Chosen One, and Cleve the Immortal threw up their hands.

“Alright, we’re taking a break,” they said.

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Bad Dreams - Part Three

I saw a man. A man perhaps a little older than Rose and myself, and clearly not in a good way.

A man who had, at some point, decided to have only a loose relationship with eating and with hygiene and who, as a result, had got both angular and pungent. Greasy in places, dark under the eyes and pale just about everywhere. He did not inspire confidence.

Sorry to judge by appearances, but you can tell quite a bit about someone from these things sometimes and context is important - the scrawny, pale man in the dark house with newspaper on the windows makes the mind go certain places.

All of the above was also elevated to new heights by the final detail of the man being shirtless, but being shirtless in such a fashion that suggested it was more because he’d entirely forgotten about putting shirts on, rather than by having made an active choice to be shirtless.

Top to bottom the immediate, overwhelming impression was of someone who’d become so focused on something other than themselves they’d rather let it slip from their minds that they were there in the first place.

Not a great start. Oh well.

“Evening,” I said, giving a wave with one hand and putting the other hand behind my back. The other hand was the one holding the crowbar. Best to try and make as good a first impression as possible, being an intruder in the man’s house notwithstanding.

The man did not move a muscle. He then blinked, which counted as moving a muscle in my book.

“Who are you?” He asked. Surprisingly restrained given the circumstances.

I could have answered this, but instead I chose not to.

“Terribly sorry, we were expecting to find a witch,” I said instead.

“I am a witch,” the man said, maybe a touch testily, as though this was something that he ran up against a lot. Though maybe it was also because we were in his house. Maybe a bit of both.

I looked him over, tip to toe.

“...where’s your hat?” I asked.

“We don’t have to wear a hat,” he said and this time he was definitely testy and it was definitely about the witch thing.

I looked Rose over, tip to toe. Particularly the tip, where the hat was. Where the hat almost always was. In fact, no ‘almost’ about it - where the hat always was. Not a day had passed since she’d got the thing when she’d been without it. I thought those had been the rules.

“I like my hat…” she mumbled.

The man cleared his throat to get attention back on him.

“My next question - before I call the police - is going to be why are you in my house?” He asked.

You’d think he’d sound less calm, being confronted by two housebreakers. I certainly wouldn’t be so cool and I was one of the housebreakers. Right then I was mostly running on nerves and gut impulse, my brain clinging on for dear life and only able to react after I’d said anything.

Maybe he got a lot of this sort of thing?

“We’re here about the dream skimmer you got sticking out the chimney,” I said, pointing upward, in case there was any confusion about where the chimney was.

He went very quiet for a moment. I think I heard him swallow.

“Ah,” he said, at length.

He looked like a man who knew he’d been caught out. Because he was a man who had been caught out.

“Still feel like calling the police?” I asked.

“No, ideally.”

“Would that be an admission of guilt?” I asked. He looked at me like I was an idiot.

“That would suggest I have anything to be guilty of in the first place, which I reject. I’d just rather not get any more people involved and stomping about the place,” he said.

“Naturally. But since we’re already here and stomping about the place you’ll humour us?” I asked.

“If that is what it takes for you to go away,” he said through gritted teeth.

“How very obliging of you. How is the dream skimming going, just to ask? Well? Skimmer doing what it’s meant to be doing? Skimming?”

I could tell my breezy attitude towards what he plainly considered his hard work had got under his skin almost immediately, as much as he might have tried to hide it. Him and Rose too - witches were a touchy lot when it came to their witchy-business, weren’t they? Presumably it’s important to them.

Fair play, I guess. Must be galling to pour work into something and then have someone like me come in and be a smartarse about it. Would I like it if someone broke into my house and started undermining my confidence? Probably not.

“It is performing a little over what I expected,” he said, coolly.

“Delightful. Show me.”

His mouth worked a little. Whatever he’d expected it hadn’t been that.

Why else would I be here?

“I don’t think you’ll be able to appreciate the mechanism, especially given that you are not a witch and wouldn’t even be able to perceive half of the work that’s gone into it. You wouldn’t understand it. You can’t,” he said.

I didn’t think I was missing much, honestly.

“Humour me,” I said, pulling my crowbar hand from behind me and proceeding to stare him down.

Normally I’m not very good at staring anyone down and it’s not something I have a lot of call to do, but this was a special occasion and so I really poured myself into it, really meant it. I imagine that I was holding a crowbar helped a bit as he folded pretty quickly, all things considered, breaking eye contact and seeming to collapse in on himself a little bit, crossing his arms and looking away.

“Fine, fine…” He said turning around and gesturing for us to follow.

The very picture of sullen, he was.

“Come on,” I said to Rose, who squeaked.

“Really?!” She hissed.

“If all else fails I’ll crowbar our way out,” I said.

“That is not reassuring!”

She still followed, however unreassured she was, and we went up the stairs after the man. Cautiously, admittedly. I’m relaxed but I’m not an idiot. Hence the crowbar.

Downstairs had been house-like. In need of a clean, but house-like. Upstairs had been mauled. Doors were removed, plaster was exposed, holes had been knocked through walls, tubes and cables and wires ran everywhere and while I was getting nothing the wince on Rose’s face suggested a lot of magical jiggery-pokery going on.

The man, still sullen and now also mixed with open annoyance at us lollygagging, was stood waiting for us by an open doorframe.

“In here,” he said.

“After you,” I said again, giving him the nod. He glared but went in, and we followed again.

Was this going how I expected it would go? Not really. But it seems to be going well enough.

I think. I have no precedent for this sort of thing. Feels like an adventure though. I think.

We entered into what was one room that had plainly been two rooms before he’d had his way with them. He’d apparently knocked through a wall to link the two together. Not properly, I should point out. Bits of the wall remained here and there and the whole affair was held up by bits of wood the structural capacity of which I did have much confidence in. Professional it was not.

But that wasn’t the main thing, nor was that really the thing that I was paying attention to. The reason why he’d mangled the rooms together was on account of the great, sprawling, tinkling, hissing, gurgling thing that had been built and which took up most of the available space.

The dream sifter, presumably. Really didn’t look like much this close. Look like a still had had a run in with a milk churn and then left in the rain for a day or two. It was leaking in more than one place. Leaking what though was harder to say. Something.

“Very nice. Should it be leaking?” I asked, pointing to the more prominent leak. He looked, hissed, and swept up a roll of gaffer tape and quickly and liberally applied it. From the looks of the thing this was his standard response. There was a lot of tape, not to mention discarded rolls piled up in the corners.

Probably should have just made it less leaky, really. He’d save money on tape.

“Right. You’ve seen it now. Go,” he said, tossing the tape aside and glaring some more. He wasn’t getting out of this that easy.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “Explain this thing to me. What does it actually do?”

“You really wouldn’t understand,” the man said.

“Well, you can try. And if nothing else I’m sure Rose would appreciate hearing it. Right?” I asked, looking over to her. She was really coasting on this whole thing so far and leaving most of it to me but, in fairness, this whole thing had been my idea so I could hardly blame her.

“Um. Sure,” Rose said. She was squinting. The man was too, I noticed. Presumably the room was swimming in witchy nonsense that I was entirely unaware of, being so mundane and inert and all.

I looked back to the man and he stared at me in open, exasperated disbelief for a moment before his shoulders slumped.

“Fine. But will you then please leave me alone?”

This was another question I chose not to answer. Just gave him a winning smile instead.

He tried to explain it and I tried to follow his explanation, I really did, but I am as has been said magically inert and on top of that I’m also not that bright, so he got about three words in before I lost the thread completely.

Broadly speaking, I understood what he said something like this:

The bulk of the sifter sat in the room where we were, looking at it. It was the big ugly thing which was leaking. The delicate, sifty bits went up the chimney. Those were the bits we saw wafting about over the house, doing the sifting.

Alright, that made sense, I could follow that.

The sifty bits sifted. Shocking, I know. They sifted dreams out of the air and snatched them before they reached their proper destination and then drew them down into the main part. He did not explain how or why or where or when or anything about why dreams were just floating about loose instead of being entirely inside people’s heads but that was fine, I was beyond that, I was comfortable knowing I’d never know.

Magic. Whatever.

And then once in the main part of the sifter the dreams were condensed and distilled and filtered and whatever whatever. Basically the thing took dreams and through a series of arcane and fiddly processes turned them into some kind of liquid. Dream liquid, liquid dreams.

And this stuff was good stuff, he said. You could use it to do a variety of dream-related activities, apparently. Dream whatever you wanted. Live whole imaginary lives doing the impossible. Marry a cloud and have a whole family of raindrops, whatever tickled your fancy.

I thought you could just learn how to lucid dream. Couldn’t people do that already? Maybe that wasn’t good enough?

The man did mention, offhand, that a side effect of people having their dreams sifted or intercepted or whatever was that the ensuing void tended to invite bad dreams to come in and fill the space. Again, how that worked was something that was glossed over completely but here at least we finally had our explanation as to why any of this bad dream business was happening in the first place.

It was happening as a side-effect. This wasn’t the intention at all. The intention was this dream liquid the man wanted. The bad dreams were a consequence of the process. Somehow that’s even more galling than if it had been on purpose. Poor Nisien’s screaming and exhaustion and my bad nights were an afterthought.

In fact, no, not even an afterthought, not even a thought at all. Just background noise.

Grr.

I felt I’d heard enough.

“Why?” I asked, cutting in as the man warbled on about some point to do with the bottling process. He blinked at me.

“Why what?” He asked.

“Why did you decide to do this?”

“...I don’t understand. I did explain how it worked, didn’t I?”

“Well enough, sure. I mean why did you think this was something you had to do? Dream liquid? Why did you build this instead of just not building this? Why aren’t you playing pinball right now or literally anything else?”

Not a complicated question, I thought. He blinked at me again as he was having some difficulty working out where I was coming from. I could see him working through a slow formulation of an answer in his head, trying to hack his reasons down into something someone else might understand.

What works in our head is often difficult to put into the heads of others. Often it doesn’t survive the journey. I’m aware of this. I gave him time.

“With access to the raw, distilled essence of dreams I’m able to fully control the dreamscape. Lucid dreaming is a crock and a waste of time and beneath me, anyway. Total control is the real deal, I can do whatever I want, anything at all,” he said, eventually, slowly.

This was not a compelling answer to my not-very-complicated question. It was barely an answer at all. I pointed to the sifter again, just for emphasis.

“So this machine is sucking in the dreams of just about everyone within a however-many square mile radius, leaving a void that bad dreams rush into, and you’re basically melting all those dreams you’ve effectively stolen down into something that you fiddle about with and inject into yourself so that you can have whatever dream you want?” I asked.

“That is a ridiculously oversimplified and crude way of-” he started, but I did not let him finish.

“It’s a yes or no question and I’m holding a crowbar.”

His eyes flicked to the crowbar.

“...yes.”

The crowbar gets results. Humanity really did peak with that one.

Certainly a crowbar was infinitely superior to this dream-snaffling whatever. All these dreams all sucked in so one person can benefit? Those numbers are shocking.

“That’s spectacularly inefficient,” I said.

“Yes, but-”

I wasn’t finished though:

“Not to mention overwhelmingly selfish.”

But that should have gone without saying.

I mean honestly, I’m not even sure how anyone could get anywhere with a plan like this. How could you even start? How could you not run through it in your head, see how horrendously selfish it was and realise that, as an exercise in theory it’s diverting but in practise it would just be disgustingly self-indulgent and therefore something you shouldn’t do?

Was I missing something? Was this just me?

“Selfish?” He asked, as though the word had been a slap in the face.

“Well, yeah. If you can’t figure that out on your own I’m not sure where to start. If you eat someone else’s lunch that’s also selfish, did you know that?”

“It’s not selfish,” he said, pouting. Actually pouting.

“Feels pretty selfish from where I’m standing,” I said and he bristled a moment before replying.

“I’ll admit it’s unfortunate that some people are having bad dreams but there’s really only so much I can do about that.”

Big of him to admit that it was unfortunate.

“You could always not do it. You could do that,” I said.

He ignored this.

“It’s only in it’s prototype stage. I’ll admit it’s far from perfect now, but it’s getting better every day. Soon, pretty soon, I’ll have the ratio all the way down to one-to-one. That’ll just be one person maybe running the risk of having a bad dream - which they might not even remember anyway! - so I can dream whatever I want. Do you have any idea what I can do in those dreams?” He asked instead.

“I shudder to think.”

That took him a second.

“Not like that!”

“Hmm.”

I was thinking. I was always thinking, obviously, as are we all, but right then I was thinking about this whole thing, this whole business. Thinking about it and what I should do about it. Clearly I should do something, shouldn’t I? But what, and why?

Questions, questions.

This was a bad thing he was doing, yes? Yes, I think I can comfortably say that. Deciding that your personal enjoyment ranks above the discomfort or outright suffering of however many other people. Especially since this particular type of enjoyment is the explicit cause of that discomfort. That’s a bad thing.

I think I can follow this so far.

With that being the case what was I meant to do? Was I meant to do anything? Were any of us meant to do anything?

Maybe I’ve got a bit beyond the scope of the issue, there. Let’s pull back in a bit.

Let us say that he is right when he says the thing can be improved. Let’s assume that for a moment. Even if he got that machine down to one-to-one efficiency that’s still ensuring someone else has bad dreams so he can have good dreams.

What if he rotated who the machine picked? Isn’t it likely someone is going to have a bad dream anyway? Where’s the harm, really? Would they even notice? In the grand scheme of things, does it even matter?

Yada yada. Questions like these serve to pluck away at your energy, slow you down and divert your attentions, make you doubt yourself. Sure, if you ignore them you might make a mistake, but if you listen to them all you might end up doing nothing, and doing nothing is usually what someone doing something they shouldn’t wants you to do.

Sometimes a Gordian knot just needs cutting. Sometimes you just have to say bollocks to compromise and go full-on hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle.

So no dice. Decision made. No dream stealing. Not on my watch.

You want to have good dreams you wait for them like anyone else. Or do it in a way that doesn’t attract my attention, and the attention of my crowbar.

“Rose, you might want to step outside,” I said, which seemed to snap Rose out of whatever quiet funk she’d slipped into. Seriously, she’d really clammed up ever since we broke into a guy’s house and been confronted by the guy whose house we’d broken into.

“Huh?” She asked.

“I’m going to draw a line under this,” I said.

“Oh, right. Okay. I’ll just - I’ll go. Meet you outside,” she said, shuffling out of the room with only one or two backwards glances. The man was suddenly just a touch nervous. I could see this.

“Where’s she going? What are you talking about? What do you mean draw a line?” He asked.

“You’re a clever fellow, I’m sure you can figure it out,” I said.

Though of course I actually started smashing his sifter before he figured it out. Ain’t I a stinker.

I’m not an expert at smashing but I like to think I did an alright job. I aimed for one of the leaking spots with the pointed end of the crowbar, wedged it in, heaved, and managed to lever off a good half of the thing away from the other half. Made an awful noise and sloshed clear liquid all over. Seemed a good start.

“What are you doing?!” The man squealed, lunging but clearly unsure what to lunge at. Did he lunge at me to stop me or lunge at his machine to try and save it? He hesitated, and while he hesitated I kept going. I pried more bits loose, I whacked the crowbar into the bits that looked like they’d crumple best, I hooked the curved part over dangling bits and yanked.

I made a frightful mess. And in a very short time, too. Maybe I have hidden talents.

In a few seconds what had been a ticking, whirring, leaking device was now several bits of wheezing, leaking, non-ticking, non-whirring junk strewn across the floor and sat in puddles of clear whatever. Presumably that stuff was dreams? Condensed, liquified dreams? Didn’t look like much.

“How selfish of me,” I said. Zing.

The man was on his knees, scrabbling. Again, he obviously didn’t know what to scrabble for first and was just halfway scrabbling at everything in his hysteria.

Sort of ineffectual for a witch, you’d have thought. Maybe if he’d had his magic rod to hand he might have had better luck in beating me off. Aha. I imagine he just found the whole thing a bit overwhelming. Everything’s easier after the fact, isn’t it?

“Do you know how much that cost?!” He wailed at me, eyes glistening. I think he was about to cry.

And I wasn’t sure what this was meant to make me feel, this line about cost. Was I meant to feel worse because he’d spent more money on the thing than I might have suspected? If he’d been frugal, should I have felt less bad? Is a questionable decision that costs more easier to defend? Hmm.

If people wanted to spend money doing something they probably shouldn’t that’s perfectly allowable. Just not clear why it has any bearing on what I do or think. Value is, after all, largely subjective, is it not?

I don’t really know.

“Lots?” I asked.

“Yes! Lots! Fucking lots! Oh God, most of those components were bespoke, too!” He shouted, holding up a handful of bits that had fallen out of loosened casing. The bits glistened. They certainly looked fragile and fiddly.

“What a shame,” I said.

The man deflated, a sob wracking him. He looked down at the puddle he was kneeling in.

“And you wasted all these dreams! Wasted! You wasted them!” He said, angry now, pointing at me.

“Yeah, sure. This was all my fault.”

Mean, this exact thing was my fault, I’ll admit. The smashing bit and the making a mess was my fault. But the greater blame really can’t be ignored or moved here, come on. This is like when the bad guy says it’s not their fault they murdered people, but the fault of the good guys for trying to stop them.

Not quite like that, but similar. Right? I know what I mean.

“Strictly speaking you wasted them. I just made your dream-wasting machine fall over. But that’s splitting hairs. In future if you’re going to make my housemate’s life miserable so you can enjoy yourself, don’t. Pleasant dreams, now.”

If I’d had sunglasses I’d have put them on then. I don’t care if it’s nighttime, that’s a great sunglasses line. Kind of felt bad to waste it, but chances to drop lines like that don’t come around often and the real waste would have been saying nothing.

My hands were tied.

He didn’t say anything after that, which was good because if he had it would have ruined the moment. So I left him sniffling in his puddle of dreams and went back outside to try and find Rose.

I couldn’t find her out back because she’d gone out the front and was there standing under a streetlight looking like she’d prefer to be anywhere else other than on a street waiting under a lamppost.

“Well that’s sorted,” I said, cheerfully, giving her a wave as I wandered over.

“What did you do?” Rose asked.

I considered saying something else pithy and cool but I was far too tired to come up with anything else off the cuff so just stood there gormless and silent for a second before just coming out with it.

“Smashed his thingy with a crowbar,” I said, waggling said crowbar just so Rose knew which crowbar the thingy had been smashed with. Rose did not look impressed.

“How very direct,” she said.

“It did work pretty well. Last I saw he was crying on the floor so I think we can write this one up as a roaring success.”

“Your definition of success…” Rose tailed off and sucked her lip a moment. “I don’t know how to finish that sentence.”

“That’s fair. You were very quiet in there,” I said.

“You seemed to be on a roll. And I couldn’t really think of anything to say. Felt weird being inside someone’s house when we weren’t meant to be, even if he was, you know, doing something like that. It was kind of nerve-wracking.”

Now that it was done I could feel the tension that I’d been ignoring starting to get the better of me. The trembling had nothing to do with the encroaching chill of night, let me tell you.

“You’re not wrong,” I said, looking at my hand.

Oh God, what had I done? What had any of that been? What had I been thinking? Had I done the right thing? Had I done the right thing the wrong way? Had I done the wrong thing? Was I going to get into trouble? Was he going to tell anyone? Had it even worked? Had I just wasted an evening? Why did I feel so sick all of a sudden?

Eurgh. Worries. I hate those. I stuck my hand in my pocket and bit my tongue.

Ow.

“Can we go?” Rose asked.

“Probably wise.”

So off we went. We didn’t talk as we went. There wasn’t much to say that we hadn’t said before we set off home and besides it was late. Wouldn’t do to be talking in the street and waking people up. Proper sleep hygiene had been the motivating force behind this whole endeavour, after all.

Hadn’t it?

I bid Rose a good and restful night once we got to hers and then carried on back to mine on my own, thinking about the evening, about what had happened. Was that what an adventure felt like? Was this what you were supposed to do after one had concluded? Just go home? Was there something else I should have been doing? Was I going about this all wrong?

Was there a book I could read?

By the time I’d got back home and got in and put the chain on the door I’d stopped worrying about it. Or, rather, I was still worrying about it but was confident that a proper night’s sleep without any nightmares would make me feel a lot better about it. That is to say, everything would make sense in the morning and there wasn’t anything to be gained fretting about it in the dark.

Everything is always the worst it can be in the dark. This is pretty widely-known.

Nisien was still on the sofa, but had clearly rolled around enough to dislodge the blanket I’d laid over him, because that was on the floor. Despite this, he actually looked quite peaceful. Certainly looked more peaceful than he had any night that I’d seen him recently. Sleeping happily, comfortably.

That made me feel much better about the evening. That was an accomplishment. I might have done adventure wrong, sure, and maybe I’d made lots of mistakes, but I’d still fixed what I’d set out to fix. If nothing else, Nisien was going to get a proper night’s sleep. And this was good.

Objectively good. In my book.

I put the blanket over him again, obviously, because that was the nice thing to do. He stirred as I did so.

“Nngh? Wassis? Sorry, sorry...” he mumbled blearily, blinking, squinting. I patted him on the head.

“Shh, go back to sleep,” I said.

“N’okay…” and he did.

Yes, definitely an objectively good thing. Solved a problem for a friend. People might question my methods but my results are impeccable.

And so to bed. Knackered me out that adventure. Popped the crowbar back under the bed, stripped off most of my clothes at least until I ran out of energy, crawled under the covers and did my best to quiet the churning, raging thoughts rattling around inside my head. All the loose ends could be sorted out tomorrow. Didn’t have anything else that needed doing, and it was unlikely there’d be another adventure so soon.

Well that was exciting.

END

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Bad Dreams - Part Two

While inflation was occurring Rose called upon me to assist in wrangling the basket we would apparently be clambering into and ascending in shortly. Again, what we pulled it out of was in no-way the right size to have contained it in the first place but meh, we’re over that. The basket itself seemed a bit flimsy to me, in all honesty, but I trusted Rose and so made no mention of this.

Besides, if I plummeted to my death she probably would too, so it’d work out.

Thus, with basket set up with sandbags and such and balloon lashed to basket and glowing cube seeing the balloon full and plump we were, apparently, ready to go. Who knew it could be so easy? Certainly not me.

Learn something new every day.

I stood admiring our handiwork while Rose continued to fiddle. Most of magic seemed to involve a lot of fiddling, or maybe it was just a habit of witches. I didn’t know any others so couldn’t say for sure.

It was a bag she was fiddling with this time. A very handsome leather over-the-shoulder affair. Messenger bag?

Out of this bag she pulled what looked to be a pair of opera glasses. I’m not sure how I know what opera glasses are, but I know them when I see them. Like a pair of binoculars on a stick, basically. And what a fine set these were, if a little ostentatious. Lots of brass bits of indeterminate purpose.

Rose passed them to me.

“You’ll need these,” she said.

“I will?”

“Well, yeah. You’re not a witch, you can’t see magic or most magic things and if you want to try and sort this out you’ll need to. So you’ll need these.”

“Righto.”

That’d be me being magically inert again, I guess. We all have our areas of weakness. Rose can’t roll her tongue the way I can, Nisien is colourblind and I’m magically inert and need special glasses to see dreams while hovering in a balloon.

Such is life. Different strokes and all that.

I gave the glasses a quick experimental peer through and was taken aback. At first I thought maybe something had gone wrong and stopped peering after not even a moment, but on my cautious second attempt I discovered that, no, what I’d seen was apparently what I was supposed to have seen - assuming they were working.

“Are these working?” I asked, wincing, holding the glasses up and looking around at the garden, the balloon, the walls, the sky, the etcetera.

“What are you seeing?” Rose asked.

“Coloured...splotches and...drifting...threads and...wafting...bits of...something?”

It was kind of difficult to describe.

“Nope, that’s about right,” Rose said.

Maybe not so difficult to describe, then.

“This is how you see all the time?” I asked, aghast, looking at her and finding her practically shining and glowing and generally incandescent, radiant with inner-power amidst a swirl of lesser, uh, somethings.

Words fail me. Not my area of expertise.

Rose shrugged. Her shoulders shot sparks that headed skywards with abandon.

“Not completely, but close,” she said.

“It’s exhausting,” I said, lowering the glasses and giving my eyes a rub.

And with that in we clambered and up we went, Rose controlling our rise via means of yet more arcane hand gestures administered to her box. Fingering was key, it seemed. Could get a proper rise with the right sort of fingering.

Hah. Funny.

The view was lovely, but that should go without saying. A lot of people are ambivalent about heights and a lot of people are rather unhappy about them, but I love them.

Particularly I love them in places you don’t usually get them. High-up views from places where there isn’t really a high-up place to view from, you know? Gives a whole different perspective, tilts whatever grasp you had on the layout of the world to the side, shakes up the way you think things fit together and helps you understand just how tiny you really are.

But that’s me. Point is it’s fun seeing across all these rooftops and all these streets that seem so familiar from down below but so novel and new from up above. And the thrill of knowing that you’re inches from plummeting to your death.

Whee, etcetera.

Still, we were up there on business, such as it was, so there wasn’t any time to waste in sightseeing or cooing over how I could see my house from up here - we had dreams to spy on or whatever. Rose was already getting into that, one hand clutching the lip of the basket and the other coming up to shield her eyes from the last few dribbles of sun, squinting in fierce concentration.

Not wishing to be outdone I took the other side of the basket, clutched the lip (sensible, really), brought the glasses up and got to squinting, again bamboozled by all the lights and swishy nonsense.

How did witches put up with even a smidgen of this? You can get used to anything, I’m told, but still, it’s a bit much. I’ll take being magically inert, thank you.

Scanning about I did my best to keep an eye out for anything unusual, keenly aware that everything I could see through the glasses was, for me, unusual. With that in mind I tried to dismiss all of that unusual stuff as normal and instead look for the really unusual stuff.

Whatever that was.

Behind me Rose was continuing to do the same thing without the aid of glasses and likely with a lot more success in knowing what was and wasn’t noteworthy and it was while I was thinking how poorly-equipped I was for what we were doing that something actually did catch my eye.

Quickly scanning back to the right - which is where the flicker in the corner of my eye had been - I saw what looked an awful lot like a great deal of bright, shining silver wire being spooled out of a chimney a few streets away. The more I watched the more this continued, the wire just spooling up and up and unwinding in the air and there just hanging, forming an ever-expanding cloud of tangles that was certainly striking.

And, more importantly, looked absolutely like nothing else I’d seen so far, which made it unusual.

Keeping my eyes glued to it lest I lose it I reached back and blindly groped to try and find Rose, managing to lightly tap her on the shoulder after a few false swipes.

“What?” I heard her ask.

“Think I got something here,” I said.

She came in to stand beside me (making the basket wobble a little).

“What?” She asked again. I pointed.

“That thing. Big silver thing, big silver mess over there. Is that something?”

Rose narrowed her eyes, then started muttering quietly to herself as she pulled out that big dream book again and had a quick flick through, glancing down, pointing to a page and then glancing back up again, still muttering but with a few nods thrown in for good measure.

All while that was happening the weird silver cloud tangle whatever continued to hang there weightlessly, weirdly, trailing down into that chimney. As I kept my eye on it I saw every so often a part of it would flash briefly and brightly and then that flash would condense down - for what of a better word - into the wire and then whizz all the way around so it could down the chimney to wherever all of it came from.

Happened a good dozen or so times in the time it took Rose to double-check things.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s something,” she said once she’d done the book thing a few times, closing it and putting it away again. “The book says that’s a kind of dream skimmer, or looks a lot like one if it isn’t one.”

“‘Dream skimmer’?” I asked, the silly name sour in my mouth. Rose gave me a look that was equally sour.

“I didn’t pick the name, that’s just what the book says one of those is,” she said.

Who knew witches could be so defensive about these things?

And what’s more:

“And how is it skimming dreams anyway? What are dreams doing up there and not in people’s heads? Are they coming from somewhere? Going somewhere? Why? Where? To what end? What are they made of? Who-”

Rose cut me off here, and who could blame her.

“Look, I don’t know a lot about dream mechanics so can we just assume all these questions have answers?”

“Alright,” I said.

She peered at the skimmer some more, and with greater intensity. I also peered at it, more just because I’d never seen anything like it and I didn’t know what to do about it.

I needed to know more.

“Do those things happen?” I asked.

“What?”

“Those things, skimmer things. Are those naturally occurring? Naturally magically occurring, I mean?”

Magic did occur naturally, after a fashion, but I’m sure she knew what I meant. Was this the sort of thing that, if no-one did anything, would happen just because?

“Uh, no. Don’t think so,” Rose said after a moment’s thought.

“So someone made that?”

“Probably. Some witch. No-one I know.”

This was news to me. Not that Rose didn’t know people, that part I could imagine. The other part, the witch part.

“A witch made that?” I asked.

How? Why? How? Why? To what end?

“Probably, I don’t know. Don’t know who else could have, though. They don’t happen naturally like I said and, well, yeah.”

Here Rose tailed off, clearly having run out of things to add. Meanwhile my brain was fizzing.

I wasn’t really sure what I’d expected to come out of any of this, honestly. That there’d been a problem was just conjecture on my part, fuelled largely by lack of sleep and swelling concern for Nisien.

Learning there was probably something going on was something else, and now coming up and seeing there really, actually was something going on and it was going on because of something someone had gone out of their way to do, well…

Where do you go from there?

To the skimmer, presumably, to knock on the door and ask what the deal was. Or something to that effect.

Right? Right.

“Where do you reckon that is?” I asked, pointing to the base of the thing, where it stuck out from the chimney. Rose wrinkled her nose as she consulted her mental map. I did likewise, though without the nose wrinkling.

“Gun street? Maybe? Or around there?” I ventured, when she didn’t reply in good time.

“Maybe…” She said, distantly, plainly lost in thought.

Was she too thinking of what to do next?

Whatever it was we were going to do, we couldn’t do it in the balloon, that was for certain.

“Well, if nothing else we can just go in that direction and look up every so often. That thing isn’t exactly easy to miss,” I said, pointing some more.

Rose continued to be lost in thought for a second before noticing I’d said something and starting, looking to me at last.

“That’s true,” she said, then twigging the implications. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”

“I mean if we go in that direction it shouldn’t be too hard to find the right place. It’ll have a great big silver thing sticking out the top,” I said, pointing at the great big silver thing.

“You mean...going there?” Rose asked, also pointing but without the same confidence I had.

“Of course, what else are we going to do?”

“Um…”

Clearly she hadn’t got as far ahead on this as I had.

“Not an expert, but something funky is going on with the dreams or the dreamscape or the dreamverse or whatever it is the technical term is,” I said. I waved a hand to indicate generally the air around and over us, where dreams apparently liked to float about for reasons I was still unclear on.

“It is none of those terms,” Rose muttered, interrupting but not so intrusively I couldn’t continue:

“And that thing over there is a dream-related thing that someone went out of their way to make happen. I feel confident in saying it’s probably related. And even if it isn’t, maybe they’ll have a clue. Certainly it’s not something we can ignore, is it?”

“It’s just - this isn’t the sort of thing you ever imagine happening to you, it’s meant to happen to someone else,” Rose said.

I began to get the sneaking impression she was adventure-averse. Guess it’s not something anyone really has a lot of experience with, at least not anyone I know. Certainly I’ve never been on any adventures that I’m aware of.

Would this count, once it was done? I always imagined adventures would be grander, that they’d involve a mountain and a great trek, not just meandering a few streets over and knocking on a door.

All have to start somewhere, I suppose.

Either way, we had apparently managed to find what it was we’d gone up there to look for, at least to our mutual satisfaction, and so with more box-coaxing Rose brought us back down to the ground and we tidied up and put away the balloon, more-or-less in silence.

Once it was back in its too-small shed thing it was properly dark, evening having shuffled off into night. Everything seems more daunting at night, I find, but my resolve was undimmed.

“Are you still going to go there?” Rose asked with clear trepidation. As previously stated my resolve was undimmed. I nodded.

“I am indeed.”

Her trepidation continued, plain even in the poor lighting of the tiny back garden.

“Alright, okay,” she said at length. “We should do something about it, it’s just I’m not sure what, but that’s not a good reason to not do anything, is it?”

I think she was asking for moral support here.

“Exactly. We’re decent, well-meaning, handsome young people with a thirst for justice. We’ve detected an issue, we’ve spotted a possible cause. It’s the only thing we can do,” I said, putting a reassuring hand onto her shoulder. There’s a technique to doing this.

I don’t think I have the technique down.

“You might have oversold it a bit,” Rose said, her face flat.

“If something is worth doing it’s worth overdoing,” I said.

Her face did not get any less flat. I took my hand off her shoulder.

“...let’s just go,” she said.

We departed the tiny garden and made our way back through the now alarmingly dark back passage and around again to Rose’s, being as it was on our way.

“I’m going to get a coat,” Rose said. Sensible. I thought I should do the same and as I was thinking this thought a further thought occurred.

“Good idea. I’ll be back in a minute, just hang here. Honestly, two seconds,” I said.

“Alright, alright,” Rose said, disappearing back into hers while I jogged back to mine.

There I obtained a coat and a little extra something and was all set to jog back again when I spied Nisien napping fitfully upon the sofa, cartoons having paused themselves to ask if he wanted to keep watching. He, napping fitfully, was in no condition to answer this question.

Poor lad. I turned the television off, found a blanket - for we had several on hand for these purposes - and laid it over him. The least I could do in the circumstances.

“I’ll get this sorted, don’t you worry,” I said quietly though he, asleep and writhing, could not hear. It’s the thought that counted. And if anyone was watching somehow they’d know about it, too, and see my motivation.

These paranoid fantasies are important to indulge from time to time. Make life more exciting. Who wouldn’t want to be the star of something, even just the once? As unlikely as that might be. What fun.

Anyway. Becoated and equipped I jogged back, finding Rose similarly becoated and waiting in front of her door, rubbing her arms and peering up and down the length of the street. She saw me coming.

“Finally,” she said as I came to a halt before her.

“Yeah sorry, doing a thing. Nice stick.” I said, pointing to what I assumed was a wand she was holding and she, beaming, gave the wand a few swishes and flourishes,

“Pays to be prepared,” she said.

Rose then noticed what I was holding and her eyes widened a little.

“Why do you have a crowbar?” She asked. Never a question with a good answer. At least not usually. Tonight the answer was definitely a good answer.

I gave it a bounce and then held it up in front of me in both hands.

“Pays to be prepared, like you said. It’s not a magic wand but it’ll get the job done,” I said, giving it a loving stroke. I liked my crowbar. So versatile and yet so simple, truly one of humanity's greatest achievements.

“No-one uses wands…” Rose muttered, in a particular style of mutter that I was quickly coming to recognise. It was the mutter of disapproval that appeared whenever my free-and-easy attitude trampled over important magical matters.

As a professional she takes these matters seriously, clearly.

“What’s that, then?” I asked, pointing to the wand-like, wand-shaped magic stick she’d brought with her. She clutched it to herself somewhat defensively.

“It’s a rod,” she said.

I snorted. Rose took a second to get it.

“Oh grow up. You still didn’t say why you have a crowbar.”

“To break into the house of whoever is doing the thing with that thing,” I said.

If it came to that, obviously. This was me just idly planning ahead. Jacking in the locks and busting open the door wasn’t my first choice but if ways are found to be barred, well, it’s either giving up or pressing through, and crowbars really help with pressing through.

Or so I’ve heard. Tonight might be the night I find out.

Rose didn’t look pleased.

“Breaking in?!” She hissed, again looking up and down the street, this time perhaps in case anyone was about to swoop on us for contemplating ill-behaviour. No-one did, obviously.

“Well, what do you suggest?” I asked.

“Calling the police!”

I suppose I could see the logic in Rose’s suggestion.

“That’s one angle, I’ll grant you.”

“You said we were knocking on their door anyway!”

“Oh of course, that’s the first option. This is for if that doesn’t work,” I said, explaining out-loud what I’d just explained to myself in my own head. Rose’s eyes narrowed.

“I can’t work out if you’re being serious or not,” she said.

At this point I wasn’t wholly sure either, if I’m being honest. Was this an adventure thing? The normal routine of life disrupted to such an extent that we’re not sure what it is we’re meant to do next and what we’re even capable of doing next? The tantalising risk of making a mistake in the heat of the moment?

What happens in an adventure is always a cut above everyday life after all, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

I have no frame of reference. I assume so but I could easily be wrong.

I’m also very tired. It could also be that.

Wilting in the face of Rose’s cast-iron sensibleness I sighed and rubbed my face with the hand not currently full of crowbar.

“Rose, man, I’m exhausted. Nisien is probably one more night away from snapping like a dry twig and some saucy sod is messing about with people’s dreams - yours included. There’s no time to waste and no time like the present,” I said.

Rose looked sympathetic. Still highly skeptical and concerned about me having a crowbar, but sympathetic at least, which was a step in the right direction.

“You still can’t just go...breaking into places,” she said.

I could, anyone could, it’s just more a case of if they should. But that’s semantics, and pedants are no-one’s friend. Never fun being told that actually I think you’ll find that in the original Greek usage of the word such-and-such actually meant so-and-so and so therefore I think you’ll find actually etcetera etcetera. No-one likes those people. No-one liked being that person, either, not really at least.

Hard to stop the impulse sometimes, though...

“Mean, I can do that if I need to, but that’s only a last resort, honest. We just want to draw a line under this, don’t we?” I asked. Rose fidgeted with her rod - hah - a bit and after a few seconds just threw her hands up in surrender to the moment.

“Alright fine, let’s just go before I think twice about it. Will be interesting to see one of those sifters up close anyway, they sounded very difficult to make,” she said.

“I get to knock on a door, you get to look at a dream sifter, we all get something out of this. Away we go.”

And away we went.

The walk did not actually take that long in real terms, but it felt like a long time. Presumably this was because it was cold, dark and I kept having to ask Rose where the big thing in the sky was. In hindsight should have brought those fancy glasses of hers, oh well.

We arrived. Gun street it was. House on the end of a terrace. Small house, needed a little brushing up but wasn’t falling down. Windows newspapered over, the front garden a veritable graveyard of cardboard boxes and disembowelled white goods.

Kind of a let down, really. Don’t know why but I’d sort of assumed that a qualified witch of the calibre required to make a dream sifter - assuming making one was difficult, which wasn’t a difficult assumption to make - wouldn’t have let their home get into such a state. Thought they’d be more on top of things.

Oh well.

“That was easy,” I said, standing before the gate. The gate was hanging off a single hinge. That level of decrepitude takes effort. If nothing else it shows commitment to wrack and ruin.

“What were you expecting?” Rose asked, blowing into her hands and rubbing them briskly. I shrugged.

“Complications. You know, adventure things,” I said vaguely. I hadn’t had anything concrete in mind, I’d just had the unconscious expectation that someone or something should have got in our way or slowed us down.

“Let’s just knock, it’s cold out here,” Rose said, now rubbing her arms.

“You’re not wrong.”

Up the path I went and knock on the door I did.

Nothing.

I knocked again. I even rang the bell but it didn’t appear to work so I compensated by knocking some more and harder, too, really letting the door have it.

Continued nothing. Somehow I was not surprised. Who’d answer the door this time of night anyway?

“Maybe they’re not in,” Rose said from behind me.

“Their big dream-snatcher is there, think it’s pretty safe to say they are too. Either too busy or ignoring us. I’d say,” I said, because I was an expert now, apparently. If you wouldn’t leave a pot of boiling water unattended it stood to reason (to me) that you wouldn’t leave a big bit of magical apparatus unattended. It just didn’t seem like a sensible thing to do.

Again, apparently I’m an expert now.

“It’s a sifter, it sifts. A dream snatcher is something else,” Rose said.

This gave me pause. I’d just been being flippant again. There’s always a jolt when you’re joking and inadvertently land on the way things actually are. It’s like missing a step on the way downstairs. Didn’t know where to go from there.

“...learn something new every day,” I said, eventually, giving up on thinking up anything pithier.

Too tired to be hilarious.

“It’s more invasive,” Rose said brightly, as though that wasn’t a horrifying word to appear in such a sentence and in such a context. In fact, it’s kind of a horrifying word to appear in any context, come to think of it. Like the word ‘damp’, ‘invasive’ wasn’t a word you wanted used anywhere near you if you could help it.

Probably some exceptions but now wasn’t the time.

“Lovely. Well, this door isn’t getting more open and we’re not getting any warmer standing out here,” I said, turning around and heading back down the path and around the corner, up the dark and overgrown strip of mud and brambles that was the access to the gardens of the terrace. Rose, flat-footed, lollygagged briefly before hustling to catch up with me.

“Where are you going?” She asked, her voice low.

“Back garden,” I said, hands on the wall of said back garden. Ah, the benefits of it being at the end of a terrace - I only had to jump one wall. How liberating.

“You really are breaking in?” Rose asked.

“Looks that way.”

The wall was about my height and, on peering over, I saw nothing but a scrappy patch of forgotten lawn and some forlorn, long-dead plants. Tossing the crowbar onto the lawn I hauled myself over the wall to recover it, thence heading to the back of the house.

From the sound of things Rose made much more complicated work of mounting the wall. I wasn’t watching. I was considering the task ahead of me.

Backdoor. Windows. Which would be best for entry, I wondered? What would a burglar think?

“I can’t believe you’re actually serious!” Rose whispered, having come to huddle beside me.

“Neither can I, but this is where events have led us.”

“Breaking and entering?!”

“They started this when they broke into Nisien’s nighttime routine. And yours. And mine. And presumably some other people we don’t know personally but who are also suffering. Time to return the favour.”

‘They’ in this case being whoever was in the house, obviously, assuming their dream sifter was at all involved in the dream-related business going on. Which this whole trip was kind of in aid of clarifying.

I know this, why am I thinking this?

Rose sputtered, apparently having too many arguments against this to pick one and instead trying to expel them all at once. Really, I could understand. There were likely dozens of superior ways of approaching this situation. But I’d picked this one and I was committed now.

What’s an adventure without regret, anyway? How else are we to grow?

Arbitrarily I decided to go in through a window and so moved towards the downstairs one, crowbar at the ready. I was all set to get jamming and prying when Rose put a hand on my arm.

“Wait,” she said, quietly.

“Hmm?” I asked, crowbar poised for crowing and barring.

“Don’t - don’t go breaking things yet. Give me a second,” she said, ushing me backward with a gentle sweep of her arm. I allowed myself to be ushered. Now I was the one huddling behind and I watched as Rose unsheathed her rod-

-snrk-

As Rose took out the smooth, imposing length of her impressive rod-

-hurhurhur-

No, come on, this is serious. Try again.

As Rose took her magic rod and did something magical with it. I obviously couldn’t see the finer, technical details of what it was she did. To me it just looked like waving the tip of the thing around the window and poking it in a place or two. I assumed it was all very deliberate though and not for the first time I could only admire her quiet dedication to her craft.

The latch on the window also clicked. Unlocked.

Fancy that.

Rose put her rod away again and gave the window an experimental lift. The bottom pane rose smoothly on its sashes, didn’t even squeak. Just like that the window was wide open for us.

You’d have thought the house of a witch would have had better security? Tsch.

“Very swish, Rose. Sorry, crowbar, you’ll have your go,” I said, moving past Rose and clambering in without a moment’s hesitation.

After all, if you’ve got time to think you’ve got time to think twice, and who has time for that?

Given what the outside had been like I’d rather expected the inside to be a similar picture of neglect - I’d gone in expecting heaps of ancient newspaper and jars of toenail clippings - but once my eyes adjusted I instead found it, well, not like that.

It wasn’t the picture of luxurious and it was certainly a little cramped but it was at least organised. Books on shelves, books in boxes, books on side tables, a lot of books.

Witches do like to read, if Rose was any indication, so this tracked.

“Can’t believe I’m going along with this…” Rose griped from behind me, still following. “We’re going to get arrested.”

I disagreed with this.

“We’re not going to get arrested,” I said, firmly.

Best way, I felt. Direct. Sound confident, like you know for sure.

“You don’t know that!” She hissed.

Negativity up in here, let me tell you. No good at all. I turned back to her and put my hands on my hips, the stance of low-grade irritation.

“If I believe it hard enough it’ll come true. Worrying about it won’t make it less likely, so let’s just be optimistic, eh? Anyway, let’s do whatever it is we’re here to do.”

“What are we here to do?” She asked. She was plainly unmoved by the placement of my hands on my hips. Made of stern stuff, was Rose. I think that’s a witch thing. Ineffable forces and all that. Contemplating the weave underpinning reality and all that.

“We’re here to stop the bad dream thing,” I said. We’d been over this, I thought.

“How are we doing that?” Rose asked without missing a beat.

I blinked.

Huh.

Again, this was one of those things that I’d just hoped would make itself obvious as and when we got to it. No-one seems to have to worry about these sorts of things in adventures, they just flow naturally. There’s sometimes a little thinking involved, I’ll grant, but it happens without issue, just organically. The solution should have been obvious. Ideally, I should already have been doing it.

But I was not. Hmm.

Okay, maybe this was harder than I had initially thought it would be. Again, I’m blaming this on being sleep-deprived. Really makes it hard to get your ducks in a row.

Playing for time, I used my crowbar to scratch my head.

“Um,” I said, continuing to play for time while Rose stared at me in exasperated expectation. “Um. Well. Obviously we need to find the thing, so we need to look around. Place isn’t too big so that shouldn’t take too long and once we find it, um, well, you’re the witch so you’ll tell me what’s what and we can, um, figure out our next step, I guess.”

Improvising was one of my strong points. Maybe. It was tonight, at least. It kind of had to be.

Maybe once we found the thing Rose could just poke it with her magic stick and that’d fix the problem? Maybe our streak of luck would continue and this whole thing would be a cakewalk?

Chance be a fine thing.

“Why are we the ones doing this?” Rose asked. I had to shake my head at her. Such a negative influence tonight, such a drag.

“Come on, Rose, it’s a little late for that. And besides, why not us? Someone has to! We went over this outside and-” I said, but that was as far as I got because behind me I heard a creak and as I heard that creak I also saw Rose’s eyes widen. Oh dear. I turned.

#amwriting #writblr #writing #writeblr #Writing #writers on twitter #Bad dreams #What

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