Dreamer Preface and Chapter 1

Meet Dyer Kegan, a boy with extraordinary dreaming powers.

Preface

I had never really taken my dreams seriously, although some people find it remarkable that I remember every single dream I've ever dreamed, and that I have the power to lucid dream, or to control what I dream about. Really though, these aren't exactly extraordinary to me at all.

What I find to be fascinating about my own dreaming power is the variety of... I don't know the right words to describe it... Spectrums, perhaps? The variety of spectrums, then, that I can dream in. I dream in both black and white and color, and that's interesting enough, but the variations are what make dreaming so exciting.

Whenever I dream in color, I dream in different shades of color, different shades of life. I can dream in vivid, over-the-top color, which makes everything larger than life, as if everything I see is a cartoon. Dreams come in life-like color, to the point where I have trouble distinguishing when fantasy ends and reality begins. And of course, there's the mildly interesting color spectrum in which everything looks blurry and fuzzy, similar to, but better than an old television with a bad receiver.

Black and white dreams tend to stay crisp, sharp, and clear, but occasionally, to my great amusement, they look faded and washed out, as if I'm part of an old '50s sitcom.

These strange color capacities I cannot control by means of lucid dreaming.

These supposed "great qualities" and "gifts from God" are all shadowed however, by something that I discovered by accident, that I've spent my whole life trying to keep secret, a great power that I dare not to exploit, that was, and still is, so dangerous, it never crossed my mind to ever experiment with it, ever again.

There were many who were fascinated by these supposed gifts, but besides the dark power, which I never used or mentioned, I never saw my dreaming abilities being at all important.

And now, all of a sudden, my life, and others', depend on my dreams.


Chapter 1

I didn’t know her name, although her face was strangely familiar, which was odd. I’d never seen it before, and yet, here I was. Stunned by the sheer impossibility of the situation I was in, I couldn’t even lift a finger- my entire body felt like one huge lead weight, sinking into deep waters… But as she drew closer and closer, with desperation and desire in the blue waters of her eyes, my body did automatically what my mind could not do. Forcing the vast entirety of both my arms up to her shoulders, I ran my hands down to her waist, indulging my fingers with the feel of the soft fabric of her shirt, and gently wrapping them around her body.

 

Slowly, as if not to alarm her, I tilted my head to the side and smiled, smiled as she nervously came closer still, smiled to ease her worries… And she pressed her lips against mine, carefully, and after a while, she silently beckoned me to kiss her back- I was only too eager. Her face filled every blank void of my being and her soft curves tempted me, incited me to act upon this mad impulse… But I knew I shouldn’t… How could I resist? The sweet scent of butterscotch flowed from every part that was her, overwhelming any logical half of my senses.

 

As I considered this dilemma in my head, there was suddenly a brilliant flash of pure white light- it was bright enough to blind the both of us, but surprisingly, it didn’t. It spared the both of us in an act of paranormal mercy, and in that split second, we both understood that she was me, and I was she, that we were one, that the way our bodies locked together was forever permanent…

 

“Dyer… Dyer…”

 

She was crooning my name, calling me.

 

But this couldn’t be right. She should not be able to talk so clearly and kiss me like this at the same time… Pricking up, my ears started to prowl for the source of the sound, while my open eyes drank up every detail, every contour of her face, because she was the most beautiful thing they had ever registered… My psyche was drunk from drinking the toxic wine of not only her external beauty, but also her soul, which spontaneously filled in the gaps that were present in my soul, while mine did the same for hers, all without needing permission from my brain to act upon the urge. This poisonous splendor did not kill me with the imbalance in beauty, but seemed to repair my own flaws. How unexpected…

 

The texture of her bare skin was driving my fingers mad, insane with the effort of self-control, and the skin tone itself… Her skin was pale, but not fragile at all, seeming to emit a feeling of hope and serenity, a peace with the world. Mindless thoughts. I reprehended myself. Of course there was peace with the world. There was peace between she and I, and that was the whole world anyways, our entire universe. Nothing else mattered, nor should it. Me and her. She and I.

 

“Dyer!”

 

This repetition of my name sounded more urgent, and my ears, being especially sensitive to make up for my lack of sight, were aching, because a shrill alarm had started to go off. Perhaps it had been ringing for hours and I was just now noticing, or maybe, it had just started, and that would account for the peculiar woman, her voice foreign in this universe, where there was me, and there was her. One thing was certain. It was not her voice that was crying out, because she seemed just as confused as I did, although our lips remained locked together, moving with each other’s in a perfectly choreographed way.

 

Did she need help? It sounded like she did… Should I break this off, my source of life, to go help? But if I stopped now, I would die. This was my fix, and I felt so good… My thoughts, sluggish, heavy, intoxicated, unreasonable, not even understandable… What was the word I was looking for? Incoherent… That was it… Why couldn’t I think? It was all so confusing…

 

“Dyer Anthony Kegan, GET UP!” the voice roared, and before I had a chance to subconsciously protest, I was up, rolling out of bed, totally unprepared to face the day ahead of me… Caroline- Mother, I corrected myself- stormed out of the room, her long brown hair trailing behind her.

 

So disorientating. Experimentally, I shook my head in the way I would to get water out of my ears, to no avail- I was still just as dazed as I had been before, but now with a slight headache. I had been so sure that it was all real, but… It was a dream. Of course it was. It always was.

 

I felt a slight frown expanding upon my lips, not only for my rude awakening, but also because of the dream content and Caroline’s reaction to my heavy-headedness. Despite being a teenage male with hormones, I had never dreamed about a girl in this way at all, ever before. I hadn’t ever really expressed any interest in any specific girl- not that I wasn’t attracted to them, but because there was nobody who really clicked with me. Maybe it was because I was reserved about these sorts of things, even towards myself. Shyness, not so much- aloofness or standoffishness would be a better term. It wasn’t something I could help; I remembered faintly that Christopher had been this way as well…

 

And Caroline… The slope of my mouth grew steeper. Caroline was usually positive by nature, characteristically able to see the bright side of every situation, but ever since Christopher had died, she’d become ever increasingly irritable and negative. I had a theory about this- I thought that on top of the loss she felt over Christopher, trying to live a normal, composed life was taking a toll on her- all that acting for my benefit left her drained and feeling trapped within her own misery. And if I was being honest with myself, I found that I only had myself to blame, and only myself to hate… A long and slow gust of air escaped my lips as I very sorely regretted the fact I could dream at all…

 

Glancing at my alarm clock, which seemed to perch itself smugly upon my dresser, I realized that I had better hurry- if I didn’t, I’d miss the bus and be late for school. I dared not to do anything that could set Caroline off any farther. After ripping through my limited closet for some clean clothes and running a toothbrush across my teeth, I stopped for a costly minute to glance at myself in the mirror.

 

The image in the mirror was comforting and familiar- I had thrown on an old black Pink Floyd band tee, and some faded indigo jeans, torn with the wear of a few years. My brown hair, which almost came down to my shoulders in the back, was always pleasantly messy- disheveled enough to make a statement, but casual enough to fit in with my surroundings. It wasn’t nearly as long as Caroline’s, but strangers could easily see the family resemblance- we had precisely the same color hair. My eyes peered out behind that curtain of hair, which didn’t dilute my eye color- the brown stands of hair didn’t contrast too strongly against my perfectly matching eyes, which were also courtesy of Caroline. That was all I got from her though- Christopher was responsible for the remainder of my facial features, although my face in general, thankfully, didn’t resemble his at all. No need for yet another reminder of my past…

 

Noticing the time again, I grabbed my backpack, ran out of my room, and nearly flew down the stairs to the front door, where Caroline kissed my cheek goodbye as I walked out, a trace of caged-in frustration still clearly evident in her eyes, confirming my thoughts about how she felt. There was no way she could still be angry about me not waking up on time. And it’d had been years now… Was she ever going to get better?

 

I ran all the way to the school bus stop, backpack pounding rhythmically against my back. The physical exercise kept my thoughts off the pool of guilt that was threatening to overtake me, which was good. No need for anybody else to see me have a nervous breakdown. I arrived just in time- the school bus had almost pulled away by the time I caught the bus driver’s attention. His weathered and wrinkled face was mildly amused, as though he was debating on whether or not to stop to let me on. After driving twenty feet forward, he finally stopped and opened the door. Panting, I scrambled on and the bus driver gave me a creepy sort of wide-eyed grin, as though he'd just pulled the best prank the world had ever seen. The bus pulled away from my stop once more, grumbling and cursing under its mechanical breath. I snorted in disgust to myself. A few years, and I wouldn’t have to put up with the bus and its constant moaning and screaming, which were caused by nonchalance to automobile repair.

 

Everyone on the bus was obnoxiously loud, and nobody ever had anything worthwhile to say. They all probably saw me as cold and distant- that was fine by me. I had no wish to be associated with these thoughtless buffoons. For this reason, I usually had a seat to myself in the very back every single day- people tended to avoid me. Pulling out my outdated, barely functional music player, I turned up the volume until I couldn’t hear anybody on the bus anymore, or the actual bus itself. Caroline had given me a lecture about turning up the volume, but the truth was that the crappy old thing couldn’t play music half as loudly as any other mp3 player.

 

I felt unusually tired, and I wasn’t even listening to anything mellow- I was listening to some grunge tracks. Definitely not bedtime music. Rarely was I drained after a good night’s sleep- it might have been the intensity of the dream that caused my physical body to go into overtime, even though I was sound asleep. That made sense, kind of. Enough for my mind to be comfortable about putting the issue to rest… Groggily, I blinked just once after I made that conclusion… And in that split second after I opened my eyes, we were in front of my school, Atway High. It took me an additional second or two further to realize I had fallen asleep. The corner of my mouth twitched in some mixed emotion- half amused and half annoyed. It wasn’t normal of me to arbitrarily doze off, especially without realizing I was asleep while I was asleep. So many strange happenings lately…

 

As I walked out and away from the bus, it grunted pathetically and retched out a thick cloud of smoke as it pulled out of the school front. Yet another result of a cut school budget.

 

Paying no care to the drab, faded red brick walls of the exterior, I instead contented myself in the slight drizzle of the routine, everyday morning rain- I adored the rain, even though it was fairly common here in Atway, Connecticut. There was just something oddly calming about its gentle rhythm, and the drops of rain that fell here felt like tender, caressing touches, as opposed to the fast and hard rain that anybody could find anywhere else.

 

Nobody even bothered to bring umbrellas around to school anymore, because they all knew the soft and unassuming morning rain very rarely lead to harsher waters later on in the day, though occasionally, we’d see a new kid carrying an umbrella around after school, glancing in apprehension at the sunny skies. And they would learn very fast that umbrellas were absolutely unnecessary in this city. Pity, really, because without the flamboyant colors and patterns of a multitude of umbrellas, there really was no color to really speak of around Atway High. The only things to look at were the brick walls, chipped and worn over time, and the few trees and shrubbery that adorned the sides of the entrance, which didn’t add much color to the whole scene anyways.

 

The joy I’d taken from the daily weather was cut quite short by the appearance of an unpleasantly familiar face- even though I had never seen her before. In the bustling crowd that gathered every morning in front of the school, it must have been either chance or destiny that caused me to see her; one half-second, and the jostling students would’ve pushed her out of my line of vision- another second before, and she would have not been pushed to the center of my focus.

 

To my intense surprise, it was the same face that had possessed my dream the night before, but it was even more beautiful, more stunning than my dream’s now pitiful rendering. How could I ever downplay such beauty? It was not at all like gazing at the impossibly perfect, impassive Greek gods; I could recognize subtle imperfections in her features and the proportions of her face, but, if anything, that just made her more endearing. Her features were neither extraordinarily sharp, nor dull, but instead were soft, in an angular way. Looking too soft and perfect to be real, her lips were full, but not broad, and disconcertingly colored- sort of a light cherry red, made brighter by lip-gloss. This matched perfectly well with her hair tone, which was a chocolate brown and mahogany mixture, and was matted down to her head with the weight of the rain. Her shirt stuck to her figure from the moisture- I could see that she was slender, but not in a way that made her appear weak.

 

Without a doubt, the most beautiful thing my eyes ever had the good fortune to see, and a thousand times better than my dream.

 

This all took less than a single point in time for me to take in, and an involuntary gasp arose from the bottommost depths of my chest, where I had just rediscovered the existence of my lungs. Cold air welled out into my lungs and cut into my chest cavity, but I barely noticed the pain, still engrossed in her. While I was still gawking, she turned her face, very slightly, without breaking her pace, to match my eyes with her own. As if she had known that I was looking at her. As if she had been expecting this. As if-

 

Abruptly, the burn of the slicing cold air became a dull, numb sensation, because if her facial features were beautiful, then her eyes must have been the most dazzling things in existence- I came to this conclusion perhaps too soon, but already, I was sure that I was indisputably correct. How had I not noticed her before? For that matter, why didn’t anybody I know ever talk about her? The exact shade of blue was indescribable, but resembled aquamarine, and practically radiated light and energy. I’d never seen that color in my dreams, even in the ones where I had seen colors so vivid and saturated, no one else in the world knew they existed. From this perfection, I could not bear to take my eyes away.

 

I must have been staring for too long, because she suddenly started taking large strides in my direction, cutting through the callus and impenetrable crowd more effectively than I would have thought possible.

 

Oh dear.

 

I only had time to take two steps before a single strong hand held onto my collar, forcibly stopping me from escaping. Obviously, her slender body was capable of hiding unexpected abilities and strengths. Turning around reluctantly, I made sure to avoid looking directly into her eyes, in fear of being struck dumb again. She opened her mouth and began to speak, in contrast to my unending speechlessness, easily and effortlessly. This too was beautiful- her voice was neither obnoxiously high pitched or unattractively low pitched, and held the barest, faintest hint of a British accent. Melodic, in a way, even though she definitely wasn’t singing.

 

“Interesting dream you had last night,” the unknown girl said in false sweetness and innocence, a mocking smile set steady on her lips.

 

Her tone was casual and nonchalant, as if we were just talking about the morning weather- in this city, that’d be a very unattached conversation indeed. From the muddy swamp of my judgment, I reached for some sort of civil response. Unfortunately for me, this was the exact moment my eyes decided to meet hers again. I should have been formulating questions about how she could possibly know anything about my dream content, but my head went completely blank. She seemed to recognize this and waited patiently for a minute or two, although she never took her eyes off of mine.

 

A shrill, metallic bell rang, signaling the beginning of first period, and finally, she was forced to avert her eyes from my own, looking disappointed. Saved by the bell is really an old cliché, derived from the days when boxing was the most popular sport in America, and as it was, she was not the one saved by the bell. I was. She seemed to know that I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything while those eyes were focused on me. As if she had been silently dealing blows to my reason, while I just stood there, perplexed and unable to defend myself, letting her throw multitudes of punches to the head in rapid succession. She composed her face into a sly smirk and began to speak again.

 

“Come to the lounge after school, and come with questions. I know you’ve got some. Although if you’re going to pull that number every single time you look at my eyes, you’d be better off writing your questions down. Trust me on that one. And expect to answer some questions yourself. You… Sort of fascinate me. I’m not sure what it is yet… But we’ll talk later. See you later, Dreamer.”

 

My brain, now completely punch-drunk, decided it’d be best to walk into school before I was late for class and received detention. Thankfully, my legs agreed, and I wheeled myself through the front doors- nearly running into them in my daze- down the first hallway to the left, and into first period, tripping on the door frame on the way in. As I stumbled in, Mr. Parker coughed loudly, and said, “Thank you for joining us Dyer. Class started two minutes ago.”

 

I flushed, and made my way to my seat as fast as I could without running- subsequently, I tripped over Andrew Hall’s backpack on the way, which led to further snickering.

 

Naturally, math class was just as dull as ever, and I’d already learned all the material, so I decided to instead pass the period by making a list of questions to ask the girl. Ignoring Mr. Parker’s dry, slightly monotonic voice, I instead tuned in onto the frequency my thoughts aired upon.

 

First and foremost- how did she know about the dream I had last night? What was her name? Didn’t anybody else notice her eyes, those incredible eyes? Why was I dreaming about her at all, when I barely even knew her? Why did she call me “dreamer”? Was it a good thing, a sign of affection, or was it a derogatory nickname? Did she know? And how did she know?

 

Remembering Abbie’s warning, I flipped over my half-finished lecture notes, erased a few scribbles and doodles completely unrelated to the class, and began to transcribe the questions in my head onto the paper, checking over and over to make sure I didn’t leave anything out.

 

Without my consent or knowledge, first period shifted into second, and second period quickly became lunch.

 

Lunchtime was always part of the routine we followed at school, because everyone had a very specific group of friends to sit with, which mostly consisted of the usual cliques, clubs, and groupies. Just like I’d done for months before today, I plopped down my tray between “Big and Rich’s” and Julia’s, and across from Winnie’s packed lunch.

 

Big and Rich’s name was really Richard, and the crowning irony was that he was small and poor, although, certainly, he never acted like he lived in a slum; he rejected the “ghetto” or “gangsta” labels that his peers eagerly lapped up. It wasn’t that he had a problem with being either poor or black; it was that he rejected that entire genre of music and the ideology behind it. He didn’t really care about being called Rich too much, although he hated his full nickname- he had his roots stuck firmly into what he called the “Seattle Sound”, and couldn’t stand country music. His hair was styled into a distinctive and chaotic blend of cornrows and dreadlocks, which both fit his squared jaw perfectly, and matched up with his personality well; he had a knack of blending different (and often incompatible) aspects of life together, and pulled it off impossibly well. But being fairly unpopular with the “mainstream”(as he called it) school population, he wouldn’t know who the girl was. Besides us, he didn’t have too many friends…

 

I glanced momentarily at Julia and as in response, she instantly looked at me, as though she’d been anticipating my look, and we both awkwardly looked away at our lunches. Julia was the only one in our group of friends that actually went by her real name, besides me. We were very much alike, personality-wise, because we had spent most of our lives together; her mother, Elizabeth Watson, happened to be best friends with my mother, and they had gotten pregnant around the same time. As such, we had been forced together ever since we were old enough to walk and talk. Until one of us overcame our shyness to say hello, we had not talked much to one another until the first grade, preferring instead to play on opposite sides of the living room when our mothers visited one another. One day, when we were first grade, we'd struck up a conversation, and we had been best friends ever since then.

 

There always seemed to be a line of suitors waiting for her hand, but she turned nearly all of them down- some repeatedly. At the moment, she was single, so she had to put up with a mountain of hopefuls, but she was contemplating dating one of them, just to get the rest off her case. Personally, I had never noticed any particularly attractive features to her, physically speaking, but I’d grown up with her… I supposed that if I had not known her my entire life, I could probably find something alluring about her…

 

Studying her soft face discreetly, I couldn’t see anything particularly special that made her stand out from the crowd, though I could appreciate that she was moderately pretty. Just the same old defined cheekbones, the same slender lips, which appeared to be a little too small for her face, the same gentle eyebrows that always made her look at ease, and the same slight nose, which jutted down at a sharp angle… Even though she went out into the sunlight whenever she could, she neither tanned nor burnt, leaving her skin pale with a faint tinge of pink all year long. Personality-wise, she kept quiet and to herself, leaving people guessing about what was going on in her head… Very much alike with me. Caroline- Mother, I corrected myself, had once joked that she was just as reserved as I was. But she was wrong; Julia was twice as reserved as I was. Even I didn’t know that much about her, and I knew her better than anybody else on the planet. She wouldn’t know the mystery girl.

 

Winifred, or as everyone called her, Winnie, was pretty outgoing, but she had only a select group of people who could understand, or at times, tolerate her. Winnie often went on what she called “natural highs” in which she acted as if she was stoned… But she’d never done drugs in her life. That much I was sure of. It was no secret either, that half the males- and quite a few females- in the school thought they were in love with her, although her beauty was nearly a polar opposite from Julia’s; Winnie was loud and demanding, and her hair, in direct contrast to Julia’s long, plain, brown hair, was strawberry blonde and short and spiked on the first layer, leaving her second layer plain, long, and untouched, framing her face. Whereas Julia’s face was subtly sculpted and soft, Winnie’s was sharp all around, emphasized by her biting green eyes.

 

Her head was moving slowly to the beat of a song that was emptying its contents into her head via her headphones, which betrayed no clue as to what she was listening to. Judging by what she was softly singing though, I guessed she was listening to either the Beatles or the Grateful Dead. She would know, or at least, have a better chance of knowing than Rich or Julia. I tapped her arm gently.

 

“Winnie, who’s that girl sitting at the table right there?”

 

As I gestured towards the mystery girl’s table, I felt guilty, like a stalker… When I paid for the nasty school lunch, I couldn’t help but note which table she was sitting at, and what sorts of people she associated with. Naturally, I didn’t recognize a single face that was sitting at her table, but I’d soon find out who they were. Very stalker-like, considering I had never seen a single one of them in the flesh before today. Again, I berated myself silently- how could I have missed her when she was right underneath my nose?

 

Winnie yawned, faking disinterest, and muttered, “That one’s Ellie, that one’s Lucy, Abbie’s younger sister, and that-” she paused as she pointed to the mysterious gorgeous one- “is Abbie.”

 

As she went back to the serenity of her music sanctuary, Rich looked up, looking mildly interested. “What, you got the hots for her?”

 

I shook my head and noticed, that quite uncharacteristically, Julia also seemed to be paying unnaturally close attention to the conversation.

 

“Do you know her?” I asked, hoping that my voice sounded cool and completely apathetic as to whether or not she did; I had no room to sound eager, because if I slipped up, I’d have to tolerate Rich’s wild girlfriend theories for endless weeks; he couldn’t quite believe that I wasn’t interested in anybody.

 

She cleared her voice and quietly said, “I have a few classes with her.”

 

Although I could barely hear what she was saying, volume-wise, the tone of her voice betrayed a lot of what she was thinking- it suggested that she was on good terms with Abbie, and that she was puzzled about why I cared so much about who Abbie was. Good questions, on her part. Rich snorted, and I felt blood rush up to my face, giving me a rather noticeable blush, which was, I knew from looking at myself in my bedroom mirror, an embarrassing shade of pink.

 

“Ladies!” He grinned like a maniac. “I think our very own Dyer Kegan has just found his first crush!”

 

I punched his arm, not hard enough to actually hurt him, but hard enough to give him the message to keep quiet, although he opted to change the topic hastily rather than to stop talking.

 

Taking advantage of not being in the spotlight, I let my eyes wander back to the table where Abbie sat, evaluating her companions. Lucy and Ellie, was it? It was easy to see the family resemblance between Abbie and Lucy, although Lucy didn’t have the same eyes… I’d be very much surprised though, if anybody else in the world did have the same colored eyes. And this Ellie girl… Was it just me, or did she look extremely angry about something? Although I didn’t really know for sure, I supposed that she was in her own way pretty, although the bitterness still leaked onto her face, distorting all her facial features… And Abbie. The epitome of all of perfection… Although I’d seen her face before, it knocked me breathless again and again to look at her, though she never so much glanced in my direction- I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was done on purpose.

 

The remainder of lunch passed by without any further mention of either my love life or Abbie. With Rich there, I actually preferred it that way. When it was time to go back to class, Abbie stood up gracefully, caught my eyes again, and winked. Blinking rapidly and trying to fight off the recently formed haze in my head, I stumbled to third period in a blind stupor, just like I had this morning. Three doors, an open locker, and a stretch of perfectly straight ground later, I found myself tripping into third period.

 

Biology was really not the best time for me to doze off, because we were taking notes on something or another that was likely to appear on an important test somewhere, but I found myself daydreaming. It didn't really matter anyways. Julia would take notes for me, wouldn’t she? I’d taken notes for her loads of times, whenever she just wasn’t feeling up to it… There I was again, falling in and out of consciousness unwillingly, just like on the bus that morning… What was it with me and sleeping today? Usually, I had precision control over my sleep and dreams… I might just be… Maybe the uncanny…

 

And then my consciousness fell back into sleepy, unfocused speculation.

 

Once I was in English, my last class, the hour dragged on for what seemed like years, and I could swear I heard the clock laughing, mocking me. This couldn’t have been just an hour. Several hours had passed, but the teacher had just forgotten to dismiss us… That was the only logical explanation. The clocks had all messed up, and the periods were being held longer, and the teachers had not noticed that a few hours had gone by…

 

I shook my head to rid myself of these drunken, maddening thoughts. Time was just being slow. Of course. Perhaps I just had some sort of unexplainable complex with passing time, but it never seemed to do what I wanted it to do. If only time was as standard and routine to me as it seemed to be for everybody else… For me, time lurched by too quickly and slowed to a crawl in all the wrong places.

 

“Mr. Dyer, perhaps you’d like to tell us one major character flaw of Holden Caulfield, based on your homework assignment from last night?”

 

Coach Hughes’ matter-of-fact voice cracked through my concentration.

 

“Um… What was the question again? I didn’t quite catch you.”

 

I was focused on something far more important than this trite nonsense. Finally! Just a minute… 45 seconds. 30 seconds.

 

Coach Hughes might’ve said something else, but whatever it was, it was lost on me once more. Maybe it would’ve been a better idea to pay attention after that first time, but the clock had just hit 10 seconds until dismissal. He opened his mouth reproachfully, probably to give me detention or something. “Mr. Dyer, are you paying atten-”

 

“Of course I’m not paying attention,” I thought scathingly to myself, tuning out the rest of his words…

 

“Mr. Dyer!” This time he sounded pissed.

 

RING!

 

Saved by the bell again. I frowned. This cliché was getting to be too much.

Author's Note

To a certain Nina Davies- apologies for the length of the chapter- it is 365 words over your 5000 word limit, and if this causes me to be disqualified from the contest, so be it.

Reviews

[Nina Davies]

Hi Jason, I enjoyed reading your chapter. You have a very distinctive voice and the makings of a fascinating story. I have some suggestions for editing, but these are just one person's opinion. Use or discard as you see fit :-)

One "problem" I found in your prologue and chapter was a tendency to use extra words that weaken your work rather then strengthen it. Let me give you some examples and my suggested revisions to show you what I mean.


I had never really taken my dreams seriously, although some people �

== >I had never taken my dreams seriously, although some people �

What I find to be fascinating about my own dreaming power is the variety of...
==> What I find fascinating about my dreaming power is the variety of�

it never crossed my mind to ever experiment with it, ever again.
==>it never crossed my mind to ever experiment with it.
Or
==> it never crossed my mind to experiment with it.

Stunned by the sheer impossibility of the situation I was in
==>Stunned by the impossibility of the situation I was in

The sweet scent of butterscotch flowed from every part that was her, overwhelming any logical half of my senses.
� The sweet scent of butterscotch flowed from her, overwhelming any logical impulses.
(senses can't be logical. It's the brain that is logical.)

As you can see from these previous examples, I'm not suggesting you rewrite anything, merely remove the excess words that are getting in the way of the strong picture you are painting. Your character's voice is slow, measured and thoughtful (great!) and it won't be disturbed by removing the excess words.

Note what words I'm removing: adverbs, some adjectives, lots of "function" words like 'was/be', 'that', etc.
Here's a self-interested plug: The AutoCrit Editing Wizard can help you find where you overuse these words :-)


Now, there are some sentences that also need a bit of rewriting. Here's an example.

Forcing the vast entirety of both my arms up to her shoulders, I ran my hands down to her waist, indulging my fingers with the feel of the soft fabric of her shirt, and gently wrapping them around her body.

There are several things to watch out for here. Firstly, grammatically speaking, the action in the initial ing-clause must co-occur in time with the action of the rest of the clause. Since he can't actually force his hands to her shoulders AND slide them down at the same time, this sentence needs a bit of work. Secondly, "the vast entirety of both my arms". This implies that the guy must be obese or something, which doesn't jibe with the rest of what I read. I'd skip it. Here's a potential rewrite of the sentence.

My hands slid to her shoulders and then drifted to her waist. On the journey, my fingers indulged in the slickness of her smooth cotton shirt and the satisfying firmness of the underlying skin.


So, watch out for sentences that run on and aren't actually grammatical. Here's another example. The problems I see in this sentence:
- repeats 'smile' too much.
- Excess words (tilting head implies it is tilted to the side)
- You say she is nervous, this is a POV error since he can't know she is nervous. He can only know what he sees. Describe that.

Slowly, as if not to alarm her, I tilted my head to the side and smiled, smiled as she nervously came closer still, smiled to ease her worries.

I'll stop my comments there, since I'm sure you've got the hang of what I'm pointing out. Your voice is strong. I just feel like you need to let it shine through more by tightening up your sentences. This is "easy" editing, since it is only individual sentences that need tweaking. I don't see a need for any major revisions.

By the way, as a last comment, this was an awesome hook to the prologue. You really raise the stakes for the reader. Well done.

==> And now, all of a sudden, my life, and others', depend on my dreams.

Thanks for entering my contest. It was a pleasure to read your work!

[unspokenguilt]

Okay so I only read the preface so far but it's Awesome! Very interesting, your writing can really pull a reader in...you story sounds really cool :)