(Here’s the end.  Yes, it’s over.  And it’s happy.  I think.)

In This Time of Waking

So old; she was so very, very old…

Pyramids rose in her eyes and the sun burnt her to the core, revealing everything terrible and cracked and rotten within her, and she tried to outrun it instead of face it, head on, and destroy it.  She ran, and one night a man held out his hand and promised, breath smelling both sweet and foul.

Promised her that she would never dream again.  He would take care of her, love her, forever.

“Let her go!” someone shrieked in terror, in hatred, in petulant loss-

Her mind whirled before Chris’s eyes: everything she was, everything she could have been.  Child of the sun, she would have been a priestess, but she looked in the mirror and hated what she saw.  She hated and ripped at her flesh and tore at her eyes-

“You’re killing her!”

He’d fixed her, oh yes he had.  He’d hollowed her out and given her dream upon dream, if only she would love him, serve him, belong only to him.  She was the first and she would have been the last, but she was falling apart because of this alien mind, this reality, crowding into her and sucking the illusion away.

She was nothing more than his puppet now; a pretty little doll.  And she did regret.

“Please,” she whispered, and Chris understood her madness, understood how her hatred had hollowed her out and how she could now see, really see, because it was his eyes, Chris’s eyes, that she was looking through.

Reality.  Dream.  She was a product of the first, lost to the second, and would die because she couldn’t escape into illusion forever.  She was long overdue to sleep.

Chris was pushed backwards by weak hands, jolted into his own separate mind just long enough to step back, take his hand away, and see what happened to her- to Mia.  He watched, not the only member of a horrified audience, as the knife fell from her nerveless fingers.

A single tear fell down one dark cheek and then her hair, her beautiful dark hair that she had once torn from her skull in her madness, was streaking through with white.  It grew brittle and broke, falling off to the sound of dry whispers.  Her skin was fading, paling, wrinkling and drying out.  When she tried to speak, her blackened teeth fell from her mouth and then she toppled over, hitting the ground with a dry rustle, like a bag of straw.

Her remains were already flaking away.

“Please,” Chris whispered, an unconscious echo of her final plea.  The boy standing at his side, wide-eyed and furious, turned to him with slow precision.

“I suppose you didn’t murder her, either,” he said, his voice a poisonous whisper.  Chris stared into the dome, at what had been Mia.

He said, “She didn’t even know her own name.”

The boy screamed and the sound was so filled with pain that it seemed the darkness surrounding them would shatter.  The dome collapsed on itself and Chris backed away, eyes wide with shock, groping almost unknowingly for the door knob.

“How many more of them would you take from me?!”

“Two for two, you son of a bitch!” Chris screamed, feeling the wall against his back.  There was no door here, but he could edge around; find it somehow.

The little boy raised his hands, laughing though there was no amusement in his tone.  “Then let me raise the stakes, my own one-“

And the dome was all around them; Cerin was standing up feet away from where Chris stood, moving toward Abby with a grim look on his face.  Dace was reaching out with the quickness of a snake, taking Abby’s wrist and knocking Mia’s corpse aside in his zeal to get the knife.

“You will not,” Cerin said coldly, unmoving and unmoved.  “You can’t hurt her.”

“Can’t I?” Dace asked, baring his teeth in a fierce, angry grin.  “Who’s going to stop me?”

“Who do you suppose stopped Mia?” Cerin asked, now taking a small step.  Dace stiffened and drew Abby back with him.  She was too frightened, lost in shock, to even think of fighting him.  Her eyes stayed on what remained of Mia’s body- flakes of papery skin rubbing off of yellow bones.

Dace grew agitated and confused at that; unable to think of a good answer.  Mia had tried to kill the little girl and died herself.  Who was to say that the same wouldn’t happen to Dace?

“David,” the little boy said suddenly, reaching out and touching his face tenderly.  Dace flinched, startled by the sudden appearance of this strange, terrible mockery of a child.  “You will not be harmed.  You are mine and I will protect you, as I promised.”

“No,” Dace whispered, but what he was denying was unclear.  Abby was focusing on the strange little boy now, her eyes widening with further terror.

“I know that you planned to deceive me,” the boy continued, smiling tenderly.  “But all is forgiven.  Kill her for me.”

“No!” Lily shrieked, still in the pit.  Cerin started to move forward, a protest on his lips, but the little boy turned and held out a hand.

“Ceir, your heart has stopped,” he said quietly.  Cerin’s eyes went blank and he began to fall.

“No!” Chris shrieked, and the fragile dome tore.  He was standing in the darkness of the cabin again, the unformed part of it, and the little boy was looking up at him with an almost sweet expression.

“I can save him,” he said quietly, “If you give yourself to me.”

No.  The word was in Chris’s mind and on his tongue, but he could not speak it.

“I’ll even let your precious Abigail and Lillian go free.  I can get what I need another time.”  The boy stopped, tilting his head to the side and smiling slyly.  “Unless you’d rather they all die, so that you are free.”

No.  He still couldn’t say it, hearing Lily’s scream echo and Cerin’s body fall, knowing that in any moment that knife would tear Abby’s fragile throat-

“Just you, Seymour, given freely to me, and they can go.”

“No.”

* * * * *

His heart stuttered but it didn’t stop.  He wouldn’t let it; he was his own, he could take himself back, and he wouldn’t fall.  He wouldn’t die.  He had too much yet to do.  Dace’s eyes widened and he moved to bring the knife across Abby’s flesh.

And then Abby screamed.

“I WANT TO GO HOME!”

The words seemed to tear at the very fabric of the dream.  Dace let her go, falling back.  She stepped forward, still wailing, still screaming, “SOMEONE TAKE ME HOME!  I WANT MY MOM!  I WANT CHRIS!  STOP HURTING ME I HATE YOU I WANT TO GO HOME!”

Because a five year-old girl doesn’t ever really believe that, should she cry, should she scream, the world will not somehow start to make sense again.  A five year-old girl has a very acute sense of reality and she knows that, if she should have a nightmare, she will wake and her loved ones will comfort her.

The strength of her belief, of her conviction, warped the dream around her.  Filled with a deep sympathy for her suffering, he walked to her and took her in his arms, holding her close.

He whispered, “I’ll get you home, Abby.  I promise.”

“Impossible,” Dace whispered, sinking to his knees.

He looked at Dace coldly.  “Not quite.  I’m all my own now.  But you… you’re still caught, aren’t you?”

Dace gave a wordless scream of loss, of defeat, of continued bondage and fear, then plunged the knife into his own belly, up under the rib cage and deep as he could go.

* * * * *

“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t give a single fucking thing,” Chris snarled, taking those tiny shoulders in either hand and shaking the boy roughly.  “You don’t give anything and anything that is taken, you take back.”

The boy tried to fight, but he was weak.  His eyes, once shining silver, were cloudy gray.

“You think you’re real?” Chris demanded.  “You think that you found some kind of extra reality because you stole those poor people, made them into caricatures of what they really were, and forced them to feel something towards you?  You don’t even know what love is; you want to own them and that’s not love!”

“What do you know about it?” the boy asked, but his voice was dry as dust.  He was fading fast, glowing gently like a mote of dust in sunlight.

“People are real, really when, when they love.  When they give up their time and their energy and focus to other people; when they care about other people and about themselves.  The more people you care about, the more real you are.”  Chris took in a deep breath.  “Dace is gone, Mia is gone, Ginne is gone- you saw it, I saw it; you have nothing left!  Cerin, Ceir, he isn’t yours anymore.  I’m not yours, Abby’s not yours, and Lily’s not yours.  And we’re leaving.”

“Can’t,” the boy protested, but he was just a thin line of reflected light; he was a thin film of water about to collapse.

“Who are you, really?” Chris asked just as the boy disappeared.

The darkness edged away and there was something in the corner, some terribly old and deformed thing, with a bloated, distended belly and wide staring eyes.  It was all gray, all lack of color and beauty, all terrible and gross.  It was a corpse; it was a nightmare.

“You can’t,” it burbled, the reality of the dreamer exposed.  Something almost pitiable, if one didn’t know the malice contained within.

Chris almost smiled.  “There is nothing that I can’t do here.”

“Not alone,” it moaned, weak tiny hands scrabbling at its huge stomach.  “Not all alone.  Can’t do that-“

“This dream is all yours and yours alone, now.  You’re stuck here, and you have no power to steal anyone else.  You can dream here forever, alone.”  And, with that, Chris turned and walked out the door, leaving no goodbyes and feeling no pity.  The door swung open at his touch and he stepped out…

…into the line of trees alongside the parking lot, almost knocking into a woman with a stroller carrying a squawling kid.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, and she smiled quickly before pushing the stroller on, anxious to get her child to the car and home.  It was late, after all- the sun was getting close to setting.

He was back.

“Fuck,” Chris whispered, suddenly remembering those who were missing.  He ran, pounding through the parking lot and rushing towards the fair, where three people that he dearly loved were stepping out of one of the tents, blinking in the sunshine.

“Hey!” he shouted, not knowing which name to scream first.  It didn’t matter; Abby, Ceir, and Lily all ran at the same moment, calling out his name and they were all laughing, almost crying, as they crashed into a strange four-person hug in the middle of the main walkway, drawing quite a bit of attention.

But that was all right, too.  At that moment, everything was all right- it was perfect.

* * * * *

Lily and Abby were sleeping in the backseat of the minivan, dreaming safer, more innocent dreams than those the rest of the day had possessed.  Chris drove, scouting the road ahead for deer.  A car accident would really cap off the day.

“What happens now?” Ceir asked, looking out the window.  He seemed hesitant to look Chris directly in the eye now.

“I’m not sure,” Chris answered truthfully.  “What’s going to happen to you?”

“I have some money saved up,” Ceir said in a strangely evasive tone.  “He… made sure we could get anything we needed, should we be out in the real world for a long while.”

Chris thought about that, about how the terrible dreamer had, in some twisted way, actually loved those he’d practically kidnapped.  And about how he was stuck in a world of his own, all alone, now.

“The skeletons might keep him company,” he said aloud without thinking.

Ceir actually laughed, bright and warm, surprising both of them.  Chris looked back in the rear view mirror, but Abby and Lily hadn’t stirred.

“You’re an odd one,” Ceir said comfortably, reaching out and squeezing Chris’s thigh.  Chris blushed and squirmed, suddenly embarrassed.  It was strange not to feel so incredibly powerful and right anymore… but it was good, too.  He could let these things happen.  “Would you mind terribly if I used your phone to call a cab?”

“A cab?” Chris repeated, looking over at Ceir, who was smiling at him in much the same way he had when they had first spoken.

“There’s a bed and breakfast in town I can stay at for a while,” he said simply.  “And it’s not that far from your place, as far as I can tell.”

Chris was silent for a long moment, relishing the feeling of Ceir’s hands working on his leg, and when he did answer, his voice was slow and warm.  “That sounds fine by me.”

* * * * *