Dreamer Chapter 2

Dyer visits the lounge and tries to figure out who Abbie is.

Past the double doors with fading blue paint, far behind the school, deep in the woods that swallow the rear end of the building, in a small, claustrophobic clearing, grow a variety of plants, many of them quite illegal. They have been growing there for longer than anybody alive can remember. Somewhere in Atway High's history, somebody took the liberty of naming this space “the lounge.” Consequently, the lounge was a popular destination for those who supported serene apathy and gracious use of cannabis. I had never been to the lounge myself, but I’d heard plenty of stories about it- no small number of people visited the lounge on a regular basis, and they always seemed to have amusing little anecdotes about their experiences afterwards. The most I could gather from these stories was that the entrance was behind the school. This probably meant I’d have to search for a while… And the trail leading there wasn’t supposed to be the easiest thing to navigate.

 

I fervently hoped Abbie had enough patience to wait for me, because I needed to see her again, to prove to myself that she was actually real. And if I got to ask her my questions, that’d be an added bonus. A chill ran down my spine as I pictured her impossible eyes looking at me. There was something else there in that sun-lit ocean blue that she was holding from me, and she was doing a good job of keeping it a mystery. Suppressing a shudder, I passed the last row of faded blue lockers and found myself at the back door.

 

A wave of heat instantaneously struck my body as soon as I cracked open the blue double doors. The sun’s blazing fury tried to melt my face off my skull, and I saw accordingly a large patch of half-dead yellow and wilting green grass. Judging solely by the length of it, I guessed that it hadn’t been cut for at least a year- it came up to my knees, where it was still alive. Balmy Atway was always sunny, but never this hot. Great. Now we got freak weather to match up with the freak people. Hot enough to kill grass in half a day, and probably enough to dehydrate me if I hiked for too long. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate to worry about.

 

And right in front of me, twenty feet away, were the first trees that made up the woods. After glancing around quickly at the surroundings, it dawned on me that there had been no need to worry at all about being caught. No security cameras, no teachers patrolling the area, not even a fence… Looking more closely, I realized that I’d have to be an absolute idiot not to be able to find the lounge; there was even a little beaten path that snaked its way into the forest, less than subtly, where no botanical life dared to grow, in the fear of being trampled.

 

I walked into the shade of the overgrown, towering trees. The wind blew a cool welcome forwards, like a butler for my temperature wants, calm and smiling as it greeted me. I hadn’t fully appreciated just how much the outside sun was angrily bearing down on me. Together with the humidity, the sun conspired against me, but now, I was safe from the elements. My sweat glands, working overtime just moments ago, unwound and let out a smile identical to the butler’s as the liberating wind passed me by.

 

In the comfort and security I felt alongside with the aged and wise trees, my eyes felt no need to look for any sort of danger. Instead, they soaked in every detail of the canopy. In direct contrast to the wasteland of grass outside, the forest seemed to be almost too colorful. Besides the actual green leaves on the trees, there were enormous bushes that easily cleared my knees, orange, purple, and blue flowers growing on either side of the path, and pools of water and mud lying around from the morning’s rain. Unseen animals scurried around in the growth, going about their own unknown agendas. I wasn’t paying attention to the actual trail, and because of this, I nearly ran into somebody who was standing in clear view in the middle of the pathway.

 

Without waiting for an apology or explanation, she launched into speech. “Well, I knew you’d never been to the lounge before, so I decided to wait and see if you’d come. I got impatient, so I came out here to make sure you wouldn’t get lost.” Abbie’s voice was dripping with liquid-smooth sweet sarcasm. Catching my eye for the barest instant, she added, “I didn’t know you were so poetic. Honestly, smiling butler winds, waiting to cater to your every need? There’s a fine line between poetic imagery and just being weird.”

 

Before I had a chance to open my mouth and seriously ask if she could read minds, she turned her head to the side, signaling to me to follow her, and then turned back around and started walking down the path. The densely packed woods seemed to get even thicker as we walked farther and farther, deeper into the depths of the forest. Eventually, the trees were so close to one another that there was no room for the bushes and flowers to grow. My classmates hadn't been exaggerating when they had said that the lounge was cramped... Countless minutes passed, but the only sounds I could hear were leaves crunching hopelessly underneath our shoes, and Abbie keeping herself deathly silent… The silence was deafening, pressing.

 

Abbie’s voice cut through this silence, making me jump. “We’re nearly there. Keep your mouth shut until I tell you that you can talk… We wouldn’t want to give any stoners the wrong ideas. Not that they'd be in any real shape to recognize us or wonder what we were up to.” She grinned widely at some remembered experience and stepped past an oddly shaped boulder into a partly-hidden clearing. So this was the lounge.

 

The lounge was bigger of a space than my classmates made it out to be, although that may have just been attributable to the lack of warm bodies that occupied the area. A single teenager was sprawled out on the lush field of brightly colored flowers, although I suspected he’d been through some of the more menacing-looking plants growing closer to the edges of the clearing. His clear hazel eyes were glazed over, and he seemed to be preoccupied with poking a flower repeatedly.

 

Creating a frenzied kaleidoscope of blurred colors, the flowers were the most dominant feature, mixing every color imaginable in the center of the field. Subtle, but dazzling, the sky in its entirety was perfectly visible. The trees were shorter here than in the forest, and they allowed warm rays of sunlight poke through without exposing the field to the full rage of the sun. There was some sort of unexplainable charm about this simple field that made me want to lie down in the multicolored flowers and daydream for a few hours, even though I was strictly anti-drug myself. I could see why this space was so popular. Thinking that this was where Abbie wanted to talk, I lay down and put my arms behind my head. Incredible. The flowers were just as good a cushion as my bed back home.

 

“Nice call, meeting here. I love this place already.” I sighed, content.

 

She snorted and said, “We're not stopping here. I just thought you'd like the scenery. Come on, we still have to hike for another five or so minutes.”

 

Before I had any chance to get up off the ground, Abbie grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet with another startling display of strength. Geez. So pushy and inpatient.

 

She stuck to the outskirts of the clearing and led me past the flowers, guiding me towards a dark, nearly invisible pathway. In my head, I sadly bid the sun and the flowers goodbye and followed her into the woods again. Unlike the path that led to the clearing, this one was overcome by undergrowth, making the usually simple act of walking into a total body fitness workout. Abbie didn’t seem to be at all fazed by this wild trail; she kept up the same brisk pace we had gone on the other trail, while I stumbled a few feet behind her, trying not to trip over something and fall flat on my face. Was she planning on murdering me and burying my body in some discreet location or something? What could possibly be out here, in the very back of the forest? By now, we were probably a mile or two away from the school...

 

A few minutes later, her pace slowed to a crawl as she surveyed the unmarked mass of life. Her face scrunched up and her breathtaking eyes squinted, looking for something that I knew not of… Without warning, she started taking steps to an inconspicuous spot of land, half hidden already by shadows, although it wasn’t very late at all. Finally, to my credit, I spotted at last a small wooden shack. Now that I knew what I was looking for and where it was, it seemed obvious to me that the little structure was very out of place amongst the ancient trees, which practically radiated longevity. Wood, compared to other building materials, seems to portray its age honestly, without shame, and I could just tell that the shack wasn’t very old at all- the wood had obviously not been subjected to even a year’s worth of natural degradation.

 

“What do you think? I built this entire thing with Lucy and Ellie.” She sounded unconcerned on the surface of her words, but I caught a genuinely curious and interested undertone. I suppressed an urge to snicker. Indifferent Abbie actually cared for once about somebody else's opinion.

 

I nodded, impressed, but still a little skeptical. “This is pretty awesome. Doesn’t seem like something three girls could build on their own.”

 

She nodded nonchalantly, ignoring my unconvinced manner. “Ellie was actually a bigger help than Lucy and I would have ever thought. She helped nail this whole shack together, and she and I carved some of the furniture together. She’s dead handy with a chisel. Not sure if she took woodshop or something, but…” Abbie laughed. “I actually feel guilty for saying I helped carve the furniture, because Ellie worked so hard on it. Most of the time, I just watched her work her magic. Welcome to our own version of the lounge. Think of it as a place where just the four of us can chill out, get away from the worlds’ problems. You’re the only person to ever see this besides us three builders.”

 

Shaking my head in newfound awe, I marveled at the shack once again. I had thought she was just bluffing about only having two other people help her build the thing, but it looked like they had done it all themselves, without any outside help at all. It wasn’t much, but it was a lot better than what I could do with the help of two other people. Winnie would probably just sit around, trying to get her chi in balance with the plants and insects. Rich was too small and dapper, for somebody who lived in the ghetto at least, to really be able to help much at all, and Julia… If I weren’t trying to keep my face impassive for Abbie’s benefit, I would have frowned.

 

Julia and I went back, far back, back when we were still waddling around in diapers, but I still didn’t know much about her. Of course, she wasn’t one to talk about anything at all, never mind about herself and her personal life. On top of that, she was overly modest, refusing to display anything that could halfway resemble endowment. In class, she never participated in any discussions, save for when the teacher specifically called on her for an answer. For all I knew, she could have multitudes of hidden talents and knowledge tucked away, concealed far enough so that even I wouldn’t be able to see, although I seriously doubted one of those mysterious talents was hard labor and building. Even though Julia was a mystery to me, I knew Julia better than anybody else on the planet. I was the one she turned to when she needed help or advise, not her parents, not any of her other, more popular friends… Me. It was a nice feeling.

 

While I had tuned out, wading around in my own thoughts, Abbie had directed me to the door of the little shack, and as she opened the door, which glided smoothly on its hinges, I could feel my eyes widening, and my jaw literally dropped as the second wave of surprise hit. She was smiling, amused at my reaction to the interior. Maybe for her, the designer, it wasn’t anything special. But for an unsuspecting visitor, this was a bit too much.

 

Rugged and primitive on the outside, inside it could have easily passed as a small house. To the left of the entrance was a table, which seemed to have been carved from a fallen log, and it extended itself seamlessly into a drinking bar; Abbie and Ellie must’ve carved the entire thing from one tree. As far as hand-carved furniture went though, that was it; the chairs, in front of the bar, looked as though they were barstools straight from a soda shop from the sixties, and the three girls had somehow managed to drag two full-sized sofas, a recliner, and a retro-styled plastic coffee table all this way.

 

I couldn’t believe it.

 

Abbie seated herself behind the bar, and I thoughtlessly followed suit, hopping onto a bar stool in the front, still in shock from the exquisite amounts of furniture in this small, middle of nowhere shack… How in the world did those three girls manage all of this? She withdrew some glasses from a hidden cavity in the back of the bar.

 

“Care for a drink?”

 

Although I wasn't too big on alcohol, I didn’t want to risk looking like a prude, so I nodded. She pulled out a bottle of some sort of dark liquid from the cavity, and poured some into one of the cups. I hesitated, wondering if it was enough to get me drunk, but finally took a sip... Funny. Didn't taste like alcohol...

 

“Is this Coke?”

She gave me a look that plainly read that she was very tempted to ask if I was stupid and didn't bother to reply with anything but a curt nod. After pouring herself a glass, she turned to me and grinned widely, anticipation gleaming in her eyes, although I couldn’t figure out why she was so excited…

 

“No, I can’t read minds, technically, sorry, but I can’t tell you how I know about your dream, my name’s Abbie, but I see Winnie’s already told you that, yes, people comment on my eyes all the time, because you’ve got pretty interesting dream content, yeah, I guess it’s an affectionate nickname, and as I said, I can’t tell you how know these things.”

 

Not for the first time that evening, I was forced speechless.

 

Enjoying the look on my face, she added, smug, “It’s your turn to answer my questions.” She sat back and watched my face go through a range of emotions, from shock to bemusement to irritation, before settling on frustration.

 

No way. No way she could know about those questions, when I hadn’t even asked her any. No way she could skip the most important question I had of the entire group, the secret to her creepy knowledge of my life and thoughts. And no way she could then honestly expect me to answer any of her questions. This was all so unfair. So I decided to tell her that.

 

“Okay, there is no way,” I burst, “that you can know what I’m thinking, and not be a mind reader, which I have noticed, you didn’t satisfactorily answer my question about. I’m not going to answer any of your questions until you actually answer mine.” As soon as I said all this, I regretted opening my mouth. That had sounded so juvenile.

 

Sighing heavily, she seemed to understand my unspoken thoughts better than I had explained them verbally. Sounding martyred and resigned, she said, “What I am is a moot point at the moment, because what I am…” she stopped for a moment to gaze curiously into my eyes, “is extremely fascinated by you.”

 

A glare was all I could manage, because doubtless, she probably did read minds, and I didn’t feel the need to waste breath explaining what I was clearly saying in my head.

 

Also seeming to sense this, she let out a deep and weary sigh and said, “Look. I promise to tell all about me if you tell me all about you.” Abbie took another look at my eyes. What did she find so interesting about my eyes, when she had the most beautiful ones the world had ever seen? My eyes were starkly ugly next to hers...

 

“And honestly, you’re taking the possibility that I may have inhuman powers way too well,” she said, trying to get me to spill my secrets out into the open air.

 

My cheeks burned slightly at the realization that she had set the entire conversation up as a trap to get me to tell her what she was longing to know about me.

 

“Fine.” This was probably the only way that I could get her to explain her own strange enigmas. Cursing at myself wordlessly in my head, I figured that I should have acted more surprised, because now she suspected something. Not that it mattered anyways, if she could read minds. Of course I was taking her mind reading powers well. How couldn’t I when I had freak powers of my own? The question now was, how well would she take my inhuman powers? The entire situation was one big web of deceit.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not anywhere close to deceit… Yet.” Her tone was reproachful and it sounded like she was reprehending me. This was all ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

 

The entire shack fell to the siege of silence while she studied my eyes with care yet again. Annoyed, I asked her, “Are you going to ask me anything, or are you just going to sit here looking at my eyes for the next few hours?”

 

Instead of flushing, like I’d expected her to, like I’d expect any normal girl to, she merely glared. Even when her eyes emitted anger, they were undeniably picturesque... Perfect. Even now, though she looked as if she wanted to slap me across the face. “Both then. I’ll ask you a question, and you just think about it. And don’t you dare break eye contact. Try not to say anything unnecessary.”

 

Her answer sounded three times as demeaning as my half-sarcastic question had been, and I immediately rued saying anything, yet again. There seemed to be a pattern here… Get knocked speechless, regain the power to speak, try to say something, get cut off, say something, regret saying it. Perhaps I should just keep my mouth shut, like she had suggested. The corners of my mouth twitched, eager to retort, but I decided against snapping back.

 

Abbie’s body leaned over the bar, closer towards me, much closer than what we both knew was strictly required. Her mouth opened and closed with speech, and as she talked, I could feel her breath grazing the side of my face, cool and minty, subtle, but at the same time, strong… Deep in a corner of my brain, somewhere, a neuron decided it would be more beneficial for me to listen than to smell.

 

“…And you have extraordinary dreams,” Abbie commented, quite needlessly, “and it looks like you remember every single one you’ve ever had. Honestly, I didn’t know humans could dream like this.” She hesitated shyly- it was real shyness this time, not just an act. Quite unlike her usual bold demeanor. “It’s a nice feeling to know that I’m the only girl you’ve ever dreamed about like that for the duration of your fifteen years, but I didn’t know you even knew who I was until today… And apparently, neither did you.”

 

Did those heartbeats belong to me? They were so loud, so audible…

 

“It’s sort of unflattering though, how off you were about my general body features in that dream, but I’ll let it slide since you’d never even seen me before then…” I squirmed slightly, uncomfortable with where the conversation was going. “Hm. What’s this?” Her features twisted up in concentration before they loosened up in unexpected laughter. “You peed yourself over that?” she asked slyly, not taking her eyes off mine for even the smallest amount of time.

 

“What can I say. Big Bird scared me when I was a kid,” I muttered back, resisting the urge to look down at my feet.

 

Her composition changed again, but now, it was totally blank and unreadable. A few tense seconds passed, and I knew what she was trying to discover. I knew, and I tried to keep my mind blank so she wouldn’t find it. The only dream I’d ever tried to forget. Abbie’s perfect lips opened halfway, and I knew I wouldn't be able to hide my past for much lower. Anticipating her question, I spoke first.

 

“You’ve found the dark powers, haven’t you?” Only after I finished hearing the words out loud did I realize just how harsh and burning my voice was. Instead of answering, she just gazed at me, the tiniest bit of shock present in the depths of her eyes.

 

Those lips, which had hung open without purpose, were now open with newfound urgency. “When you were eleven years old…”

 

She knew that that small phrase was all I needed to remember every single detail of that night, and the morning afterwards, that horrible memory, from the exact color of Christopher’s jacket to the texture and feel of the easy chair… The memories I had tried to repress for four years came gushing out from the depths of my mind, and each detail pricked at me. The guilt feelings became too much. I began shaking uncontrollably, trembling with the weight of the pain. Nauseated with the implications of it all. Still, I didn't dare break eye contact. As much as I hated it, this was my past. And for once in my life, I had somebody who could understand. Somebody who could listen.

 

Christopher, my father, probably had some sort of mental illness, possibly severe depression or bipolar disorder, although now, it was too late to find out. As an eleven year old, I didn’t pay too much mind to that sort of thing, and I know better than to ask Caroline now…

 

When Christopher walked in the door that night, I was in his favorite armchair, watching the television with devout attention, even though it was only commercial break. Caroline was out doing some late-night shopping, and I was later thankful for that… She didn’t have to be a witness to the debauchery of the night from the two men in her life. He had on his favorite plain cotton black zip-up jacket, and his hair, which came down to his shoulders, just like mine does, was tangled and messier than mine could ever be… Shaving was clearly something he didn’t feel the need to do over the last few days, as he had a full mustache and beard, giving him the look of a homeless person. He had also the appropriate smell. Alcohol fumes and cigarette smoke mingled together- I remembered crinkling my nose. Christopher wasn’t a heavy drinker most of the time, and according to Caroline, he hadn’t smoked since he was in high school… My sense of smell just wasn’t able to cope with the awful stench of this overwhelming mixture, and my eleven-year-old self started breathing through his mouth, in the hopes that the smell would go away.

 

It was by no means the words that frightened me, but the tone in which he said them. He took exactly five large strides to the chair, and in a colder voice than humanly possible, said, “Get out of my chair.”

 

If I was older and knew better, I might have, and Christopher would still be alive. Maybe. Just maybe. But as it was, I didn’t even offer him the opportunity to keep living, and my rebellious side kept my body in the warm, smooth leather fabric of the armchair.

 

“No.”

 

Christopher glared at me with something that strongly resembled hatred, an emotion I had never seen from either parent before then.

 

“Get out.” The anger had turned into furious desperation.

 

“No.”

 

His eyes seemed to expand in its socket, widening with absolute rage, which he had obviously bottled up over the last few hours. The rancid reek of alcohol hung heavily on every breath he took, and even as an ignorant and naïve preteen adolescent, I should’ve had enough sense to get out of the chair.

 

Christopher’s last words to me were screams. “Get out of my chair, you stupid son of a b***h!”

 

He was already well toned and muscular, and his uncontrolled anger fueled each strike. Punching the back of my skull first, he continued to my face, and slapped me time and time again, causing me to go into hysterics. This display of violence seemed to not calm Christopher back to sanity, to reason, but cause him to get even more agitated. Despite my tears and screamed protests, he picked me up bodily. Flailing against his unrelenting arms, I was thrown into my room, and I heard the lock being jammed with a hammer. I lay there, in the position that I had landed in, in shock. Blackness started to wash over my line of vision. The trauma was too much for my young mind, and I fell asleep, or maybe I went into unconscious, now just as hurt and angry as Christopher seemed to be.

 

Whether I was lucid dreaming or not, I still can’t tell. I was very in control of what I was thinking and doing within my dream, but the experience felt different from any lucid dream I’ve ever dreamed… There was a mass of… Something. A large collection of thoughts? An untapped well of emotions? Consciousness itself?

 

Frustrated, I tried to think of words that could come close to describing what it was, before remembering that I didn’t have to. Abbie saw it as I had seen it.

 

The 11-year-old me poked around in the thoughts curiously, feeling and seeing strange things… A brown glass bottle, one or two... No. Several. Many. Too many. And a strange, detached feeling... A car that had been smashed beyond any repair, and the panic as I ran from the scene of the accident. This was not me, but it felt like me. With a start, my younger self saw another memory, the memory of my beating, and the curiosity gave way to anger, and fury raged in my bloodstream. Because this fire, this pain and hurt were all real, more real than anything else I’d ever felt. I wished I could bring harm onto him, to make him suffer for what he’d done to me, and I wished harm onto whoever was the bearer of the memory, to actually kill in the name of anger.

 

Looking back, I cannot believe that children- children, who are always portrayed as innocent, generally peaceful people, can have thoughts of murder at that young age. Christopher was usually a good father. Sometimes, he wasn’t there when I needed him, but he had always tried. Whatever his problems, he’d tried his hardest to bury his own personal demons and raise me. We had shared so much between us. Never close, no. Never quite close. But I was his son, and he loved me. He really did. And this is how I would repay him.

 

My conscious self alerted my subconscious mind that my ears were hearing a single, drawn-out, agonized scream- brutal and unwilling, but somehow… Joyful. Happy. Like he was happy to…

 

And then the big collection of thoughts was gone.

 

Christopher’s death certificate stated that he had died from a suicidal self-stabbing. That was a lie. I knew that I had unnatural, ungodly powers when I dreamed, and I kept that to myself- that I had the power to control other people’s minds, and that Christopher’s death was in reality a murder, a brutal, torturous murder by his own son. No matter what else I could say in my defense, that was the inescapable truth. My hands were not clean, and my conscience was stained. Nobody would ever believe me if I only had words on my side, but Abbie had experienced it. But what good would it do? The truth could not set me free. There was no freedom for me. Yes, I got off scotch-free, but the guilt was eating me alive. And even if I somehow persuaded anybody that I had killed my father, what good would it do? I would rot away in prison, but it wouldn't bring Christopher back.

 

Abbie didn’t say anything. Of course she didn’t. What was there to say? That she didn’t want any part in anything that concerned me anymore? That she was horrified with me? That she thought I was a soulless madman? I could expect no less, because in my own eyes, that wasn’t far from the truth. She was still looking at me, but she didn’t look as if she was going to say anything, so I broke the endless silence that had enveloped us over the last ten, twenty, thirty minutes. Was that all? An entire murder confession wrapped up in that little time span?

 

“So, what’s your mind-reading story? How do you know so much about me, if you claim you don’t read minds? Did you even see what I was thinking? Or did we just waste half an hour staring at each other?” I tried to keep my voice even, so I wouldn’t let any of my emotion leak through...

 

She ignored my questions once again, and keeping her eyes on me, she asked instead, “How much influence do you have when you use your dark powers?” Abbie’s voice had a coolness to it, as if she couldn’t care less that I had murdered my own father, the tone of voice I couldn’t quite achieve… Was she just putting on the act, or did she truthfully not care? It was so difficult to tell with her…

 

“I don’t know,” I admitted slowly, “and to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to. It’s not like I wanted to mess with that kind of stuff after-”

 

Abbie cut me off yet another time. Would she never stop?

 

“Do you think you could dig into my mind tonight and convince me that I want to give you a kiss tomorrow at school?”

 

Our eyes, despite our open speech, had still not strayed away from each other’s, but her focus now seemed to be elsewhere… I didn’t like that look. It was cold and calculating, but at the same time, warm with passion and caring. It was a look that meant trouble.

 

“Why…” I started, enunciating clearly, injecting venomous disbelief in every syllable I spoke, “would you want me to do that?”

 

She shrugged, trying to look innocent, but the tone of voice in which she spoke betrayed her… The delicate cold façade she had tried to put on had cracked enough for me to tell what she was feeling under the cover. “Because I don’t particularly like you, well, not like that anyways, so I want to see if your ‘dark powers’,” putting unneeded sarcasm into her words as she mocked it, “can convince me to do something that’s uncharacteristic, something that’s not in my nature to do. Kind of like a science experiment. That's all.” But I could tell that it wasn't. That wasn't all.

 

My stare had become a glare. “That still doesn’t answer why you-”

 

She cut me off once more, for the last time that night, finally breaking eye contact with me to look out the window. “It’s getting dark. Now, come on, follow me, before you get lost in the forest.”

 

Internally, I was fuming.

Author's Note

Ugh. I hate the beginning of this chapter. I will never be happy with it.