It is dark. A line of Christmas lights make the gloom even darker, blacker. The red and green lights flicker on and off, on and off. It was have driven him to tears, staring at them. He wants them to settle into a steady glow. He notices that the spiders don't mind. He imagines them to sit perfectly content on their web of broken lights, waiting. Waiting for what? He watches them staring with their cold eight eyes at him. Their Barbie doll-sized mandibles were clicking together like knitting needles. Slowly a drop of venom fell, nearly --

What the hell? Asked Alexander. This isn't my dream.

The scene flickers. Wavers. Vanishes.

He finds himself staring up and up and up at a tree. Or was it a forest? He can't tell, the trees were too large to see around. They trunks are as long as a pickup truck and hundreds of times that as high. He can see that they had corners. That's okay, he is actually fond of corners. They remind him of paper dolls, except these are three dimensional and can't give you a paper cut. He reaches out with his hand and runs it down the corner of one. Nope, nothing. He doesn't mind that the bark looks stretched and thin. Or that it is made up of tiny brown numbers that repeat 01100010 01100001 01110010 01101011, 01100010 01100001 01110010 01101011 over and over and over again.

But there is something wrong. This is his dream, right? He looks at his hands. His hands aren't very special. The only exciting thing about them is the small burn on his middle finger. He likes to tell people that he flipped off the wrong person at the wrong time and got that burn because of it. What really happened was that he wasn't paying attention. The cellphone he was working on with the battery still in it suddenly backfired on him. He learned to always remove a battery before working on things because of that.

AHA! Gotcha! He stares accusingly at the little flame tip-toeing its way on top of a bush that looks as if someone intersected two pieces of bush-like paper together down the middle before propping it up on its edges. This is my dream, he tells it. Mine. The flame disappears. He returns to looking at his boring hands. He squints, concentrating.

Nothing. Then something: gloves. Bracers. He was wearing armor now – nothing heavy made out of steel plates or any so-called bulletproof vests. Can someone really be called bulletproof when someone shoots them in the face, he wonders? No, he isn't interested in trying it out, thank you he tells the bullet that appears before his eyes, shooing it away quickly. But that gives him an Idea. He holds out his hand and waits. It appears without a sound, as if it was there this entire time. It is a gun with decorative lines on it that glow green. He figures that there are many others like it, but this one is his.

Alex likes being able to call something his. Usually everything he has somehow doesn't because his anymore because of what he does: he gives it to someone else. Then they call it theirs. Sometimes he wonders if it's worth it. Sometimes the things he gets in exchange aren't worth it, but sometimes they were. What really belongs to him? He looks down at himself. Then he looks up. Why was he still here? He picks a direction and begins walking.

The trees are gone. The sky grimaces, its comforting-blue turning to a sick-green, wavering there before twisting into an illness-yellow. The sky doesn't look like that, he protests. The sky is blue. He stops and stares at it. Narrows his eyes at it. It refuses to budge, to cure itself. Fine, he tells it. You are yellow. He isn't happy with its decision, but what can he do? His gun suggests to point it up and shoot at it. His other hand is jealous because it doesn't have a gun to hold. He ignores them both and continues.

Wait. What the hell? Alex asks again, where are the trees? They are gone. Obviously.

He spins a slow circle around himself, confused. He was in a forest, but now he is in a city. The buildings arch themselves over him and lean towards him, threatening to fall down onto him. He is small. Therefore he can be threatened. Or can he? He looks down at his hands and grin, then points his hand at them.

Bang.

It feels good to whisper that word. His left hand remains up in the air, fingers forming a fist save for two fingers. His thumb arches up and back a ways; a hitckhiker's thumb. The index finger isn't curling around a trigger, but straight and pointing itself at the oppressing buildings.

It appears I am not needed, remarks the gun. It vanishes. Alexander doesn't mind. In fact, he has already forgotten about the gun and won't ever recall it again in this dream. He is instead staring at the sky which remains a yellow.

Won't you turn blue? He asks. The sky remains silent. He would wait for a response if there wasn't something more pressing on his mind. The thought weighs his head down to the point where Alex can't help but to look at the ground and stare. It was too bad he wasn't Superman and could stare at something until he could see through it or heat it up. Part of him reminds him that it would be a Very Bad Thing considering where one sometimes looks.

Alex doesn't mind. He would quite like to burn up the sky. The yellow bothers him. It bothers him almost as much as the silky feeling of curiosity that wove itself around him like a cat weaves and twines herself around her chosen human's legs. He decides to feed his curiosity first. After all, wouldn't it suck to wake up and find out that something hacked up a ball of dissatisfaction into your shoe?

He takes a step forward. Tries to, really. There's something in the way. It's easy to kneel down for a closer look. Absently, he wonders if he should have remained standing in order to poke at it with his toe. It was too late now, since he was hunching over the item already.

To call it an “item” was certainly rude of him. Sincerity and manners insist that they didn't really mean it on Alex's behalf to the object. Calling it an object was certainly rude too – we do so apologize profusely.

Color seems to seep away from the setting as Alex reaches forward, his inner soundtrack starting up and freezing. What is it? What will he find? The boy is feeling disappointment upon discovering that it is a body. Or was one. Was a body still a body when it was dead and wasn't moving? Alex isn't so sure. His experience with dead bodies is seeing them explode into a shower of pixels when he kills them one by one for his own gain.

He checks for a pulse. Funny, he thinks, this person feels like cold clay. Disappointment grows heavier and louder with each new discovery. The person is cold. The body wasn't warm. Blood is absent from the clothes. Shoes are on both feet. The pocket is empty of a wallet.

He wonders if he should feel guilty for flipping the bloodless and lifeless person onto their stomach to check all of its (is it still a “he”? The details are blurring) pockets for something. IT was trespassing into HIS dream after all. He should install a toll system. He secretly wants to buy a dream pony. No, not a pony. Horse? No, still too girly. Dragon? Not after all the hype that is going on about them went off. A bear. Yesss. He grins at the mental image. Yes, a bear called Rhendden Dishemboweller. He stares at the empty spot next to him and waits.

His bear doesn't appear. And it won't, because it won't be making an appearance in this dream either. What does make an appearance is laughter. High, shrill laughter that feels like someone is running sharp fingernails down a chalkboard, but in a way that makes it sound as if the fingernails and the one making the sound are both laughing at your suffering.

The yellow sky seems to have fallen while he was looking at the body. Or so he tells himself. Slowly he stands up and looks around into the yellow mist. The body at his feet disappears as rust-red stains appear on the buildings and creep over it like many small spiders. Black cracks accompany the orchestra of creaks as the buildings collectively slouch and weep their rusty iron tears. There is a crash. The shrill laughter that makes him want to retreat and find his forest can be heard again, except this time it is accompanied by the even higher tinkling of falling glass.

There is a light in the mist. He heads towards it. He wishes he didn't.

He can see another person, this time moving and breathing and throwing sometime carelessly into the buildings. The “something” in question is small and burns brightly. It also smashes with a painful sound before the muttering of flames engulfs it, consuming it. “Why are you doing that?” Alex asks, approaching the person – a girl, he can see. “Why do you break your own bottled dreams and wishes and hopes, Mab?”

But this girl isn't Queen Mab of the Faeries. This one smirks with an unsettling grin that makes his spine chill. This one's hair is as orange as the fire that consumes the building behind her. “What have we here?” She pauses. Her smirk widens, shifting into a knowing grin as she taps the side of her nose mischievously. “I knooooow! You are another sinner! You are hear to be cleansed! Very well!”

She slides around on her high-heels, spiderweb-clad legs shifting smoothly and gracefully as she points one of those mysterious bottles at him. He sees the trail of tears coming out from it and the fire of rage burning at the other end, a piece of fire clinging to each drop as it falls away from the bottle to splash and disappear upon the cracked and sagging road beneath their feet.

“Now, now, don't be shy~aiiii!” She giggles, and is suddenly behind him, one arm hanging in a companionably way over his shoulder. She smiles down at him. The bottle is twirled in her other hand as she draws him close until he can't see anything but the bottle's flame before his eyes. There is movement inside the bottle. He can't make it out.

“What do you plan to do?” He says, trying to step away from her. He can't move. Does his body not want to move? Is he now that body he saw earlier? Did it have his features? Alex couldn't remember.

She leans close.

She whispers.

“I'm Sailor Nea, and in the name of Astraea, I shall punish you!”

He tries to ask her for what. Why. He didn't do anything. Was the body her earlier? If so he is really sorry, he didn't mean it. He wants to apologies.
Tries.
He can't speak.

He can't see anything for the flame in front of his eyes. He can see it crouch down like a hungry beast. A tongue of flame shoots out from its mouth and licks its chops. It stares. Then leaps.



Alexander woke himself up with his own screams of terror. He flailed about in his blanket, trying to fight his way of its confining grasp. The most he managed to achieve in his struggles was to roll completely off of his bed and crash onto the floor, dazing himself. Slowly with a groan he rolled himself onto his back, staring at the ceiling and waiting for it to stop moving. He made a point to ignore the banging on his door, the shouts of “Shut the ******** up man!” “No, YOU shut the ******** up!” “If one of you screamed like a p***y, Imma put a cap into yo a**!” that were rising in volume as irate sleepers argued back and forth, cutting off abruptly when several doors slammed.

His heart was slowing down and settling down from the dream. No, nightmare. Alexander was sure of it, just as he was sure of his ability to twist and wiggle free of his own cocoon of a blanket. He freed himself, then peeled off his sweat-slicked nightshirt and threw it into the corner he designated as “dirty clothes.” Or was it “moderately dirty clothes?” He could never remember, nor did he have a roommate to correct him.

Needless to say, Alexander didn't sleep well for the rest of the night. He gave up on sleeping after two hours of drifting in and out of sleep, spending the rest of the night staring out at the quiet slums that surrounded Hillworth Grammar School. He felt uneasy. His shoulder felt dirty from where a weight settled down. His chest felt too hot for normal. Fever? With a sigh, Alexander closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cool window pane, grateful for the poor insulation and breeze that used to plague his winter nights. Sleep? Out of the question. But if he could just relax and wait, wait for the sky to turn yellow then blue again...